Nawal Msaad was tricked into smuggling cash to terrorists by hiding the banknotes in her knickers
Holland
Park School, in the heart of the Royal Borough of Kensington and
Chelsea — a catchment area that includes some of the wealthiest
addresses in the capital — is known as ‘the Eton of comprehensives’.
Indeed,
the building itself resembles a plush hotel or advertising agency with
minimalist sofas and bespoke chairs for both teachers and pupils,
created by one of Britain’s leading furniture designers, not to mention a
sweeping glass atrium, stylish walkways, a roof terrace with panoramic
views over the city and a swimming pool in the basement.
Even
before the Grand Designs-style refurbishment two years ago (funded by
selling part of the campus to housing developers), it was regarded as
one of the top state schools in the country.
‘Outstanding’
was the verdict of a 2011 Ofsted report that praised the ‘exceptional’
leadership of inspirational and dynamic headmaster Colin Hall, who was
appointed in 2001.
Currently,
96 per cent of students sitting GCSEs achieve five or more A* to C
grades. Five have won places at Oxbridge in the past two academic years.
Bear
this in mind when you consider the next ‘statistic’. In the same
two-year period, up to six former Holland Park pupils left Britain to
became Islamic jihadists in the Middle East or were linked to Islamic
terrorism.
Today,
following a Mail investigation, many of these individuals — the
youngest is 21, the oldest 27 — can be identified. Three of them are now
dead.
One
appeared on a video in the summer appealing for more recruits from the
UK to join Islamic State’s ‘golden era of jihad’. He is still in the
Middle East, where Islamic State (IS) is engaged in a bloody and
barbaric struggle to establish a caliphate, or Islamic empire, ruled by
Sharia law. A second died in battle after joining up with IS in Syria. A
third was killed while waging ‘holy war’ for an Al Qaeda-linked group
in Syria. The fourth on our list also died in the Syrian conflict.
A
fifth, a woman, was found guilty in August of fundraising for terrorism
(the money was destined for IS) and is awaiting sentence; her female
co-defendant, who was in the same year as her at Holland Park, was
cleared of the same offence.
Until now, the ‘Holland Park link’ between these home-grown jihadists has gone unreported.
There
is no evidence, it should be stressed, to suggest radicalisation took
place directly inside the school, which attained academy status in 2013
and is alma mater to the likes of Hollywood actress Anjelica Huston and
the late Tony Benn’s children.
Nevertheless,
we now know that of the reported 24 jihadists from London who have
joined IS or taken up arms with other Islamic fanatics, around a quarter
of them went to the same school.
Mohamad el-Araj, pictured, ran away from home to Syria where he was later killed fighting for jihadis
Could
there be a more extraordinary — or chilling — revelation? Or, indeed, a
greater betrayal of everything this country has done for them and their
families?
Betrayal
is, of course, a charge that could be levelled against anyone from
Britain who has joined a terror group such as IS that is murdering
Britons abroad in the name of Islam and actively conspiring to do the
same here.
But
it is especially true of those who were afforded the opportunity of
going to one of the best schools in one of the most affluent boroughs.
Around
60 per cent of pupils at Holland Park School come from ‘a wide range of
ethnic backgrounds’, according to Ofsted, and speak English as a second
language.
Many
former pupils also came from the Ladbroke Grove neighbourhood, where
one of the biggest mosques in West London is situated and where many of
those you are about to read about, we have learned, went to pray. Among
them, 23-year-old Mohammed el-Araj.
Hamzah Parvez, pictured, asked fellow British Muslims 'Are we content with eating Nandos?' on a terror video
One
morning last year, he left the family flat in Blenheim Crescent, an
elegant Victorian terrace in Ladbroke Grove, not far from David
Cameron’s Notting Hill residence, to go to a local college where he was
studying to be a mechanical engineer. At least, that is what his parents
thought.
Their
son never returned, however. His father, an antiques dealer of
Palestinian descent, would later discover that he had never gone to
college at all; nor had he ever even enrolled on a course.
The
next time Mohammed’s family saw him, in fact, he was staring out from a
propaganda photograph on the internet wearing a paramilitary uniform
and brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle in war-torn Syria, where he was
fighting President Assad’s forces alongside terrorist and extremist
groups under the name ‘Abu Khalid’.
Mohammed Nasser was killed fighting for IS earlier this year also attended the school
Not long afterwards, Araj was fatally wounded. He received many tributes from his ‘friends’.
Araj’s
short life and brutal death made a few paragraphs in the papers at the
time. Only now has it emerged that he went to Holland Park School. He
flourished during his five years there, leaving in 2006.
‘Mohammed was a lovely young man, very intelligent and humble,’ said a family friend. ‘He was always studying.’
His
two younger sisters also went to Holland Park School. One was among ten
GCSE dance students from the school who were chosen to perform in a
production at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago, and the other was a
box office assistant for Opera Holland Park, a company which receives
financial backing from the council to produce an annual season of operas
in the summer holidays, staged under a temporary canopy in the
eponymous local park.
The
contrast between their lives and the path chosen by their brother —
they were, incidentally, brought up in a non-religious household — is
both striking and profoundly disturbing.
