Council fails in attempt to take children of extremists into care

Social workers unable to prove that four youngsters were at risk of being radicalised at home

SOCIAL workers dropped plans to take the children of two known Islamist extremists into care after a council said they could find no evidence they were in danger of being radicalised.

The London council had applied to the courts to take five young children into care, fearing they risked suffering emotional and psychological harm because of their parents’ extremist views.

The children’s father, described as a leading figure of the banned terror organisation Al-Muhajiroun, has been on a terrorist watch list and their mother had attended extremist meetings.

But the council dropped care proceedings after it said it could not demonstrate that the children had been damaged. At a seven-day High Court hearing, Mrs Justice Knowles agreed.

The case is thought to be one of a number in which councils have been unable to prove the children of known extremists are in danger and need to be taken into care.

Earlier this year Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police’s recently retired former assistant commissioner and Britain’s leading counter-terrorism officer, said convicted terrorists should be treated like paedophiles and have their children taken away from them.

He said that all too often parents convicted of terror offences were allowed to keep custody of their children, leaving them open to radicalisation. The father in the current case, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the children, was found by police to have encouraged others to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and had discussed throwing gay men to their deaths from high buildings.

He had until recently been subject to a Terrorist Prevention and Investigation Measure, used when someone is believed to be involved in terrorism but cannot be prosecuted or deported. He is facing trial later this year for breaches of the measure. He separated from his wife in 2013, and the children lived with their mother in east London until their eldest, a girl known as Child A, went to live with her father.

In June 2017 Mr Justice Nicol made a series of findings against the father, including that he had exchanged messages with the extremist leader Anjem Choudary and spoke at Al-Muhajiroun public meetings.

When he was arrested, police discovered pro-Isil material on his laptop and mobile phone and found he had been in contact with Siddhartha Dhar, the British Isil killer known as Jihadi Sid.

The mother was said by police to be an active member of a women’s circle closely associated with Al-Muhajiroun and had been seen in the Channel 4 documentary Isis: The British Women Supporters Unveiled.

She spoke in support of “one brother” who had travelled to Syria and

‘The children were suffering significant emotional and psychological harm from exposure to their parents’

her laptop contained a speech promoting violent jihad.

The woman, who had an unrelated police caution for assault committed in front of her children, admitted they would sometimes go into the meetings but denied being an extremist, claiming she was simply “a politically engaged, articulate and devout person who believed that observant Muslims should aspire to live in a caliphate” and had the right to express views critical of foreign and domestic policy.

She said she now recognised Isil’s lack of legitimacy”.

In June the council told the courts “the children were suffering significant emotional and psychological harm arising from exposure to their parents’ extremist and radicalising views and were likely to adopt those same extremist and radical views”.

However, a social worker said the mother met the children’s basic needs, and the children themselves had not expressed hateful or extremist views.