The Trojan Horse Affair - Part 2
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These first two episodes of the trojan horse are are free, but he heard the whole series. You'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done.

Hums and I are sitting behind two children. School desks were in the covert classroom at the front of the hero arm's house, talking about the trojan horse sleep. Those four pages that painted to hear as the ringleader of an extremist plot to hear clearly have strong suspicions .

about who wrote the motive was quite, quite an interesting one.

Even though the plot wasn't real, the trojan horse slighter still prompted authorities to investigate and ultimately dismantle education. Movement to hear was leading a successful movement. Outcomes for muslim students had improved dramatically. The national government also beat up counter extremism policy and tried to prevent, to hear in his colleagues from never working or volunteering in schools again, all the aftermath of the letter to hear beliefs.

If the'd ever bothered red just to investigate who wrote the thing, IT would have been very difficult for the government to justify its actions, because he says he would have been obvious the letter had nothing to do with the conspiracy or with him. Did he Sparks on details with us this first day? But he does give us that tantalizing hint that the letter came from someone close to him.

Uh but we've ver wrote a letter. They they they knew um you know they knew me, I think .

or possibly more than .

one person were they .

from birmingham? Ite well and they know me quite well too. I know them and I meet them often, you know, in an educational kind of environment and setting.

Is there a reason play in twenty questions here? Can we just ask you who .

IT is because i'm not able to obvious. Ly, I don't want to name anyone because I can't prove that. I'll give you a clue.

If you read the letter, just to A A literary point of view, just read the letter and all you have to do is who is being defended. Just read the letter. With that in mind, who is the letter defending is the question you have to answer, and you will arrive at your own judgments .

from serial .

productions and the new york times. I'm brian read.

I'm home to say IT.

Let's see if we can figure out who wrote the rosen horse letter.

Alright.

you can do this. Okay, let's move these draws going to drive.

Now we need a place to hanker down, a place to scrutiny the letter, a place to think, a place to throw names on the wall. We need to headquarters. And for this purpose hamza has generously offered up his parents bedroom.

Has been crashing in his parents of the flat here and they live in up with dob these days and are planning to retire to pakistan. So I guess they are not hear that much. I hope not, because we're completely arranging their bedroom, pushing the bed up against the closet, sliding the bureau's the corner, packing away, hums as mom's jewellery at his insistance. You want no reminder that this is your parents .

had room i'm seriously about this .

is headquarters. Have two box. Yeah.

clearing being in england. Fluting for the author, a mysterious letter alongside a doctor was having an affect on brian. He was going fully to share our comms mode. He detached the TV from the war and replaced with White boards, a cockboat and multiple lar note cards.

which are connected to the string.

I don't have the heart to tell them that you really do the whole murder all thing.

What are you seriously going .

to do with your parents? Come tell them sleep in different room, really like really now, I mean, less would figure that I want coin. Should I get the hover?

Hq was ready.

Operation trojan horses IT, and very carefully thought through. And I tried to and test to .

within burma on hums a sadness parents bed and read the letter allowed as I paced e around scribing names and schools on the White boards, circling some, crossing off others. Ht, spring field. Okay, keep moving to hear. He told us, read the letter and think about who is IT defending. That word choice seem deliberate defending.

Remember, the whole can seed of the letter is that it's written if it's from an accomplice of to hear and to a coke n spirit in another city, describing how they can start implementing this plot to hear a devised called Operation trojan horse. The author of the letter breaks the plan into five steps, all aimed at pushing out head teachers what they call principles in so you can bring in your own leadership. You'll make the school more islam.

You're proposed to get conservative muslim parents to get the head teacher a hard time about classes such as sex said, install a synthetic governor on the governing body to be basically spy on the head from their fine staff, to complain about the head teacher from within the school. But the author also explains what to hear in his coffee. Spiritus are currently up to in the other, named for head teachers at four specific schools, who the platters are the verge of successfully unseeing, and explains how they are pulling IT off.

At one school, theyd framed the head for doctor test scores, and now he was under investigation. At another, the'd instigated a nasty fight over one of the head teacher's discipline enery decisions at another that accused the head teacher of fraud. These schools and head teachers named in the letter were all real, by the way. And so where the scandals the letter described, or at least the rest of them, each of these head teachers had been an actual trouble in real life for doctor test scores, facing allegations of fraud eeta. What the letter claim, though, was that these weren't random incident of suppose is wrong doing.

