Security slur payout for Muslim nuclear worker

A MUSLIM engineering worker at a nuclear site has won a payout after being flagged as a threat for allegedly saying British troops ‘deserved to die’.

Counter-terror police went to Mo Master’s home after colleagues said he had started to show more ‘extreme Islamic views’.

A tribunal has now ruled that the decision to refer him was a ‘kneejerk’ reaction based on unsubstantiated gossip.

A judge found that Mr Master was the victim of religious discrimination and rumours persisted because of his faith.

Springfields Fuels in Salwick, near Preston, had a strict security policy in place as it stores radioactive materials that could be used to make a ‘dirty’ bomb.

Mr Master, who had worked at the plant for 28 years, was flagged to bosses in 2018 as a ‘potential security risk’ during a separate workplace dispute.

Manager Tim Berry said that during breaks in the canteen ‘Mr Master had started to say things that suggested that he held extreme Islamic views’.

A supervisor claimed that he had been heard saying that ‘British troops in the Middle East deserved to die’.

Workmates said he became ‘quite vocal about Allah’, and ‘prepared to voice opinions’ whereas he would not have done so before. It resulted in Simon Johnson, head of security, filing a report to the Office for Nuclear Regulation in January 2018.

A month later, Mr Master took voluntary redundancy and a payout of £70,000.

In May, officers with Prevent, the Government’s anti-terror agency, turned up at Mr Master’s home and quizzed him in front of family members.

They logged details of his acquaintances but took no further action.

Nuclear sites in the UK are

graded according to four levels of security risk, with Springfields Fuels having the second lowest rating.

Mr Johnson said the site held material that ‘could be stolen to manufacture a dirty bomb or sabotage to cause significant injury on site’.

Ruling at the tribunal in Manchester, the judge said: ‘There is no evidence at all about when this comment was supposed to have been made, where it was made, the context in which it was made, who made it, who it was made to and who reported it. Had Mr Master not been Muslim, this rumour would not have persisted to the extent that it did.’

He said management had reported its concerns to regulators as fact rather than unsubstantiated gossip.

Springfields Fuels – part of the Westinghouse group – was ordered to pay Mr Master £3,500 in compensation. However, he must pay his former employer £7,622 in costs after other claims were dismissed.