CAGE leaks PREVENT UK counter-terrorism training material   11 Feb 2016

EXCLUSIVE: CAGE leaks comprehensive PREVENT counter-terrorism training material in the interest of transparency

Wednesday 10 February 2016

London – The PREVENT Strategy has permeated all aspects of public life in the UK. It is important that the training provided to public sector workers to implement the strategy is scrutinised for its empiricism. To this end, CAGE has released the most comprehensive leak of PREVENT training material so far.

A growing list of senior public figures have spoken out against PREVENT and over 300 professors, academics, experts and community figures have signed a letter against PREVENT.

CAGE has made the material available at http://www.preventresources.com/

The material includes:

1. A full script of the workshop session.

2. Full video clips that accompany sessions.

3. Software programs produced by a private sector company educating obligations under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

4. A software program produced by the Police to teach Channel’s significance.

Freedom of Information requests to gain access to the workshop material have been repeatedly blocked by the Home Office, which prefers to keep the material secret* and away from public scrutiny even though some 360,000 public sector workers have already been trained using the information in these manuals.

Ibrahim Mohamoud, Communications Officer, said:

“CAGE has decided to make this information available to the public as a necessary step to allow academics, researchers, campaigners, journalists and students to research and analyse PREVENT training.”

“The assumption that public sector workers can be trained in a few hours on a complex issue such as understanding the pathways to politically motivated violence is naive and dangerous. As CAGE predicted more than a year ago, implementation of PREVENT is leading to over reporting and several high profile cases of overreach.”

“PREVENT only adds to the alienation being fed by anti Muslim attacks by politicians and right wing commentators. We call for a return to the rule of law, the implementation of principles of innocent until proven guilty and adherence to due process.”

“CAGE repeats its call to abolish PREVENT. The safeguarding of civil liberties in an open, fair and equal justice system is the best means to protect all of us against politically motivated violence. The antidote to violence is a return to a legal order that does not target sections of society as a threat because of their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Notes:

(*) One of the FOI responses from the Home Office makes the argument for secrecy citing several reasons for not publishing and bizarrely concluding that more awareness of this training would lead to “increase in risk from terrorism”: “Disclosing the information could provide useful information to extremists who wish to radicalise others about how public sector workers are trained to spot the signs of vulnerability. Such extremists would then be able to provide advice to those they wish to radicalise on changing behaviour to avoid detection and potential referral to Prevent programmes. Additionally, if WRAP training material is taken out of context it could be discredited, leading to possible disengagement of partners. Both these scenarios would lead to fewer vulnerable people being referred, and therefore an increase in the risk from terrorism."

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Related CAGE Publications:

• The latest leak follows our previous publication of PREVENT training DVDs

• Report: The PREVENT Strategy: A Cradle to Grave Police-State

• Report: Failing our Communities: A Case Study Approach to Understanding PREVENT

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