Instead, the letter claimed all these incident where the result of the trojan horse conspiracy, run by to hear alarm and his cronies, therefore, IT was these head teachers who we think to hear, meant when he told us to consider who the letter defends, because in real life, these four teachers really had been at risk losing their jobs. And then the trojan horse, sleep ter, showed up suggestion they had actually done anything wrong, that they were victims, in fact, of Operation trojan horse. Presumably one of them could written the rogan horse sleep to help themselves get out of trouble. So I list these heads on our detective wall. We've nearing IT down too.

Got the head .

teacher at region's park community school, the head teacher atterly um the head teacher at solely school. And the head teacher from spring field school. We take a step back and stare at the board, pensively beard as the cogs turn in my partner's brain .

as my partner. So was this first meditative sip of a brush cover. And after about.

I don't know what was at five minutes, we had ourselves a theory about where the treasure horse slighter came from.

The letter came from elderly primary school. That's the most plausible theory. I told bryan this before he came to burn again, but he was new to the story.

He reminded of me. I was new to journalism, and he insisted which to stop by atilius ing the letter with an open mind, which we did. And then we went up, up adder's primary school. In three years, we've added almost nothing new to the murder war.

Sorry for the trouble, doctor masie.

It's not really that sophisticated if you read the trolley host that m sure the author goes on about a grand city White plot. But there's one school that the author seems to be obsessed with, elderly primary school in the mild. Later, the auto goes on its long agent about bizarre employment dispute between the head teacher at the farmers school and four teaching assistance there, four classroom aides.

The other says this employment dispute is part of the plot and describes the in excitation detail. None kill the schools get more than a few sentences devoted to them, relying information. You could have read news or online, but adderley actually gets paragraphed stuff, ed, with particulars that at the time were not public, including a bunch of different characters and events.

We're going to way to read this part of the attitude because it's so in the weeds is gonna a lot Better sense once you know more. But when I just know that yeah there is no mistaken whoever role the troika horsa had deep insider information about this udell case. I was not the first to notice this.

By the way, more than a year after the torgan horse that I was made public, this employment dispute one in front of a judge, and in his decision, the judge said, undoubtedly, whoever wrote the letter had intimate knowledge of the allegations going through the heart of this case. What do you thoughts regarding that quote in our first interview actually read to hear this line from the judge? Because even though he wouldn't come out and sake explicitly where he thought the letter came from, I suspected he was talking about elderly.

The quote is very insightful and very accurate.

Okay.

I think the judge there are made a good observation.

So, okay, elderly to hear pointing there, this judge independently of to hear is pointing there. When you just read the letter as a lay person, your head goes there. But who added erly .

and why? Well.

let us tell you the perplexing story of what happened at that school. IT begins not too differently, from the story of park view, with a trouble school in his burma and an ambitious new leader who comes in determined to turn the school around. Elderly primary, about a mile from part of you, on an industrial edge of the same neighbor, d.

Alam rock. It's a red brick Victorian building inside a spooky blue fence. It's a big school, almost six hundred students choice the size of an average ate primary school.

And for a long time, I had a reputation for having a vital staff difficult to manage. In seven years, IT had been through nine head teachers, which wasn't good for the students. Instead, the agency that inspects britain schools had labeled attlee's adequate fAiling.

In two thousand eight, the burning of city council turned to, among others, to hear for help. By then, to hear had a reputation for revitalizing schools, and the council asked them to apply the park for formula atterly. He joined the elderly governing body, which went searching for a new head teacher for the primary school.

And I found someone they were excited about. A muslim woman would be a deputy head teacher at another reserved ham majority muslim primary school, which under her team's leadership had vastly improved. Her name was rizvon a dar. So he says he was a standout candidate.

He was very ambitious. He was very passionate as a person. SHE came across as being very child centric as well. In other words, children's interest comes first, rather than let's keep some teachers happy and keep the unions happy, which is part of the dynamics in schools. But SHE came across as being somebody who would put the children's interest first that can cause very strongly to me.

You won't be hearing from this vana dar. She's declined to talk to us, but we're able to tell you what went down between mr.

Dar and the teaching assistance because they ultimately ended up in a knockdown drag out legal fight over this in an employment tribunal, which means we've been able to read pages and pages of exhibits and witness statements and legal briefs and the resulting judgment, all of which sets out their competing versions of what happened. The people we have spoken to who know we have worked with rizzon a dar. Nearly every one of them says he was super impressive.

SHE, you know, has a genius mind. There's no question about IT.

