UK

… A century or so later, in 2003, a journalist for the Times called Andrew Norfolk became aware of strange and disturbing rumours from Yorkshire. Originally reported by Labour MP Anne Cryer, they involved groups of mostly Pakistani men loitering around schools in Rotherham and sexually abusing girls, some as young as 13. There were supposedly whole gangs of men involved and the number of victims stood in the hundreds. Norfolk found it implausible; it sounded like a far-Right conspiracy.

Yet, as the Times journalist soon began to realise, this story was true. In fact, it was much bigger than anyone could really conceive, and it wasn’t just Rotherham, either; similar things were happening across the north of England and beyond. There were thousands of girls involved.

The Home Secretary has demanded ‘major reform’ of the government’s flagship anti-terror programme in the wake of a critical report that found it was ‘failing to understand’ Islamist extremism.

Suella Braverman told MPs that Prevent’s focus ‘must solely be on security, not political correctness’ and said the scheme needs to ‘better understand the threats we face and the ideology underpinning them’.

For more than a year, I’ve been coming to sit in the same featureless, white, air-conditioned room. Cheap, stiff, bulky armchairs are positioned against the walls. In the centre is a long glass coffee table covered in refreshments – everything from bottled water to those fruit juices that contain enough sugar to dissolve your teeth. The room is in a Syrian detention camp. And it’s where I meet Shamima Begum for the ten-part BBC investigative podcast and feature documentary, The Shamima Begum Story.

Shamima Begum, who left Britain to join Islamic State as a schoolgirl in 2015, has said she understands public anger towards her but insists she is “not this person that they think I am”.

Begum, who was 15 when she left her east London home to join IS with her school friends Kadiza Sultana, 15, and Amira Abase, 16, has told the story of how she joined the terror group and life in a refugee camp in a 10-part BBC podcast, The Shamima Begum Story.

Begum was found in a refugee camp in 2019, stripped of British citizenship and banned from entering Britain. She said she knew the public saw her “as a danger, as a risk, as a potential risk to them, to their safety, to their way of living”, but added: “I’m not this person that they think I am.”

She knew exactly what she was doing.