08/09/2014 Inside Out West Midlands

I've been sat on a beach. Sttton Park. I've been sat in a

We can go to a number of different places.

We can even use, erm, museuls, anything that will help and have an

Forget what you've heard about Britain's fight against extremism.

This is the frontline, a cafe near you.

These people are often ordinary people,

just like me or you who acttally are more concerned with what was the

score with Chelsea and Man Tnited last night than foreign polhcy.

In public places across the land, Government`approved mentors are

talking to extremists, trying to prevent them

Three Birmingham men have gone on trial accused of plotting

a series of suicide bomb attacks on multiple targets in Brit`in.

I grew up in Birmingham and the stuff I hear about the city

A Ukrainian student has admhtted murdering an 82`year`old

He told police he targeted the grandfather just

So I've come back to the city to find out what's going on.

I'll ask if Birmingham is now the terror capital of Britahn.

There's a pretty serious cltster here, disproportionate to

And I'll get rare access to the men and women whose job it hs to

Can we stop someone putting on an explosive vest simply

Of course, conflict in Birmingham is nothing new.

There were the Handsworth rhots in the 80s.

And I remember the rise of the National Front.

This was the last house my family lived in

I spent a lot of my later tdenage life here and you know what?

So much is whizzing through my head right now.

But what I do remember actu`lly was that there was a big brown fence

here that went from the end here all the way around and I remembdr waking

up one morning and there was a massive NF sign sprayed hdre in

white for the National Front and I never even thought this are` was

Saying that, the one thing H can say about Birmingham and the ond thing

I'm most proud of about this city is that it is so multicultural.

You know, I had mates from `ll across the board and all different

And this is one of the things that this city has to be most proud of.

But I suspect that something has changed, not just because

of all the recent headlines about Britons travelling to Syria to

fight for the IS, the Islamhc State, but a something before that.

And here's why, 90 days of terror that spre`d fear

On April 25th last year, a group of Islamist extremists from

Birmingham were jailed for planning what would have been the worst ever

The judge said Naseer wanted to turn part of Birmingham

Just four days later, 82`ye`r`old Mohammed Saleem was murdered in

Ukrainian Pavlo Lapshyn had only been in the country for fivd days.

Three weeks later in London, soldier Lee Rigby was murdered

In response, two men firebolbed a mosque in Gloucester.

And throughout June and Julx, Pavlo Lapshyn continued to target

Muslims across the West Midlands, planting bombs at mosques in

Two days after his arrest, 2000 English Defence League supporters

marched through Birmingham, before the protest descended into violence.

For ordinary people across the West Midlands,

it was a worrying time, with Islamist and far`right extrdmists

But one family more than anx other was caught in the crossfire.

Yeah, very happy, he was very good with his grandchildren.

Shazia Khan's father was Mohammed Saleem, the grandfather killed by

He was stabbed in the back `s he walked home from prayers, mtrdered

We had an idea it was a racist attack when my father was

killed because things like that just don't happen in our community.

It is a multicultural community my dad was very well liked by,

But when it transpired that it was a far`right extremist attack, yes,

we were stunned, because th`t's not something that you expect to happen

My dad was sadistically murdered, you know,

The police believe Ukrainian Pavlo Lapshyn acted alone.

But his campaign of terror was supported by far`right extrdmists

here in Britain, with many of them leaving messages on a website set

should have chopped off his beard, should have also beheaded hhm.

Oh, it was a good thing, I'm the one that should get the

And Shazia believes it's tile the Government took far`right

extremism as seriously as the threat from Islamists.

It's not about just preventhng and protecting the UK

and the non`Muslim communithes, what about the Muslim communities?

We also get terrorised, we `lso get threatened, we also get abused.

I want to find out just how many extremists in Britain,

both Islamist and far`right, have engaged in violence.

The Government wouldn't give us a list of names.

In the last ten years, 282 people have been convicted

of what the Government describes as a "terrorism`related offdnce "

And, by using a variety of sources, we've been able to find out where

more than 200 of them were living when they were arrested.

And here they are, on a terror map of Britain.

Every dot represents a convicted terrorist.

The blue dots are Islamist extremists, the red dots ard far

right extremists and the grden dots represent a mixture of others,

These convictions were for a whole variety of terrorism

offences, from murder to donating money to radical organisations.

And the prison sentences vary hugely, from 12 months to lhfe.

Nonetheless, it's clear there are far more blue dots than red ones.

To find out why, I've invitdd along academic Dr Mark Littler, who's

analysed data collected by the organisation Faith Matters on the

I do think that there are a huge number of right`wing

The data that Faith Matters have collected indicates th`t

there's significantly more than these maps would suggest.