Roz, one for us is one of the locals to hear recruit into teaching. He lost his job after the government accused him of wrongdoing in the church. An horse affair was, one worked dunder risdon a dara uteri as an assistant head before they had a falling out. And this one moved on to another school. He responded.

our close IT wasn't that he was really good at one thing. SHE was really good at everything he did, but he was really good at training teachers. SHE was really good at monitoring.

She's really good at planning. She's really good at assessing curricular development. I've learned more from her in the career of teaching than anybody .

else is vana dar riz. As lots of people color was a big part of the reason rizwan took a position at atterly. SHE was exciting to work for. He was tireless, rone said. Sometimes SHE show up at five or five thirty in the morning and leave at ten at night.

And SHE implemented many of the same kinds of changes that the hears recruits had at park view high academic standards, inspiring like a daisical staff, getting parents involved, making religious accommodations. And he was working within just a few years off stead. The school inspectors raised badly from its lowest ranking to the second highest.

They credit a mrs. Dar as a head teacher of, quote, great vision and energy. But this is where the story IT atterly takes a turn for the unusual, because a very peculiar series of events began developing at the school, the details of which would become an important part of the chosen horse.

Sleep one day. In december twenty twelve, about a year before the letter surfaced, mr. Dar calls a teaching assistant named hilary Allen into our office.

We've heard some people involved in schools describe teaching assistance and quite Frankly, a resistance to reforms and a drain and resources. And there are strong unions in the U. K.

So it's hard to just up and fire someone because you don't get along. But according to mr. Dar, her experience with hilarious was on another level. In a witness statement, mr.

Dar describes misson's as rebellion and emotional an employee who would take to quote, throwing arms in the air, crying, lying on the floor or spreading herself across the table when you you didn't get her away one big disagreement between mr. Darr and hilario's was over the classroom miser's had been assigned to there are specific grades and teachers hilario and felt comfortable with. And you'd got a health assessment saying i'd be Better if the school could accommodate those preferences.

When mr. Star didn't accommodate that by miss one's own account, SHE started weeping in the staff room, which that they were taking leave of absence which meant the school had to pair even when he wasn't coming in and then came that day in december, Hillary ones was back at work and according to mr. Dara telling mr.

Dark finds an envelope in her male coffee it's a letter from hilario's gendering. A resignation em s. Owns is still coming to work like everything's Normal so mrs.

Dark calls misson's. And to our office, Hillary o. Sits down and mr. Dar says, I perceived you a litter of resignation.

I accept IT can either key fob please? You're free to go to a Hillary IOS response. What letter of resignation? I didn't write a letter of resignation.

I haven't resigned. Hilarion also declined to do an interview with us, but we have a recording of her describing this moment to the police. Yes, the police would eventually get involved.

I said, but I have been written a little of resignation and SHE said, um you now on god and leave, I need your security false garden leave .

is administration of leave basically when you're on your way out from a job and I thought.

did you hear what I said? He clearly didn't because he Carried on talking and I kept saying to her but I haven't written a letter resignation. I haven't signed a letter of nation. I haven't given you a little resignation. May I see the letter? He said, I don't have IT and she's, I need your security fund, which I was wearing my my neck I said, you may have this form if I can see my signature on that letter and he said, this meeting is over and with that.

miss someone says, mr. dr. Got up and stood by the door.

It's prety strange in IT get this done just a few days before this meeting with hilarious. This is also later in the court records. mr.

Da says he received three other resignation letters from three other teaching assistance at udi primary school. There were employees mister also had a difficult run with. There were three muslim women who live near the school and at work there a long time, likely arians.

They weren't keen msa, and the changes was making to the school. They too, had been fighting with a head teacher for many months. And by this time in december two thousand and twelve, we're all unpaid leave due to work related stress.

When mister receive resignation letters from these three, T. S. SHE quickly wrote back to them at their home saying, i'm accepting your resignation.

Best to luck with your future. IT is the three days, replied, what are you talking about where I am resigned? Hate to be a broken record.

Hair would love to hand the story after those days. But they've also declined to talk to us. So through the court files, these T S were named rahho um shan's bb and asma.

They were close to them were sisters when I sent to kids to adele and hell, realm's was friendly with them. Sometimes you to give one or the other left home when they learn they were on a similar particular, their boss claimed they resigned. They start coordinating the T, S, asked for a copy of the resignation letters they were supposed to sent.

