Boy posed as spy on net to arrange his own death

A TEENAGE boy posed as a spy in an internet chatroom to persuade a friend to kill him in an "extraordinary suicide attempt", a court heard yesterday.

The boy, 14 at the time, groomed his friend, then 15, with an "elaborate matrix of deceit" involving a series of fictional identities in the chatroom.

The older boy, boy A, tried to kill his friend, boy B, on the orders of the "spy", Manchester Crown Court heard.