JIHADI TEACHER’S 110-PUPIL DEATH SQUAD
Boys taught in class to plant bombs and stab Christians Grooming of 11-year-olds was under Ofsted’s nose
AN ISLAMIC teacher who groomed 110 pupils to join a ‘death squad’ to carry out a wave of 30 terror attacks is facing jail.
Umar Haque, 25, recruited boys as young as 11 to join his ‘battalion’ of child soldiers right under the nose of Ofsted.
While the watchdog rated his school as ‘outstanding’, he was brainwashing youngsters with gruesome beheading videos and making them perform role-play exercises so they could practice knifing police officers and planting bombs.
children were prepared for terror with physical training as Haque ordered them to do push-ups, races and grapple with each other. They were instructed to play the roles of police and attackers in scenarios, stabbing the ‘christians’ and ‘Americans’ with imaginary knives while their deranged tutor shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar’.
One child told how the Islamic State lessons made him feel like killing the Queen.
The religious tutor had access to 250 children over the five years he worked at two Islamic schools and a mosque, 110 of whom he indoctrinated in a bid to make them child martyrs. Yet Haque had no teaching qualifications and was only officially employed as an administrator.
Yesterday he was convicted at the Old Bailey of plotting a wave of terrorist attacks using children drilled to become martyrs at a private Islamic secondary school in Leyton, East London and classes at a mosque in Barking.
Haque planned to use his teenage ‘death squad’ to shoot police and drive cars packed with explosives into high-profile targets including Big Ben, the Queen’s Guard and Westfield shopping centre.
The extraordinary case raises troubling questions about Islamic schools and inspections.
Haque’s lessons were so disturbing that 35 students now need long-term support. Police had no idea of his poisonous influence on children as they faced a ‘ wall of silence’ from the community, teachers, parents and the pupils themselves. Haque only came to the attention of police when he tried to travel to Syria and was put under surveillance.
He was an associate of Khuram Butt, 27, the leader of the London Bridge terror attack, who was also radicalising children at another Islamic school.
Two other mosque tutors with no teaching qualifications who joined Haque were also convicted yesterday of terrorism offences.
Haque and Butt, who both attended the Ripple Road mosque in Barking, East London, appear to have been radicalising children right under the nose of Ofsted.
At a time when Haque was delivering lectures on IS to children at the Lantern of Knowledge School, a private Islamic secondary school in Leyton, Ofsted praised its ‘effective’ safeguarding measures against extremism.
Its 2015 report even said: ‘ The school checks carefully any visitors to the school to ensure they do not promote any extreme views.’
Similarly when Ofsted inspected Eton community School in Ilford, another Islamic school six miles away where Butt taught, inspec- tors also commended teachers’ efforts to combat extremism.
The school, which was originally set up under another name by an extremist who trained under a ringleader of the 7/7 attacks, was inspected two months before the London Bridge attack when Butt was radicalising children as young as four, MI5 believe.
Like Haque, Butt had no teaching qualifications. Both extremists were on the radar of the security services, having previously being stopped attempting to travel to Syria. Yet MI5 prioritised surveillance on Haque and mistakenly suspended monitoring of Butt due to ‘ resourcing constraints’. Haque’s weeks before arrest the last London May just Bridge two atrocity may have prompted Butt to bring the attack forward as he feared the net was closing in. It is not known whether the pair had shared their terror plans, but their aspirations were strikingly similar. Although they believed Haque was plotting terror, police had no idea he had radicalised 110 children when he was first arrested.
The London-born fanatic who still lived with his parents, had been working in schools for almost five years, despite barely scraping through his A-levels. Despite having no qualifications, he was allowed to teach Islamic studies and physical education at the £3,000 a year Lantern of Knowledge School from July 2015 to January 2016. From September 2016, Haque was also teaching evening Islamic studies class at Ripple Road Mosque having joined as an administrator in January 2014. Haque boasted that he was teaching extremism ‘under the noses’ of parents and other teachers.
He groomed children to launch attacks with knives, guns or a car bomb on a range of 30 targets, including the Houses of Parliament, Westfield shopping centres, Heathrow, MI5, embassies, courts, media stations and banks.
Haque promised to teach 11-yearolds how to drive so they could emulate his hero Khalid Masood’s murderous rampage down Westminster Bridge. Haque said he had already been to Parliament to check how many police officers were on guard. A bug captured Haque rehearsing his recruitment speech to his class: ‘We gonna kill so many.... they gonna regret ever getting in to the war with Islamic State, do you hear me boys?’
He enlisted the help of two other teachers at the mosque, who also had no teaching qualifications.
A but ha her Mamun, 19, was convicted of preparing terrorist acts after trying to raise funds for guns and cars. Another mosque teacher, Muhammad Abid, 27, was convicted of failing to disclose a terror plot after Haque told him he was planning attacks.
Following Haque’s arrest, police found notebooks outlining his ‘battle plans’ and a large kitchen knife in the footwell of his car. When he was interviewed, he told police he should ‘go to prison for life’. Haque was convicted of two counts of preparing to commit acts of ter----
‘We gonna kill so many, boys’
rorism. He screamed about IS as he was dragged from the dock.
Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: ‘His plan was to create an army of children to assist with multiple terrorist acts throughout London.’
Yesterday Ofsted said it had no knowledge Haque was a threat when it inspected his school and said it had no power to oversee teacher qualifications in independent schools.
Ofsted deputy chief inspector Matthew Coffey said: ‘It is of deep regret that this individual was able to work within the independent school system and expose his warped ideology to children… Ofsted is committed to protecting children… However, our ability to do so is hampered by limitations on our powers. We have no ability to inspect out-of-school settings, such as madrassas, and we believe greater powers in this area could help keep children safe in the future.’