And when mr. Dog provided them, I said someone had fabricated these letters and forth their signature. ms. R, one is forensic about this. In your interview with the police, a cop shows that .

the letters supposedly .

signed by her.

and the is wrong, the c is wrong, the always wrong is completely wrong. Any wrong, it's even .

I don't .

understand.

So four of responded darts employees were insisting someone had forced their resignation letters. But this is done, as he later explained, that a witness ness statement still believe the letter authentic, despite what employees were saying to refuse to let them come back to work, at which point that he came to the conclusion that mrs. Dow must have been behind this.

What did you make of that story?

Well, I mean, I was completely amazed because it's seemed quite far, factually, the notion that I had teach your forge's resignation letters. You couldn't imagine her teacher going to those length.

Jackie hues used to be assistant directed for school improvement for the bouncy council. When his resignation forecasts happened, she'd left that job, but actually was the school. SHE knew well, and hilario's .

came to see her for advice. SHE was just so attention over over again. Restore has lined SHE has treated us very, very badly. We did not write those letters and the head teacher didn't want them in the school that they were part of the old guard from the previous head and that SHE was making up stuff so long to get rid of them so he could have her own people. And I thought that was quite plays because that, you know, does happen, does not.

But how about faking resignation letters?

Well, that is that less possible? That is just that the bit that is .

completely be so have you come up with .

an explanation .

for the IT strikes .

me this likes to write the script for every party is the online race very much as a person. However, he was quite ruthless in getting her own way and making sure that her school and IT would be hers got the outcome he wanted.

Some of the same people who told us that mr. Don was brilliant, who ordered what he accomplished, lifting udi out of its academic abuse. They also sell flip side to her ambition. His former assistant head was one for us.

Again, every single classroom, how to look the same? The boys had to look the same. Every single book had to look the same. You know, there was a level of control downa that detail .

control freak slave driver. These are some of the words people who know as wanna dar have used to describe to us. Rosanna says he would monitor the most. Meanwhile, employees tasks the way workbooks needed to be colour coded by subject. The margin size staff were supposed .

be printing with SHE would say. Yet pencils need to be, altogether.

they cannot be mixed pens.

And this is a real example. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. IT would be very, very a dictor. Al, what would he even be aware of this, like of the head teacher he would scrutinize.

And SHE would, like my school.

expect hundred percent yeah, and expect the leadership team to do the same.

You go to some head these offices, and you can tell they belong to particularly had teacher, but the other plans of work.

Dave hues was a member of the ugly governing body, the hired me sister, his experience governor, who suffered decades on the governing bodies of schools through out bermingham, including a park view with the hair. They're also married to jackie hues, who sit next to him, eye glass hanging around her neck.

not in her head photograph for and be. You tell his place to work, a professional place. This is office was like an extension of her home, lots of personal belongings in there, as well as professional stuff pinned on the wall. The whole school had the feeling of not being a an independent institution, which he was lady but earth, if if was how IT felt to.

yeah, no.

I did in door. Yeah, I think .

exactly right. Yes.

we think SHE could be capable of doing whatever is necessary to protect that fifteen.

mr. Dar saw the four years as a threat to her job that's clear from the court files in her witness statements. SHE said they were miserable during the work day.

Constantly fighting her is one of are also started getting a lot of a grief from parents about how he was running the school, in particular more orthodox parents. People miss dr. Referred to in the litigation as slippy muslims.

Salif ism is a conservative interpretation of islam. Groups of parents ts started sending in complaints are showing up at school to raise a stinks efforts to which this is dar seemed SHE knew the muslim T A. A. Connections in the nearby stylishly community.

And though they were willing of these parents on purpose, SHE also blamed clippy parents for spreading rumors of about her personal life, weaponized the fact that he wasn't married at the time and didn't wear her job. mr. dr.

Writes about this in a witness statement. S. I regularly stand in the playground welcoming the children in the morning or waving them off in the afternoon. As I do so, I receive a high level of insults from parents.

In response to my good morning, they call me bitch and slag and tell me I am not a good muslim, not a good enough role model for their children, do do not covering my head, that I should be married, that my closer were appropriate, and I was too modern and too western. We haven't talked to anyone from matera who observe the abusive behavior directly, but in witness statements, members of mr. Star's leadership teams say they saw behavior like this and that the days were behind the bullying, but the T.

A say that mr. Dar was the real bully date, along with a few other colleagues, large formal grievances against her through their union for bullies, intimidation and harassment. The police claimed that they were, quote, constantly undermined and blitzed by mrs.

