THE DEATHS of two Brighton teenagers fighting in Syria has been a “wake-up call”, according to the safeguarding boss who ordered the groundbreaking review into their radicalisation.

Graham Bartlett, Brighton and Hove Local Safeguarding Children Board chairman, said the review indicated the whole system had let Abdullah and Jaffar Deghayes down but no one agency was to blame.

The pair left their Saltdean home in January, 2014, to join their older brother Amer in Syria. But they were killed just months later aged 18 and 17.

The serious case review is thought to be the first of its kind in the country to focus on radicalisation.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the review’s raising of missed opportunities to intervene raised “serious concerns” but added that lessons had clearly already been learnt.

Mr Bartlett, a former Sussex Police commander for Brighton and Hove, said: “The whole system has been analysed in quite some depth to try and establish whether any single agency was solely responsible.

“What the review has found is that the system as a whole let these young boys down and it is a wake-up call to agencies to work better together to understand the nature and symptoms of trauma and work better with young people at risk of exploitation, particularly when they come from complex backgrounds.

“The system itself was at fault.”

Mr Bartlett said a number of measures had already been taken in response to the tragedy but the safeguarding board would look to take that progress further to ensure young people are better protected in the future.

He said: “I’m very confident the structures are in place now to better identify children who are at risk of travelling to fight abroad and indeed in Brighton and Hove we have already seen, to my knowledge, two young people who have been prevented from travelling due to legal constraints put on them.

“I don’t think we can ever say we will 100 per cent stop young people from travelling, that’s not the nature of life, but I think what we’ve done, what the agencies have done in the city, is put in measures to make it incredibly more difficult to do so and easier to identify.”

Mr Bartlett said developing improved links with minority communities would not be an “overnight fix” but doing so would encourage better engagement with authorities.

An NSPCC spokeswoman said: “Radicalisation of a child and grooming them for extremist purposes is abuse. It’s important that all agencies have the skills to spot the signs at the earliest opportunity.

“This review raises serious concerns about missed opportunities to intervene and help these two boys, although it is clear that lessons have been learned to ensure young people who may be vulnerable to exploitation by extremists are identified before it is too late.”

A Dysfunctional family setting

THE serious case review depicts mother Inas Abulsayen as an extremely polite, devoted and loving mother who has been severely affected by the loss of her two sons and who is desperate for the safe return of Amer.

Life in Saltdean and then Southwick had been difficult for the family who belonged to the upper echelons of society in their homeland of Libya.

The family had been subjected to more than a decade of racist abuse which became an almost daily battle.

Problems of racist abuse were traced back to a campaign to stop a centre for asylum seekers being built in Saltdean in 2003 which apparently attracted protesters dressed as Osama Bin Laden and Ku Klux Klan knights.

Uncle Omar Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and spent five years in Guantanamo Bay.

The publicity around his release seems to have been the spark for a persistent and prolonged campaign of racist abuse aimed at the family.

In 2009 the message “Behead all Muslims” was written in 12 inch high letters near their home.

Organised right wing groups also targeted the family, including one incident in January, 2013, when they had to be removed from outside the Deghayes’ home where they were waving flags and shouting abuse through a megaphone.

Because of a perceived lack of results in tackling the perpetrators of the racist abuse, the relationship between the family and police deteriorated to the point where their father, Abubaker, would only communicate by letter and make complaints months after an incident had happened.

Relationships with council workers also became increasingly strained, particularly with Mr Deghayes who would not engage with staff.

Cultural differences also played their part as Mrs Abulsayen was isolated, rarely left the home and had little authority over her children.

She allowed the boys to bring friends to the house late at night against the advice of social workers because culturally it was important to show hospitality.

She also told the review’s authors that when her children began to get into trouble with police she was not able to share this with her own family because it was not considered acceptable behaviour.

The review’s depiction of father Abubaker is far less sympathetic.

Investigations into possible domestic abuse in the family date back to 1996, resurfaced in 2000 and again in 2008 when the family returned to live in Saltdean.

In 2010 the boys told a youth club worker they had been the victims of physical abuse from their father.

The allegations included claims the five children were forced to wake up at 4.30am to study the Koran.

If they did not study properly, they would be made to stand against a wall for up to seven hours and he would whip them with electrical wire.

Abubaker said the claims were part of a “racist vendetta” by a youth worker.

The five children were made subjects of child protection plans for physical and emotional abuse.

Mrs Abulsayen separated from him and temporarily moved with the children into alternative accommodation until the retraction of the
children’s witness statements caused the criminal case to collapse.

At the beginning of 2012 the child protection plan was discontinued because the boys, aged between 13 and 17, were no longer considered to be at risk of physical abuse.

Abubaker was living abroad in the main, but Mrs Abulsayen was struggling to control her sons by herself.

Child protection procedures were resumed in 2014 in the wake of the boys’ flight to Syria.

