CANBERRA, Australia — An Australian newspaper on Monday published a photograph of a child it said was the son of an Australian convicted terrorist holding aloft the severed head of a Syrian solider.

The Australian newspaper reported that the photograph of terrorist Khaled Sharrouf’s son was posted on Twitter by his proud father.

“That’s my boy!” Sharrouf apparently posted beneath the image that was taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of what has been declared that an Islamic Caliphate by the Islamic State, the newspaper reported.

The child, who is not named, appears to be younger than 10 years old.

Sharrouf used his brother’s passport to leave Australia last year with his wife and three sons to fight in Syria and Iraq. The Australian government had banned him from leaving the country because of the terrorism threat he posed. He was among nine men accused in 2007 of stockpiling bomb-making chemicals and plotting terrorist attacks in Australia’s largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.

He pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses and was sentenced in 2009 to four years in prison.

In June, The Australian newspaper published a photograph of Sharrouf posing among the bodies of massacred Iraqis.


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