Dar, and that some of them had to seek medical help and go medication. These grievances were significant and serious. They had the potential to Cosmos star, her job.

And notably, IT was shortly after the T. A had filed these grievances, that mr. Darren form them, that they had resigned, that he had received resignation letters from them according to the ts IT was these official grievances.

That's why mrs. Dar was so desperate to get rid of them. The ta tried everything they can think of to get their jobs back.

They contacted the birmingham city council. They contacted the representatives in parliament. They made a declaration in front of a magistrate asserting that they did not write the letters.

They filed a report with the police. None of IT was working. They asked for a advice around the neighborhood.

They say they want to the job, but they wanted that they want to leave.

and they're been forced to resign. Job used to be a teacher at, and he had also been involved hiring mrs. dar. He lives around the corner .

from one of the days were they are, they said, they said they felt never the last legs, and they had no ground to to retain their job. They lose their job. So I said, the best advice I can give you is going to see, to hear.

to hear was the guy you went to when there was a problem with the school. And you plus, he told her cruz.

on a dartings atterly speak to her. He would be able to help you because he's obviously to know about legislation. I didn't know the truth spect what the true but if anybody got some influences of arizona was to here as I respect him.

The woman approached to here, though, to hear, tells us he doesn't really remember much about IT. He says he bumped into one of the days of the grocery store and SHE explained a bit about the situation, but he says he doesn't .

recall IT going any further than .

that one organization did in review for the ts, their union, their rep, was firing off emma's to burma city council, which is arizona ar's employer, saying that mrs. dr. Had, quote, fabricated the sherie and that in all her years the representative had never seen someone more drunk on power.

That's a quote then was on a dar until finally the birmingham council stepped in and instructed mrs. Dar that he should not terminate the test employment. The council warned in a letter that if you treat these resignations is valid and the employees to the school for wrongful termination, we won't defend that today.

We will not pay for your lawyers or any damages. Reliable for, like the council, Normally wood for one of its schools, you'll be on your own. And this is dar SHE ended the women's employment. Anyway, to no one surprise, the T A is brought a case against adele's primary school for unfair dismissal, and the birmingham council did exactly as I said IT would.

IT left the school on the hook to pay for its own defense and for any potential damages if the t is won their case, miss dar plough ahead and the defense utterly primary school submitted ahead of the hearing was certainly novel. Daniels zak's, a solicitor who represented one of the T. S. Hilario's, remembers when he read Adelaide's argument.

They said that the case was that all four of the claims had engaged in a cost conduct over two of years to undermine head teacher and that their resignations were part of a um a plot these four people, including hillery, were part of a plot to undermine ravana dar you to convert the school to one by some strict muslims sleep y teachings, sloppy being that more conservative interpretation of islam the interpretation miss dar said the parents from the T S. Were wiping up against the subscribe to Daniel that stop that's a not accusation to make about class mates at the prime school and especially about his client Hillary who attended angle in church every sunday at lee's defense filing doesn't use the word pad, but that is what IT describes. The schools lawyers wrote that the resignation letters quote have been used as a contribute and malicious means of falsely creating a scenario which would bring into question the head teacher's reputation.

In other words, the t is IT scheme together to also submit resignations and then pretend that mr. Started force them to get her in trouble, to say that they will resign, genuine resignations. They they all denied that they resigned and that would then call that rule is not the greatest plot.

Bear mind everything we've been talking about to this point, this whole resignation dispute IT, all happened before the trojan horse had existed. So when Adelaide's legal team filed his defense in spring twenty thirteen, this was the first hilary own solution, was hearing a by islamic plot in a birmingham school to undermine a head teacher.

As a hearing day approached, the handwriting expert was brought into analyse the signature on the disputed resignation letters. And the expert concluded that the T. A.

Signatures were in fact not authentic. They had been forged by the month of the hearing. November twenty thirteen. Adelaide's defense was looking retrained. Mister dar was based on a real prospect to school losing the case.

And IT was that month that someone claiming to be an enormous White blower folded the clock a horse later to the birmingham council, a letter apparently tly written from one shadow we can spirit to another, describing a plot to outside ad teachers, a majority missing schools. The letter outline the process of taking down a head teacher in five steps. Step one, identify a poor performing school based on a muslim area of town.

Step two, quote, select a group of slippy parents that that is very specific about this. The parents should be slipped. The goal is to get these slippy parents, quote, fired up and ready to give the head teacher a very difficult time on a daily basis.

