Home Office mentors are gathering information on their clients in “confidential” deradicalisation meetings and sharing it with police for terrorism investigations into the very people they are counselling.
Leaked documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that the paid mentors, who include Islamic scholars and counter-extremism experts vetted and approved by the Home Office, routinely file an “intervention session report” after each mentoring session.
The mentors’ reports provide a “vulnerability assessment” of a client, their “capability” of carrying out a violent act and “new relevant background information” which details the personal material that was obtained, including their “susceptibility to indoctrination” and state of “mental health”.
The detailed assessments, carried out under the Channel mentoring programme, part of the government’s Prevent counter-terrorism agenda, also include briefings…