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The government’s anti-radicalisation strategy is a “toxic brand” run by mainly white officers with little understanding of Islam, gender or race, a former senior Muslim policeman claimed today.

Dal Babu, a former Met chief superintendent, said the lack of Muslim staff in the ranks of the “Prevent” scheme is hampering efforts to stop vulnerable young people, particularly women, from travelling to Syria to join Islamic State.

He says police have been caught unawares by young people such as the three Bethnal Green schoolgirls travelling to Syria - and criticised counter terror efforts as “chaotic, piecemeal and unco-ordinated.”

Mr Babu, 51, one of the UK’s most senior Asian officers before he retired in 2013, called on the authorities to conduct serious case reviews of all young people who have travelled to Syria to “learn lessons” for the future.

He said: “The police service and, in particular Counter Terrorism Command, continues to be predominately white while the lack of Muslims means the police understanding of issues is limited.

“If you are going to fight terrorism effectively then your key operatives need to reflect the people that you are dealing with and that is not happening here.

“This means they do not have a good understanding of the complexities of the Muslim community.“

Mr Babu, who now works in community development, gave an example of one senior police officer in the Met who asked him: “Just what is the difference between Sunni and Shia?”

He said: “ If you are going to police London and have an impact and change people’s views and keep communities safe then you need to really understand these complex issues.”

He added: “This lack of knowledge is amplified considerably with the more junior officers who perform the role of implementing the Prevent strategy.”

The former Harrow borough commander said most Muslims were suspicious of the Prevent scheme with many seeing it as a way of “spying” on them.

Mr Babu said: “The use of the Prevent brand turns people off, it is discredited. We need to be using simpler language. Why not say ‘safeguarding children’ - that is the sort of language we should be using.”

The officer, who helped found the National Association of Muslim Police, told the Standard: “The bottom line is that the counter terrorism strategy is chaotic, piecemeal and unco-ordinated. There has to be an honest debate about how agencies develop the necessary skills to deal with the challenge.

“More and more young people are being groomed and travelling to Syria and the chances are they will either die there or be brutally damaged. We need to acknowledge that things are not working.”

Mr Babu also criticised the role of children’s services in the Prevent strategy, saying they, too, were “entirely white in middle and senior management.”

He called for serious case reviews of all the young people who have either travelled to Syria or been victims of grooming by extremist organisations.

Normally, these reviews are carried out in cases where children are suspected of being abused or suffer neglect and when a child dies or suffers serious harm.

His comments came as Scotland Yard was criticised for issuing a misleading statement about information passed on to the families of the three Bethnal Green schoolgirls.

The Yard was forced to admit at the weekend that the families had not been informed that a 15-year-old fellow student at Bethnal Green Academy had gone to Syria, but rather only that she had gone missing.

The families’ solicitor Tasnime Akunjee said the Met Commissioner should apologise for the blunder.

The Met also admitted police should have communicated more directly with the families, instead of sending letters about the teenager’s disappearance home with Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-old Amira Abase who hid the letters in their rooms, days before flying from Gatwick to Istanbul.

The Prevent scheme has come under scrutiny after more than 600 people have travelled to Syria or Iraq to join Islamic State.

Last year it was revealed that counter terror officers had received 77 reports from families through the programme, some of which enabled police to catch aspiring terrorists.

Sir Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Great Manchester and a national policing spokesman on counter terrorism, defended the strategy saying figures showed fewer people travelling to Syria here than in countries such as France.

However, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there was a danger of putting Muslims “in a box” and admitted one failing of Prevent had been to create the impression that the sole responsibility of preventing children from travelling lay with the police, and not parents.

He also criticised Muslim leaders for failing in the past to give a clear message that extremism is wrong.

A Home Office spokesman said the government was drawing up a new strategy which deals with “the whole spectrum of extremism”.