If you can get them to be very vote on the playground, is they drop off or pick up their children. That was still about the parents. And quote, step three, put your own governor on the governing body.

Step four, identify key staff to disrupt school. From within here to the letter is very specific, the best people for this job. R ts, because, quote, they are less educated and from the local community, so are much more easily influenced. The letter continues. Quote, IT is also important, where possible, to ensure you have an english face amongst the group and quote, it's clear from the context, the letter doesn't mean my type of english face IT means a White person, because according to the letter, this person can give cover to effect the most T A part of religious conspiracy. And finally, step five, start a campaign where you complain to authorities about the head teacher, including the city council .

and your local lamping.

If you hear in those five steps and thinking elderly, you're not the only one. And that's not even the part of the tree horse letter that's directly about elderly. The early pop is a good half a page and is about this specific resignation case.

The author includes IT as one of the main examples of how the plot tim maneuvering against head teachers listen to her closely IT mrs. Idle defense in the case mr. Dar IT begins, is not a good muslims and was not open to our suggestions of the hearing to strict muslim guidelines.

She's very procedurally strong, and so we had to find a reason for her to be sacked, linked to procedures. Three of our muslim sisters and the governor have been disrupt in the school and causing issues in mister, since you to cope the school. These sisters are a great example of what can be achieved by only three people.

They, along with an english woman who is a close friend, have raised an allegation of fragment resignation letters against the head, even though the direction write less themselves from them. The children horse letter goes on to give a meticulous account of what happened with the resignations, how and where the T. S.

Drafted them, how they arranged to have them delivered. This account lines up exactly what the claims made in the employment case. IT ends with an explanation of peary ow's unique row in the surfy plot.

Quote, as the english woman dropped her left rock in the head stuff box, he adds another angle of fraud d against the head. And because she's english, IT would take the focus of the other muslim sisters. The focus wrong, everyone is briefed.

I will blame the english woman for planning and implement in the whole campaign to cause disruption among gs, the muslim staff and the muslims head teacher. That said, the trojan horse later describes what was going on, an eddy that support staff at a primary school, three anties from his bacon, and a Christian lady from the verbs were, in reality, secret agents conspiring with extremists. Part of a baddest cynic c conspiracy to take down is one a door? This incredible reading the torture horse data was just, the evidence was vana ga.

Needed to support her version of the resignations after four. When he appeared in the thirteen, her had been a singular and unconvincing claim that shows the victim of a sop p by forever teaching assistance. But now he was proof of that plot when the conspirators ors had convenient all down, incredible respond. Dar was accused of fabricating letters, and another letter materialized to come to her rescue and rescue her.

IT did respond. Dar would .

go on to .

use the treason for a sleep to clear her name. In the wake of the letter, the birmingham city council reversed course and paid for elderly primary schools legal case. The police raided the teaching assistance houses at dawn and arrested them for conspiracy to commit fraud.

The cops didn't bringing any charges, but all of us delayed the T A case against deadly for years once the hearing began and mr. Dar finally did go in front of a judge at of these legal team use the trojan horse sleep as evidence to support the school's case that the t has inspired to unseat mr. dar.

In the end, the judge concluded that mr. Dar did not fabricate the resignation letters. Ravana dar is the head teacher battery primary school to the day. More after the break.

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What's the georgian horse that start floating around emerging? And eighty, twenty fourteen, for people close to the schools involved, people who knew and worker is monitor IT intake. Too many reads for their minds to wander over the spiky blue fence and the head teacher inside. What I .

remember red distinctly coming to mind was seems to be a lot of .

information about add here in the was later, a lot of IT relates to add, and things .

that wasn't in the min, who else at the time would notice other than this, there is so.

so obvious. I just found a very strange that a lot of those things were in the letter.

The architect of this letter was somebody clear safeguard, like she's written this to cover A S.

We've seen no direct evidence the respond are ordered, the letter nor court has ever found that he did and the bone city council centres lector in which they said any suggestions that mr. Dar was involved in altering the trojan horse sea and the teaching assistance resignation letters is false, but the content of the torture horse data, it's timing and the circumstances surrounding IT point towards mrs. dr.

Or someone who supported mr. dr. Or maybe some combination of the two as the likely authors. And if IT was mr. dr.

Who wrote the torch horse letter? The bit that my surprise you is that a muslims could have done this, that a muslim could write a letter trafficking in islam phobic troops. What the potential to do untold damage to muslims? IT is messed up, but IT happens.