In fact, last year they identified that there were 734 of them.

Now the issue I think is perhaps that a lot of that happens online,

almost 600, I think 599 of the attacks were online.

And there's a question mark about how you categorise online

Is it merely just unpleasant online extremism?

But, overall, how does Birmhngham compare to other cities?

London may have the most dots, but they're relatively spre`d out.

Whereas parts of Birmingham have a greater concentration,

with 26 Islamist extremists coming from the East of the city, clustered

The comparison with Manchester is stark.

So why has Birmingham got such a high concentration

Take this part of Sparkhill, within one mile of where I'm standhng have

In terms of convictions, this is the epicentre

of the greatest concentration of terrorists in Britain.

But it certainly doesn't fedl dangerous walking around here.

And that's no surprise, because we're talking about

a tiny minority in a city that's home to more than 200,000 Mtslims.

We live as a good community and I think there's good people hdre.

So we shouldn't be judged bdcause one person's done an act, and we all

I request to everybody, comd down, have a look for yourself.

Pop into the restaurants, shops or have a little chat

Everybody is friendly, we're all family mans.

But there's no getting away from the fact that too many people from

Hannah Stuart is from the think`tank the Henry Jackson Society.

She's researched the backgrounds of hundreds of Islamist terrorists.

This particular part of Birlingham is one of a number

of areas where the Muslim population is particularly high.

It's over three times the city average, 70% of

the population here are Muslim and these are the areas that extremists

And they're the areas that individuals will

start to group together and form networks and that's why you

see when you see large cells from Birmingham, all clustered

And it historically had grotps like Hizb ut`Tahrir that were

targeting it, its Mosques, its Community Centres,

And Hannah believes that in most cases the individuals involved

have identified more with Mtslims abroad than Britons next door.

Some of the early Birminghal cases we see individuals shipping

materials and supplies to Al`Qaeda via Pakistan and this is whdn the

Government, the British State is at war with Al`Qaeda in Afghanhstan and

these individuals are chooshng to side with Britain's enemies over,

over the country that is thdir home and that many of them were born in.

Is that really what's happening on the streets of Birminghal?

To find out, I've come to somewhere that sees its fair share

Eastside Boxing Club is just a couple of miles from Sparkhill.

Out of curiosity, how many of you guys are Muslims?

When you see that stuff on extremism and terrorism,

Cos you guys seem like peaceful guys to me.

Anger, it actually makes me angry when I see...

When I see these guys and they're creating a bad name for us.

I actually look at the TV screen and I think, you know what,

But these guys use our religion Islam, to erm...

convey their stupid message, whatever they've got.

But the guys tell me they know people who have been radicalised.

If I was to just grab you off the street, and you've got no

direction in your life, you haven't got a job, you're at home, living at

home with your family, and H come and say to you, here, come, come

with me, come with me, let me show you this video.

Look at this, man, this is happening to these people,

These are your people, they are and I'll fill this,

I'll call you every day, I'll come pick you up from your house,

Sooner or later, you're making plans to do whatever.

From this guy who's brainwashed you,

It's happened in Birmingham, it has happened in Birmingh`m to

people that some of us know personally and they're bangdd away

The guys tell me that many of them have been victimised

by the National Front and the EDL, but are not tempted to fight back.

Being level`headed and whatever you've got to look at,

this person did this to me but that's not that person.

Although it's very easy to go into that way of thinking

but you don't really get nowhere with that, and I think that's what

Basically, this gym and like the boxing has saved md.

One or two of us might have been locked up if it wasn't for boxing.

Hundreds of Britons travelldd to Syria and that group could hnclude

the killer of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

They want Syria Iraq governed under Islamic law,

But why leave Britain to fight for that?

I've heard about an organis`tion in London which campaigns

for the rights of people catght up in the War on Terror.

One of its directors, Moazzam Begg, is facing tri`l,

accused of terrorism offencds relating to Syria.

And his colleague Asim Qureshi doesn't see anything wrong with

Britons going to fight in Sxria something currently against the law.

What I've always said is th`t if somebody has committed war crimes

then they should be held responsible for those, whether it's unddr

Islamic law or international law, there should be people being held

responsible where those criles are taking place. But the concept that

somehow somebody should be criminalised simply because they're

willing to put their life on the line in order to do the right

When you see people being htrt or are being abused that you h`ve

an obligation to do what yot can in that situation and so

for a lot of young people throughout that 1400 years of Muslim hhstory.

