Treat extremists like paedophiles, says terror chief

Officer suggests children should be taken from home to stop radicalisation

CONVICTED terrorists should be treated like paedophiles and have their children taken away from them, one of the country’s most senior police officers has suggested.

Asst Commissioner Mark Rowley – Britain’s leading counter-terror officer – said exposing children to extremist propaganda was “equally wicked” to keeping them in environments where there was sexual abuse.

He said in too many cases, parents who were convicted of terror offences were permitted to retain custody of their children, leaving them open to the possibility of being radicalised.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank last night, he said: “I wonder if we need more parity between protecting children from paedophile and terrorist parents.”

Expanding on the idea, Mr Rowley said: “If you know parents are interested in sex with children, or if you know parents believe that people of their faith or their belief, should hate everybody else and grow up to kill people, for me those things are equally wicked environments to expose children to.”

In November last year a mother of five was convicted of posting terrorist propaganda on social media.

But the judge in the case spared her a jail sentence so that she could return to care for her children.

Mr Rowley said social services had a lot of experience of removing children from parents convicted of sharing paedophile images and added: “Whilst the family courts have really rolled their sleeves up, I am not yet sure we have yet got our heads round how to deal with… if you have got parents who are effectively terrorists, convicted of sharing terrorist propaganda.

“Does that in itself pose such a risk to the children so that the children should be treated the same as those whose parents are paedophiles?”

Mr Rowley also warned of the “alarming occurrence” of known extremists removing their children from school for home teaching.

He explained that in a recent survey police discovered that around half of all people convicted of terrorist offences in London had been found to be home schooling their children.

Mr Rowley, who is retiring from his role after 31 years in the police service, also warned of the growing threat posed by the extreme Right in Britain.

Delivering the Colin Cramphorn Memorial Lecture, he revealed that the police and security services had foiled four neo-nazi terror plots in the UK in 2017, as well as 10 Islamist conspiracies.

Mr Rowley condemned extremists on both sides, saying they shared the same divisive goals of creating intolerance, isolation and mistrust.

He accused Cage, the controversial pressure group, of whipping up “ridiculous claims that all Muslims are terror suspects in the eyes of the authorities” and said farright extremists had set up “whites only” food banks in some cities.

Mr Rowley said: “So ironically, while Islamist and extreme Right-wing ideologies may appear to be at opposing ends of the argument, it is evident that they both have a great deal in common.”