Mohammed
el-Araj’s time at Holland Park School overlapped with that of two other
boys, two years below him, who both lived a few streets away in the
same corner of Ladbroke Grove. Their names: Mohammed Nasser and Hamzah
Parvez. Nasser — unlike Parvez and Araj — was from a devout Muslim
family; his mother and late father were originally from Eritrea in the
Horn of Africa.
‘They
only associated with other Muslims,’ said a neighbour. Even so, he and
Parvez became good friends at Holland Park, a friendship which deepened
after they left in 2009.
Over
the past few years, Nasser, a business undergraduate at the University
of Roehampton, and Parvez, who worked in a hotel in Shepherd’s Bush,
became increasingly close.
What
followed obeyed a familiar pattern. It is documented in an article in
the Huffington Post online newspaper by journalist Tam Hussein, himself a
former Holland Park pupil.
On
May 15, the 21-year-old friends vanished. They had flown out from
Gatwick before making their way to Turkey and crossing the border into
Syria, where they joined up with IS fighters. The two, according to
Hussein, were later separated and placed in different IS battalions.
In
August, three months after they left home, Parvez, his face covered by a
black scarf, appeared in an IS video. He asks the camera: ‘What are we
doing sitting in the UK? Sitting in the land which kills Muslims every
day . . . it’s not the land for us. Are we content with eating Nando’s
every week? Come to the land of Allah.’
Parvez,
whose family comes from Pakistan, then revealed, matter-of-factly, that
his schoolfriend Mohammed Nasser had been killed in fighting. Pointing
to his forehead, he said his comrade in arms had died after a piece of
shrapnel hit him in the head a few weeks earlier, on the first day of
the holy month of Ramadan.
Amal el-Wahabi, pictured, wanted to send cash from London to the Middle East to fund terrorists
Nasser’s
family, devastated by their loss, left the country for Mecca, the
online news report said, ‘consoling themselves in pilgrimage’.
Only
with hindsight did Parvez’s family begin to question the change in his
behaviour in the period leading up to his carefully planned exit from
the UK with Nasser.
At
one point, Parvez’s mother bought him a top from Primark which had the
American flag stitched on to it. He refused to wear it because, he said,
it was the ‘symbol of oppression’.
Amal el-Wahabi, 27, harboured similar feelings.
The
daughter of a London bus driver, she also went to Holland Park School
and worked hard in class, passing GCSEs and taking part in a Duke of
Edinburgh Award Scheme, before leaving in 2003 and studying for NVQs in
health and social care.
In
August, she and another Holland Park contemporary, university student
Nawal Msaad, 27, both of Moroccan descent, appeared in the dock of the
Old Bailey.
Miss
Msaad was caught with £16,000 in euros stuffed in her underwear at
Heathrow as she attempted to board a flight to Istanbul back in January.
Police believed she was going to hand over the cash to Wahabi’s
husband, a Muslim convert who was fighting with Islamic insurgents. The
jury, however, decided that Miss Msaad was tricked into being a mule by
Wahabi, who had given her the money.
Wahabi
claimed, in her defence, that she thought her husband was helping an
aid convoy in Syria. But extremist videos sent to her from him, then
found in their flat, painted a very different picture.
One
message featured the flag of IS, with the slogan: ‘Allah prefers the
Mujahideen over those who remain behind.’ To which Wahabi responded: ‘Be
beside you until the day you die.’ Also found on her phone were
pictures of her husband posing with an AK-47 and other fighters. Wahabi
was convicted of fundraising for terrorism.
There is something else you should know about Amal el-Wahabi. You might call it another coincidence.
She
was living in Portobello Road, a short stroll from Mohammed el-Araj,
Hamzah Parvez and Mohammed Nasser, but only a few doors away from one
Nassim Terreri. The pair not only went to Holland Park School, they were
in the same year.
Nassim Terreri was killed in Syria in a hail of bullets although his family deny he was a terrorist
One
night in March 2012, Terreri, 25, a British Algerian, died in a hail of
bullets on a Syrian mountainside fighting alongside another British
Algerian from London. The Syrian government later named him on a list of
‘terrorists’ sent to the UN.
His
family said he had gone to the country as a freelance journalist, and
denied he was a terrorist. But reports at the time revealed how a
YouTube account in Terreri’s name advertised links to videos featuring
extremist preachers who advocated violence against the West, including
one film by al-Shabaab, the Somali affiliate of Al Qaeda.
A
Twitter account, also in Terreri’s name, contained links to videos
advocating radical indoctrination and Islamist-inspired violence.
Colin
Hall, the headmaster of Holland Park, said: ‘We take a very strong
stance that this is a secular school and whatever you believe or might
think, it stops at the school gates when you come in.
‘We’ve
got a very strong line on secularity and a very strong line on zero
tolerance to any kind of fundamentalism from any religion.’
Yet
even under the widely praised leadership of Mr Hall, up to six pupils,
that we know of, passed through his school and were later linked to
Islamic terrorism. Whatever other influences they were subjected to
after they left, it remains a tantalising connection.
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