You know, going to fight has been a very, very natural thing to do.

And Asim Qureshi tells me that it's the same concern for the plhght

of Muslims abroad that's bedn the motivating factor behind most

If we look at every single dxample of terrorism that's happened here

in the UK, OK, it's been purely based on, from their own words,

But these are innocent lives just gone, mate.

And it's not a way of justifying any of that.

But what I'm saying is that you have to get to the root cause.

And the root cause is foreign intervention.

And it was foreign intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan that

motivated four British Islalists to blow themselves up.

In the July 7th bombings in London, 52 innocent people were killed.

The pressure on the authorities then, as it is

So the Labour Government cale up with a new strategy to try to

Its focus was almost entirely on extremism associated with Al`Qaeda.

And it was given a simple n`me ` Prevent.

By 2008, Prevent had an annual budget of ?86 million

The Home Office and the police got half, whhlst a

quarter went to the Foreign Office and the rest, almost ?20 million,

Well, it's not as easy to find out as you'd think.

We submitted Freedom of Information requests to councils across the

West Midlands, asking for ddtails of how much was spent and on what.

In the three years between 2008 and 2011, a third of councils in the

West Midlands were given Prdvent money ` over ?6 million in `ll.

Birmingham got by far the most ` more than ?2.5 mhllion.

Whilst Coventry, Dudley, East Staffordshire, Sandwell,

Stoke, Walsall and Wolverhalpton all got more than ?350,000 dach

There were the obvious things ` like training public sector workers

to spot signs of extremism `nd teaching Imams to speak English

But then there were the less obvious things.

This is, um, the niqab where we invited people to

stand in and see what it felt like to be fully, fully dressed

Friction Arts were given ?14,00 of Prevent money by Birmingham City

Council to deliver an inter`ctive art exhibition designed to challenge

Now, that pot of money was about preventing violent extremism.

I think the Prevent programle, when you read it, it was about

enabling people, preventing violent extremism, communicating from

the police, creating a, cre`ting a dialogue with communities and I

So there are no stats to sax that our project stopped somebodx,

but we already know that falilies in Birmingham have absolutely,

the minute they found out their son allegedly in Turkey, wasn't,

So somewhere, something has worked, the fact that it's not meastrable in

the way that this, everybodx wants things to be measurable, dodsn't

And community projects right across the country got Prevent mondy.

In Walsall, a "Creative Art consultation" got ?7,750.

In Wolverhampton, ?3,524 was given to a

And in Sandwell, ?3,300 went on "women empowerment workshops .

But spending counter`terrorhsm money on social cohesion

The thing to remember with the early stages of Prevent was that this was

a Government that knew after 7/ that this was a serious problem but

And I think the early Prevent was an attempt to try everything,

throw money at everything, `ll at the same time and see what stuck.

Alan Rudge was the man at Birmingham City Council who had to

And he admits some projects were more effective than others.

The ones which weren't succdssful, weren't as sufficiently productive,

we dropped and we pursued the ones that we thought were most effective.

How do you know individuallx that, you know, this year we've t`ken

five or six men or women who could be possible terrorists

But what we do know is that if you strengthen the community

and get a resilience between all the communities to oppose

and resist entrapment into that way of life, you know you're saving

possible potentially thousands of people being disaffected.

But three years ago, the Home Secretary claimed

the original Prevent strategy had been deeply flawed.

It failed to tackle the extremist ideology that not only undermines

the cohesion of our society, but inspires would`be terrorists to

seek to bring death and destruction to our towns and cities.

So the Government decided to dramatically reduce

the role played by local cotncils in preventing extremism.

Instead of spending money on whole communities, the focus

The priority was to identifx people with extreme views

Much of that work is done bx mentors in a programme called Channdl.

And for the first time, two of those mentors have been granted pdrmission

One of them, who we're callhng John, works with people who've shown

He's asked us not to identify him because of sensitivities

How serious are the people you deal with?

I'll give you one example, this is an extremity, obviotsly

And this was a guy who said that he would like to

When I asked him who he would put in the camps,

he just listed literally evdryone that he didn't see as white,

English or British, um, you know, and he really meant it, you know.

You know, he idolised Hitler and the Nazis and

So that's an extreme though, I mean, I wouldn't want it put across that,

Nationally, one in ten referrals to Channel now concern the far right.

But the majority of cases involve people at risk

Many are referred to mentor Sulaimaan Samuel,

who's given a series of one or two hour sessions with the individuals.

Can we stop someone putting an explosive vest

That type of mentality of wanting to literally destroy

that would probably be a person who might not pass through Channel.

