LONDON: A British teenager was found guilty on Thursday of plotting to behead a soldier in London after being influenced by the murder of an Afghan war veteran who was hacked to death by two militants in the capital a year earlier.

Brusthom Ziamani, 19, was arrested last August carrying a 12-inch (30-cm) knife and a hammer, wrapped in a black flag.

Prosecutors told London’s Old Bailey court he had researched the location of army cadet barracks and they believed he was on his way to a military base when he was detained. Ziamani, from Camberwell, southeast London, was convicted of preparing terrorist acts.

Commander Richard Walton, from London police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said after the verdict that the case starkly illustrated one of the threats police currently face in Britain.

“Ziamani was an impressionable young man who became radicalized then rapidly developed an extremist, violent mindset,” he said in a statement. “Over a series of months he ultimately developed a desire to carry out a terrorist attack on British soldiers.”