I remember in the case in the same area of these preminger actually, where a muslim cop had a personal be for the guy who run a prayer center, and a cop called nine one one, well, nine, nine, nine, pretending to be a civilian, reporting that people the present were planning to kidnap and killed cops in the name of ISIS counter, Terry detectives looked into IT, realized with a hoax the crooked copca seven year sentence. I think of this phone enon kind of like judo. U, when you learn that you can use your opponent strength as a weapon against him.

Here, mr. dr. Was a begins, the city council, which had abandoned her unemployment tribe, you know, which is about to sit in judgment of her.

Maybe SHE could maniples those institutions by using the latent criticism m phobia within them to her advantage, tell them that they are islamist, polers races. Judeo is a depressingly well known move that us Browns know we can make, but it's not easy thing to accept. When a friend first suggested to the hair that the letter probably came from his sisters.

I dismissed at all.

Now only was responded dar, a fellow muslim in burma, m, working in schools with a similar go of helping muslim children. This was some of the here do. He had helped hire a masdar for the elderly head teacher position.

On top of that, he was close to miss dog husband, a guy named cadir arrive is hard for the here to imagine that someone close to him mother created a letter mAiling him as an extremist to kingpin. But as the here red and reread the torture horse da, you couldn't shake the impression that I did seem designed to help review a door. And then when they let her league, the the stories start running by him being a dangerous extremist. The hair way to for a call from canada or arizona a because .

you knew them well enough for them to checking if something like .

that happened above. There were a fun, be the same day, the following day, not a deadly spot. IT is now five years, and not one of them has contacted me.

Any lingering doubts the hair had about who wrote the letter, the silence them.

If the purpose of the trojan horse letter was to help mss dar out of a very specific method, gun herself into with a handful of times at school, why would mrs. Dar, whoever wrote IT, take pains to smear, to hear as a dangerous mastermind, to hear himself strugling, to find an explanation. The best you could come up with is that mr.

Dark got the idea he was helping the T. A. In some way with the unfair dismissal case, though he insists he wasn't. We also talk to someone who was on the atterly governing body with his wana dar around this time, who said mr.

Dar was really angry at the educational trust to hear, ran from poaching some of at least teachers in any case, as the trojan horse letter took off in the press to hear, tried to push back, he drafted statements which he sent a various agencies and reporters and posted online, impLoring people to look into the origins of the letter. And he publicly pointed to atterly and the T. S.

Resignation case as its likely source.

The only outlet we've seen that picked up of the sign of inquiry was some seriously, was the guardian. A couple weeks after the trojan horse utter went public, a reporter there published an article raising the possibility that the trojan horse plot might have been manufactured to support at at least defense in the employment tribunal. But atterly wasn't having IT. The school sent an aggressive statement to the newspaper saying the Operation trojan horse plot was real and suggesting to hear was the one who should be scrutinised, not them. The school also contacted to hear directly.

I received the legal letter from .

the school's lawyers saying his insitutions that the trojan horse sleep came from atterly, where, quote, holy baseless.

and that if I made those inferences again and so on, that I will be, you know, taken to court.

Can you explain me something? I know we have had this conversation before, and i'm just, I don't know. I'm just i'm still strugling to understand that if I knew that my friends essentially had writing a document that was threatening to ruin my life, I don't know why you made no effort to go and speak to them. There's one thing to publicly something there's .

thing to pick up the phone. I thought about that many, many times actually and perhaps that as a conversation that, you know, peps, uh, I should have had actually, but I didn't think he was going to be unraveled by a chih t or a cup tea. Obvious that I didn't believe that otherwise I would have done that IT just be a no.

And I didn't want to kind of, you know, sort of maybe embarrassed myself. So for me to have a nicer you're doing is not easy thing for me to do. You have to appreciate that, you know, it's not easy thing for me to do.

Take a second to consider how the .

the story of the children horse letter changes if you begin IT with the infighting and atterly primary school. If this theory of the letter is true, if IT was created by rizvon a dar or someone near her to strengthen the offense in the elderly resignation case, think about the implications for britain's understanding of Operation trojan horse. Instead of news reports starting like this, a letter outlining a packed by harlings plot by hard line muslims to .

take my mum, muslim.

they would have had to begin with, someone appears to have fabricated a plot in an attempt to defend a head teacher whose being sued for wrongful dismissal by four employees at a primary school who claim SHE forged resignation letters on their behalf. But the head teacher says the employees did Simon resignation letters, but that they were pretending otherwise as part of a plot to unseat.

