Children begged to be put in care after ‘IS fanatic parents showed beheading videos’

‘They tried to brainwash them’

FOUR children have been taken into care after complaining that their parents fanatically supported Islamic State, showed them a beheading video and declared hatred for Britain.

The girl aged 18 and her brothers aged 16, 14, and ten said their parents were followers of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The couple were said to have supported extremist violence and ‘expressed antiSemitic, anti-British, homophobic and anti-white views in the home, which the children reject’.

The children were also allegedly beaten as their Somali parents – who secured Dutch citizenship and moved to Britain under EU free movement rules – tried to ‘brainwash them into adopting extremist views’, it was claimed.

London’s High Court heard that while no ruling had been made on the extremism claims, the children had been taken into care immediately after the daughter reported their plight to counselling service ChildLine. The case comes after a senior police officer said children of convicted terrorists should be protected like those whose parents are paedophiles.

Mark Rowley said before retiring as the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing last month that extremist propaganda and sexual abuse were ‘equally wicked’ forces for youngsters to be exposed to.

His successor Neil Basu warned recently that ‘segregated, isolated communities, unregulated education and home schooling’ in Britain had become ‘ a breeding ground for future terrorists’.

In the latest case, action was taken only as a result of the children making their concerns known. In a family court ruling Ms Justice Russell said the children had made allegations of physical and emotional abuse and that ‘their parents tried to brainwash them and to influence them into adopting extremist views’.

Some were linked to the fanatical group Al-Shabaab whose gunmen massacred 67 people at the Westgate shopping centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in 2013.

Alongside complaints of ‘physical chastisement’, the youngsters talked of their parents making them ‘watch inappropriate images of extremism on videos such as a beheading by Al-Shabaab. The children also said their parents supported al-Baghdadi’.

The ruling said the 16-year-old and his sister had now been settled in foster care together. The judge noted that the parents had not been given details of the care placements for two of their family ‘ because the level of antipathy from their children towards them is such that they do not want their parents to know where they are and refuse contact with them’.

According to the ruling, the children’s officially-appointed guardian was supporting a plan by the local authority to move the two youngest boys, currently together, into different foster homes. The parents, who say their children’s cultural needs are being ignored, opposed the move because they did not want the boys separated.

Yet even they accepted the children should stay in care, admitting their 14-year-old in particular ‘would refuse to return to their care even if that were possible’.

The court heard that the father, 51, understood to be a warehouse worker, and mother, 48, a housewife, were born in Somalia, moved some 20 years ago to the Netherlands then settled in Britain in the Midlands, living in a council flat. As well as the four children, they have an older son in Africa.

They have been in the UK for at least 15 years, and at first were open with the NHS and schools but became increasingly isolated.

The two young boys stopped going to classes and in February last year their sister, then 17, emailed ChildLine anonymously. The court heard the email com- plained ‘of abuse and physical chastisement principally by the father, and it was mostly the youngest boy who suffered. The children were kept at home, did not attend school and were kept socially isolated only being allowed out once every three weeks’.

Police traced the email to the family address and launched a joint investigation with social services. The three boys and their sister were all taken into care.

The High Court heard that the sister ‘told the social worker their parents were intending to take them to Kenya for good’.

The ten-year- old was not even able to talk properly when taken into care, and was described as ‘extremely vulnerable’.

The judge said: ‘None of the children have had any direct contact with the parents since being taken into care in February 2017. The boys aged 16 and 14 have both refused any contact with their parents and adamantly do not want to be reunited with them.’

The judge said a long-term decision on the children would be made in September. She accepted the local authority’s request to use special powers to ban the couple from contacting the children on the grounds that there was untested evidence of the parents posing a risk ‘based on the allegations of repeated physical abuse of all four children’.

The Daily Mail understands terror police have been involved in investigating the family, but last night police spokesmen were unable to say what action if any was being taken against the parents.