A dangerous extremist who attempted to build an army of child jihadists by radicalising pupils at a fee-paying Islamic school has been convicted of a range of terrorist offences. Umar Haque, 25, taught an Islamic studies class despite the fact that he had no teaching qualifications and was employed as an administrator. He was allowed to supervise classes of 11- to 14-year-olds on his own, during which he re-enacted attacks on police officers and showed students videos of beheadings.

Haque attempted to radicalise at least 110 children with whom he was in contact at the Lantern of Knowledge school and Ripple Road mosque, both in east London. Thirty-five of those children are receiving long-term support.

The schools watchdog, Ofsted, is now facing questions over how it was able to rate the £3,000-a-year school as “outstanding” after an inspection held at a time when Haque was preaching hate to the children. In response to the conviction it said that Haque’s activities were a matter of deep regret and said it was “hampered by limitations on our powers” to inspect out-of-school settings. Haque was convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey on Friday of a range of offences, including plotting terrorist attacks and collecting information useful for terrorism. He had previously admitted four charges of collecting information useful for terrorism, and one count of disseminating a terrorist document.(theguardian)…[+]