A secret counter-terror database? I’ve experienced the Prevent programme firsthand – so nothing surprises me, says former NUS officer Ilyas Nagdee
The first-year law student too afraid to pick human rights law as a module at university. The student officer told to hand over a list of members of the Islamic society. One thing binds these together: the Prevent duty. This week the Guardian revealed that counter-terror police across the UK have been running a secret centralised database containing the details of the thousands of individuals who have been referred to Prevent, the government’s counter-radicalisation programme. Many of them, on the government’s own terms, were unworthy of referral – but fell victim to an increasing climate of suspicion.