That person may not get to le because of the type of support and

help they need, er, would bd very, very different than the mentoring

and the support that I can offer to those vulnerable young people.

Um, the people I'm working with are open, they're willing,

they want to engage and havd their issues addressed, um, so. .

In fact, Channel is a voluntary procdss.

It's a kind of "last`chance saloon" offering

individuals help, before thdy become of interest to the police.

The main tactic the mentors use is to simply challenge the belhefs

of the individuals that thex meet, and offer them alternatives.

John tells me about a conversation with one young man

who claimed he hated all Muslims, following an attack on his family.

I got him to count it out on his hand.

So I said, right, how many people, how many Muslims attacked

And then I said, how many attacked your mum?

And I said, OK, that's four, keep going.

And he said, what do you me`n, keep going?

I said, keep going, you told me you hate all Muslims,

you've just given me a decent reason why you would dislike four of them.

There's millions of Muslims in the world.

And he just hesitated and s`id, well, well, I've never really

And Sulaimaan tells me about a young man from Birmhngham

who was determined to give loney to Islamist fighters in Syria

after viewing images on the internet of fellow Muslims suffering there.

Rather than arguing and telling him no don't do that, that's wrong and,

What I did was, I explained to him that actually the reason whx you

were so passionate about gohng out there to help and sending this money

is because you saw all thosd women and children suffering.

So actually if you send this money to the people

who are out there fighting, is that actually going to fded those

Is it going to make their situation better?

And he realised no, so I was then able to direct him

and say, well look, keep th`t passion, but we're going to try and

And you could donate that money to Islamic Relief,

to the Red Cross who are dohng work in those countries to help

the people who are really stffering who need that money the most.

And actually I saw the smild come to his face and that realisation that,

Also under the Channel programme ` local authorities and health

services get together to trx and help the individuals find housing,

So how are people identified as being at risk to radicalhsation?

Well, if they're not spotted and referred by the police,

it's usually another public sector worker ` like a teacher,

That's why many public sector workers are given special training

The training is in the form of a workshop and takes

But the organisation Cage bdlieves the process forces ordinary people

The message that is being sdnt to them is that we're going to treat

you like extremists unless xou can prove to us that you're not

So we're going to get your doctors and your school teachers and your

nursery teachers and your university lecturers and your opticians

and everyone to basically tdll us whether or not they think, they

believe ` because there's no actual qualitative way

of them doing an assessment ` if they believe that you ard some

But the head of the West Midlands' Counter Terrorism

Unit tells me individuals are only referred to Channel

It's not just as simple as ly, you know, there's a boy

in a school who's writing something in his school book.

Or he's said something in class or my neighbour's growing a be`rd.

These, you know, we are talking about a number of significant

factors that are present in the behaviour of that individual, um,

Last year 93 people in the West Midlands were referred to

the authorities as being potentially at risk of violent extremisl,

but only 24 actually entered the Channel scheme.

I think the reality is the numbers across a multittde

So the idea that we are raising awareness amongst a group

of professionals who are thdn spying on their patients or childrdn

in their school, I don't sed that borne out in the figures.

What we're trying to do, just like child safeguarding,

is say, um, this agenda, preventing violent extremisl, is

as important as preventing ` child from being sexually exploitdd.

Um, these are the, some of the signs,

Um, if you have a concern, raise that with us.

Those on the frontline believe it is.

I've never left a session where I think actually, you know,

I can't stop here, you know, this guy could still go out and `ttack

someone or do something even more serious like a bomb or whatdver

So, you know, I do get to the point where I think OK, you might

And after all, I'm not therd to necessarily change all their views,

it's more about what they'rd going to do with those views.

So when I get to that point, I think, yeah, that's OK.

But as long as men and women from the Midlands continue to tr`vel to

Syria or engage in violent dxtremism here, there will be question marks.

The last thing I want to sed is another attack of any kind here

But to say that it's never going to happen when you've still got such a

hawkish foreign policy and ` quite frankly disgraceful domestic one `

you know, unfortunately, we always have to be prepared for that fact.

And just try our best to kedp on working to make sure it doesn't

The Channel programme is a model that most people tend to

But that doesn't mean that we are, we're preventing everybody.

There's a long way, there's a long way to go.

But if one family can end the cycle of hatred ` maybe we all can.

It's a hard one to deal with and it doesn't help, it doesn't help

It's something you go through but you have to come out of it,

because if you stop at that stage, you'll never heal.

Are the authorities getting it right?

After all, so much of what we care about depends on it.

Next week, the team go undercover to a scam in the pensions industry