DERADICALISATION GROUP FACES CLOSURE AFTER UK FUNDING CUTS
▶ Former extremist’s London charity has helped to stop vulnerable youngsters joining ISIS or heading to Syria
At the height of his influence, Hanif Qadir was at the vanguard of the UK’s counter-radicalisation programme, working with some of the country’s most dangerous extremists.
Fifteen years on, he has been dumped by government and his charity faces eviction.
Mr Qadir, a former Al Qaeda sympathiser who travelled to Afghanistan, was seeking to expand his work with government in April 2016 when funding was cut off for the charity he set up to help vulnerable youngsters in East London.
Before then, he worked directly with suspected extremists to argue against the violent ideologies of Al Qaeda and ISIS, with his group showing an income of more than £900,000 (Dh4.47 million) in 2015-2016, according to its annual accounts.
They counselled a youngster with links to an Al Qaeda-led plot to bomb airlines in 2006 that was conceived and developed in the deprived east London community of Waltham Forest where the charity is based. The organisation briefly ran a government-funded hotline and raised the alarm about a group of schoolgirls who planned to join ISIS in Syria, he told The National.
Mr Qadir claims that his work engaging with radical influencers was considered too risky. Other sources indicate a breakdown of trust over a funding issue. Officials and analysts said the cut in funding followed a change of government strategy.
But the effect for Mr Qadir’s charity, the Active Change Foundation (ACF), has been devastating. Community centres used by troubled youths have closed, his work channelling potential terrorists from radical ideologies halted, and unpaid rent means the charity could soon be wound down.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr Qadir said. “We were the most successful in the country at this work.” The demise of an organisation once feted by police and government, raises questions about the effectiveness of the government’s Prevent programme, set up after attacks on the London transport network in 2005 that killed 52 people.
The government claims Prevent has stopped youngsters from joining ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But elements in the British Muslim community say it is a state-sponsored and discriminatory spying operation.
For more than a decade, Mr Qadir was a high-profile figure in the programme on returning from a seven-day visit to Afghanistan after being wooed by extremist fundraisers in the UK. He became disillusioned after watching orphaned children getting brainwashed.
“These people were responsible for putting kids into suicide vests,” he said. “These kids were smiling because they were going to paradise and would see their parents again.”
He sold his car-testing business in the UK and ploughed his money into creating ACF in 2003 in one of the UK’s most ethnically diverse communities. The group first received government funding in 2007 after the airline bomb plot.
Mr Qadir said his organisation was at the cutting edge of deradicalisation work, running outreach patrols to speak to youngsters on the streets and combating ISIS online propaganda. It dovetailed its work with projects trying to remove youngsters from gang culture.
Mr Qadir said his funding was cut after his involvement with the family of Jack Letts – dubbed “Jihadi Jack” – who travelled to Syria to join ISIS. His parents sought Mr Qadir’s help to try to get him to the UK.
They communicated through Facebook and “he went from calling me kafir and non-believer to saying that I had made him understand the people he met there had a completely different belief system to what he thought” Mr Qadir said. He said he clashed with government after the parents allegedly wired money to their son, against his advice. Sally Lane and John Letts were charged with funding terrorism.
Mr Qadir said the episode, plus his involvement in another complex case involving a suspected extremist, were among the reasons for losing his grants. “I was told, ‘You’re too risky’,” he said. “My argument was, isn’t our work risky?
“Our success was our downfall. We were champions of Prevent for 15 years – but this is a very cut-throat industry.”
A source close to the Home Office said the cut came after a shift in strategy from engaging directly with the dangerous extremist influencers to a broader programme of education. “There is bitterness because he was chewed up and spat out,” the source said. “But it was just a change of strategy, no particular incident stands out.”
The Home Office declined to comment but said it was continually looking to broaden its anti-extremism projects. It said 44 per cent of 169 funded community-based projects in 20162017 were delivered in schools “aimed at increasing young people’s resilience to terrorist and extremist ideologies”.
Dr Julian Hargreaves, a research fellow at the Woolf Centre in Cambridge, said the UK Home Office needed to find ways of engaging with groups whose views did not chime with official government policy.
“Under the new framework of counter-extremism, I think he [Qadir] found himself as a bit of an outsider,” he said.
Mr Qadir was trying to stave off closure with his landlord last week. An online appeal seeking £200,000 to keep the charity going has raised £15 from a solitary donor.
“ACF are cutting-edge and a bit maverick. They knew what worked and they got results – perhaps the government doesn’t quite like that approach any more,” said Ian Larnder, a former senior officer in the unit responsible for developing the police Prevent strategy. “The difficulty is measuring success. I don’t believe that the policy has shifted that much to make ACF work outdated. They need that focus and that direct work more than ever. It’s very sad.”
ACF are cutting-edge and a bit maverick. They knew what worked and they got results IAN LARNDER Former senior police officer