UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has called for urgent action to prevent risk of radicalisation at a children’s summer camp run by an Iran-aligned group.

UKLFI has raised urgent safeguarding concerns about a children’s summer camp run by a group which glorifies martyrdom and disseminates revolutionary Islamist ideology.

“Camp Wilayah”, a summer camp for children aged 8 to 13, is scheduled to take place in Kings Langley, just outside London in August. It is organised by the Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission (AIM), a UK-based group aligned with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Through its social media posts, AIM has glorified martyrdom, and spread  anti-Semitic and conspiratorial content online, including support for Hamas and Holocaust inversion.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Head of Safeguarding and Prevent at both Brent Council, where AIM is based, and Hertfordshire Council, where the camp will take place, raising urgent safeguarding and counter-extremism concerns about Camp Wilayah.

UKLFI has also called on the Council to prevent the camp from proceeding and to take immediate action under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 and the Children Act 1989, warning that AIM poses a serious risk of radicalising children and breaching terrorism and public order laws.

While marketed as a space to deepen Islamic values in an “Islamic atmosphere”, the camp is being hosted by a group that openly promotes the revolutionary Islamist ideology of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Reports describe AIM as the British chapter of the AhlulBayt World Assembly, an Iranian-backed NGO operating globally to disseminate Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of Islamic revolution. AIM’s publications include multiple texts authored by Khamenei, literature on martyrdom, and materials aimed at promoting strict adherence to Shia Islam.

Of particular concern is AIM’s use of social media to disseminate extremist content that is antisemitic, conspiratorial, and incites hatred and violence.

One video, titled “Know Thy Enemy” features a speaker describing Jews as the “harshest”, “squatters,” “settlers,” and “violent,” while accusing Israel, the so-called “squatter state”, of having a policy of murdering children. He calls moderate Muslims who may be tolerant of Israel “filth”, claiming that such Muslims have distorted the Quran to suit their “satanic desires” and referring to them as “devils”.  Other posts liken Gaza to Nazi concentration camps. Countless posts accuse Israel of genocide and liken it to Apartheid.

Social media posts by AIM appear to glorify and encourage martyrdom and justify Hamas’s 7 October 2023 atrocities by reframing them as legitimate acts of resistance, omitting any mention of attacks on civilians. For example, in one post AIM says that it “honour[s] the martyrs of Palestine & Lebanon who have been killed by the Zionist regime”. This is romanticising and glorifying individuals who have died in the context of armed conflict with Israel, which risks encouraging others to seek martyrdom through violence and frames death in conflict as an aspiration.

These posts, together with several additional examples of AIM’s social media material, indicate the grave threat to children’s psychological wellbeing and the serious risk of radicalisation posed by AIM. Further, AIM promotes isolation from Western society, denigrates integration, and glorifies violent resistance. UKLFI has warned the local authority that such content may breach multiple laws, including:

• Sections 5 and 18, 19, 21 and 23 of the Public Order Act 1986, which criminalise the publication of material intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.
• Section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, which imposes a duty on local authorities to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.
• Section 47 of the Children Act 1989, which requires local authorities to investigate any safeguarding concerns involving children.

In light of these serious concerns, UKLFI has asked both Brent and Hertfordshire Councils to:

1. refer the matter to Prevent and take immediate safeguarding or enforcement action;
2. initiate a section 47 child protection investigation
3. conduct a full investigation into AIM’s wider operations in the UK;
4. take urgent steps to prevent Camp Wilayah from proceeding pending the outcome of inquiries;
5. refer the matter to the police for criminal investigation; and
6. convene a multi-agency safeguarding response to ensure a coordinated approach across all relevant authorities.

A UKLFI spokesperson said: “AIM’s deep ideological alignment with the Iranian regime and its record of extremist propaganda present an unacceptable risk to children. We hope the local authority and other agencies will act decisively to protect vulnerable young people from the risk of radicalisation.”