COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Counter-extremism strategy spreads to more areas amid growing concerns over young men fighting abroad



The government has ramped up efforts to prevent more British youngsters from being lured into terrorism as a result of jihadi propaganda by rushing fresh resources into new areas from where Muslim men have travelled overseas to join Isis and other jihadi groups.

Brighton, Coventry and Portsmouth have been added to the list of areas needing support under the government’s £40m grassroots counter-extremism strategy Prevent, after clusters of young men from the cities travelled to fight in Syria.

A list obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act shows the number of places officially designated as needing support under the programme has risen as concern grows about British jihadis.

The Prevent strategy, which the Home Office says aims to “stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”, ranges from funding community campaigns to mentor young people at risk of being drawn into violent extremism to involving schools and universities in vigilance.

It has been controversial since it was set up under Labour, when it was accused of stigmatising Muslims – including a case in which it funded CCTV cameras in a Muslim area of Birmingham.

The coalition rapidly downsized Prevent and shifted it to a police-led initiative. Now the Home Office is once again increasing the number of local authorities involved, alongside controversial plans to place a duty on universities, schools and local authorities to “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”, through an amendment to the counter-terror and security bill, which is at the Lords report stage. More than 500 university professors have urged the home secretary, Theresa May, to rethink the plans.

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Islamic State recruitment files provide fresh evidence Coventry fighters were radicalised in the city



Fresh evidence has emerged that three young men who travelled from Coventry to Syria to fight for Islamic State (IS) were radicalised in the city.

The details came after Sky News obtained thousands of the terror group’s recruitment files - including those of Foleshill teenagers Ali Kalantar, Rashed Amani and Mohammed Hadi .

When the youngsters left in 2014, the Telegraph reported that family members of Kalantar were concerned that an imam, who runs a madrassa in Coventry, had “radicalised” the then 19-year-old while he was studying for his A-levels.

Relatives discovered two photos of Kalantar carrying out mock executions on a computer after the then 19-year-old had left for Syria. They were taken at a place where they thought he was attending religious teachings.

At the time of their disappearance Kalantar’s sister - who did not want to be named - said: “One day he decided to go and was soon going to prayers five times a day.

“He changed, but we never dreamed he was being radicalised. The imam groomed him, that’s the word to describe it.

“Apparently he was constantly telling these boys that they should go overseas to fight jihad.”

The IS files appear to add weight to those claims over a year after two of the three men were killed. Amani was killed by a US drone strike and Kalantar died while fighting for IS in Iraq. It is thought Hadi - who has been nicknamed Osama Bin Bieber - is still alive and fighting for the terror group.

Rashed Amani had said on his form that he wanted to join IS as a fighter, but none of the men had filled in the section to say who had recruited them.

Sharan Ali, a friend of Coventry University student Amani, told Sky News the teenager had shown no outward signs of radicalisation, and even had a British girlfriend, before he left for Syria.

He said: “This boy doesn’t look like a fighter. He was a normal guy.

“I loved Rashed like my brother. I loved him like a good friend. He was a nice, normal guy, nothing wrong with him.

“He never talked about Islamic State. I saw him one week before he left and he seemed the same. Nothing different with that boy.

“He wore normal clothes, he had a British girlfriend. One day they came into eat and I saw them.”

A friend of Hadi, who was not named, said: “It’s a very dangerous thing and we have got a lot of Muslims in this country, a lot of youths.

“We need to tackle this problem before these people get to their heads and radicalise them to travel to Syria.”

Sky News also suggested in their report that another family in Hillfields had seen a youngster travel to fight for IS and spoke to another man who said a family had pulled their children out of religious school over fears about radicalisation.

Kalantar was taking his A-levels and was planning to study computer science at Coventry University before he vanished in March 2014.

Fellow Afghani Amani and Kurdish-born Hadi, then 18, vanished from Coventry around the same time and Amani’s family even travelled to the Syrian border in a desperate bid to find him.

Signs of Kalantar’s radicalisation had appeared on social media shortly before he died.