Mrs Abulsayen said she was shocked when her sons left to fight in Syria,
claiming she had no prior knowledge of Abdullah and Jaffar’s plan to join older brother Amer who she believed was involved in delivering humanitarian aid.

Brothers fought back

JIHADIS are not considered sympathetic characters but council
staff working with Amer, Abdullah and Jaffar Deghayes actually
found they quite liked the boys.

Amer in particular was “highly regarded by all those with whom
he had contact” but though he was said to be open with council staff
when they visited, he never made any mention of his plans to travel to Syria.

His mother said the boys were always very interested in helping
and caring for people which, she said, may have motivated them to
got to Syria.

The three were described as “likeable young people”, who had
been victims of racism which had led them to retaliate and get involved
in anti-social behaviour and minor criminality.

Social workers and youth offending officers did not know they
were involved in violent crime, partly because of a failing in information
sharing by the police.

The entire family reported racist and religiously motivated incidents
directed against them at home, in the city, at school and in the
community, which increased significantly between 2008 and 2010 to
more or less daily occurrences.

Abuse included racist graffiti, verbal assaults and stones being
thrown towards them and their home. Two of the brothers were attacked
by men wearing balaclavas.

The report stated that they learnt to fight back, especially Abdullah whose behaviour is said to have changed to the point
where he would begin to defend himself and retaliate.

From 2009, reports of the boys being involved in anti-social behaviour
and crime, and getting into fights, were beginning to become
frequent.

The four youngest would frequently stay out until the early hours of the morning, returning home with friends and then missing school because they were asleep in the morning.

One child’s school attendance rate was a miserly 39.1 per cent.

They had increased involvement with other young people in group
anti-social and criminal behaviour, including violent offences.

In particular they targeted lone foreign language students,
were involved in substance misuse and were suspected of drug dealing.

Abdullah had almost daily run-ins with the police. 

In one week in 2012 he was suspected by police of an attack on a
Spanish student, damaging a car, beating up a drunk, stealing a mobile
phone and hitting a man getting on a bus.

Communication failings

CONCERNING behaviour by the Deghayes children which could have highlighted the threat of their imminent flight to Syria was missed in 2013 because anti-radicalisation schemes were still in their infancy.

An early intervention “Channel panel” deemed Jaffar was not a terror threat in 2013.

Six months later he was killed in Syria.

A breakdown in communication between his school, youth worker and police resulted in them collectively failing to join the dots.

In the months before, council intervention was considered more of a hindrance than anything else.

In 2012, it was a case of too many cooks with too many staff in varying
agencies getting involved.

That idea was probably prompted in part by the fact that different agencies were not working well in unison.

There was said to be “an element of distrust” between Youth Offending Service workers and the police.

Officers felt that YOS staff were “too soft” on their clients.

That poor opinion of the YOS at the time was perceived by many.

Bosses accepted the service required improvement but a restructuring created dissatisfaction among some of the staff, which in turn led to vacancies, staff sickness and the high use of agency workers.

It was said to be “a chaotic period” for the frontline service.

Instead it was decided to channel efforts through one family intervention project (FIP) worker.

There was plenty for the FIP worker and he soon found himself responding to various incidents.

He had difficulty getting to see the siblings, who were often asleep at home or out when appointments were made.

As a result root causes of their behaviour were never addressed.

Police shortcomings

ONE of the key findings of the report was Sussex Police’s failure to share information with partners they were supposed to be working closely with.

While council staff were being given contradictory stories by the Deghayes mother about where the boys had gone, Sussex Special Branch had been investigating the boys’ disappearance to Syria for weeks.

At a later child protection conference in April 2014, police officers were criticised for failing to divulge even routine information.

It was perceived by others taking part in the process that officers were there to collect intelligence from others rather than share information.

Such was the mistrust by other agencies of the police’s ability to share information, it was assumed that they had information about the boys being radicalised and their plans to go to Syria.

In fact, the review concludes it caught officers out as much as it did any other professional agency.

This unawareness of the threat was most evident at the November 2013 Channel panel for Jaffar.

New information shared that his older brother Amer was in Turkey, possibly supporting Syrian refugees, rang no alarm bells.

The police were almost seemingly powerless to stop the apparent unhealthy influence of their father from returning to the family house while he was being investigated for domestic abuse.

The police lacked the means to stop him visiting his children against his bail conditions.

It seems no one advised the mother she could take out an injunction against him.

Police officers, who regularly arresting the brothers in the early hours of the morning, viewed the Deghayes as criminals but could not deliver any prosecutions for lack of evidence.

They failed however to appreciate the boys’ safeguarding needs and the possible indicators that they were the victims of parental neglect, the report found.

Sussex Police said there was no suggestion they had failed to take accusations of racial abuse and harassment seriously or take significant steps to protect the family.

The police installed a camera outside the family home and a “great deal of work” was undertaken to investigate a small number of people suspected of being behind the abuse.

I t led to just one caution.