The Daily Telegraph

‘UK extremist groups funded from overseas’

- By Ben Farmer

FOREIGN funding provides “significan­t” income for some Islamist extremist groups in Britain, the Government has admitted, but it has refused to name those responsibl­e.

The Opposition accused the Government of suppressin­g a report into the scale and origin of extremist funding because it is widely suspected to implicate Saudi Arabia.

The review found that most funding came from small donations inside the UK, often from members of the public who may not understand the nature of the organisati­ons to which they were giving. But it found that for a small number of organisati­ons with extremism concerns, overseas funding was a “significan­t source of income”.

An outline of the conclusion­s from the long-awaited review was released yesterday, days after a security think tank accused Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, of exporting Islamist extremism to the UK and other Western countries.

The Henry Jackson Society last week said there was growing evidence that foreign funding had had a considerab­le impact on advancing extremism in Britain and other Western countries.

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, last night said there was a “strong suspicion” the Government’s full report was being “suppressed to protect this Government’s trade and diplomatic priorities, including in relation to Saudi Arabia”.

Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, said reasons of national security and the amount of personal data included meant it could not be published.

She said the Government would be directly raising issues of concern with “specific countries as part of our wider internatio­nal engagement on countering extremism and violent extremism”.

David Cameron commission­ed the review in November 2015. It found the most common source of support for Islamist extremist organisati­ons in the UK was from small, anonymous public donations, with the majority most likely coming from Uk-based individual­s.

“While overseas funding was a significan­t source of income for some organisati­ons, it was not so important for the vast majority of extremist groups,” Ms Rudd said.

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