'Spy' got friend to stab him

LONDON - A schoolboy posed as a female British secret service agent in an internet chatroom to persuade a friend to try to murder him, a court heard.

The boy, "John", now 15, groomed a 16-year-old boy, "Mark", with an "elaborate matrix of deceit" involving six fictional characters.

The fictions created by John, then 14, convinced Mark that he was murdering someone who had a terminal brain tumour. He was told his reward would be money, a job as a secret service agent and sex with the spy, who he believed was a woman.

In fact, John was determined to get himself killed, which is why he never used the abort code - 6969 - that he provided.

Manchester Crown Court heard that John, who had fallen in love with Mark, also tricked him into performing sex acts on a webcam before tricking him into stabbing him twice in an alleyway at Altrincham on June 29 last year.

Though John's life was in the balance for a time, he did not die and was released from hospital after a week.

Over a nine-month period before the attempted murder, John began presenting himself as a 16-year-old girl in search of a cyber relationship, then "introduced" himself as the girl's step-brother.

John and Mark then physically met, but in the chatroom John introduced increasingly far-fetched characters, including another boy who "stalked" John and supposedly killed his girlfriend.

Mark pleaded guilty to attempted murder, was given a two-year supervision order and banned from any contact with John. John pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and incitement to murder. He was given a three-year supervision order.

- INDEPENDENT