Assume you didn't even twist your brain around that headline. That story might make news of the weird or obscure employment law journal, but is not going to dominate the national media for months. It's not going to command the attention of parliament, the prime minister, the country's ex counter Terry chief.

It's not going to change counter extremism policy. It's hard to fat them how this happened. We're not dealing with deep throw here.

You've seen how easy is to lay the atterly case along side the trojan horse letter and see how one could lead to the other. You can do IT without much trouble from the comfort of your colleagues, parents, bedroom. The government had so many professional eyes on this letter. Multiple independent teams of investigators, they must have looked into this theory and ruled IT out for some reason.

I draw no conclusion about that.

Apparently not. This is an education consultation and former head teacher named ian cartie. He's the man the birmingham council hired to conduct a throw investigation of the trojan horse letter. His resulting report was titled investigation report trojan horse sleep and yet he proudly proclaimed to homes and me.

I draw no conclusion about who possibly rose IT, why they rose IT. I didn't write IT. I don't know who rose IT what might have to find out who write IT.

He enertia says he didn't spend a single minute looking into that in one hundred and forty one page report. He only mentioned the case atterly in one bullet point or least he appears to its spattered with reduction, writing that he didn't have time to pursue that incident in any detail. Former counterterror chief Peter Clark, the other main investigator who looked into the children horse affair for the national government, does a similar pivot. He does acknowledge in his report that whoever of the trojan horse sleep had detailed knowledge of what was going on with the resignation case at adder's primary school, but then he never discusses the case again. Both investigators, carshaw and Clark, make clear that the letter itself, its origins, its authenticity, whether IT, was truly correspondence between two conspirators that didn't matter to them or to the government agencies they were working for, which made total sense to curtis.

whoever wrote the, that whatever the most was, was not the point from the council's point of view that their questions going to be, is there something going on in our schools that we should know about? So the source of the letter, in a sense, became irrelevant.

I cannot overstate how crucial this choice was, the choice to respond to the trigen horse sleep this way, do not worry so much about its tech stalls, details, or even whether IT was real. And to instead look at its overwatched theme, the notion that muslims were colluding with each other to take over schools and potentially harm children. It's not clear where this peculiar and Frankly, is. Laptop c logic first emerged, but once I did, nearly everyone from westminster on down to the local media birminghams low park view, and utterly teacher rose, one for raz, remembers giving interviews to reporters and investigators where he says he pushed them to look into the source of the letter and being frustrated.

The feeling I got was that they weren't interested in the letter. They were interested in what's going on. The the inquiry was more like you muslims are going up to bad stuff like you tell me why you're not getting up to bad things as opposed to we've heard that this is data, what can you tell us about IT?

And once that narrative slides fied IT was insufferable so that even years later, when homes and I started trying to talk to people about what happened in birmingham ols, lots of people in trust us that we were, after something different.

just talked to be brain on IT is a hard no from him.

The wariness seemed especially start among people connected to atterly. There were stretches when I was back home in new york, and hamza was soldiering on in birmingham by himself, knocking on doors in between classes and assignments of journalism school. And I will get these voice memo on what's up from him throughout the day. Ababa man was a former year of governors from utterly would previously agree to .

get coffee with us. He doesn't think anybody story communities moved on. He's moved on and eventually he just put the phone down. So he's a hard no, I just knocked on for a effec store again.

a former finance assistant from that.

he answered and he just immediately started same, unhappy, unhappy, and start trying to shot the door on me and I said unto, just have one question to ask you. Please give me two minutes and you just shut the door my face as even try to leave with her through the post box. So eventually I just fell dictionary, and I just come back for the car, not to show what else to do. May, huma was .

like a tire that was slowly losing air.

Hi, so ah he is the update of the evening first structure. Ha home house rehana canoe .

was one of the four teaching assistance in the .

resignation case. And her husband and said, C, M wasn't pleased to see me there. He had an issue with his foot, so he had a walking stick with him.

He was hoping around. I immediate thought they guilty. Being there for monique IT became quite apparent quite quickly.

He is now then let me speak to her. SHE was obtained s supposedly busy. He also throw in there a few .

times that consider told me, as we shot the shit driving around birmingham, that the reason when into journalism was to take on stories like this one in which muslims felt burned by the press. Use that as part of the pitchy make to people when we call them or meet them at the front doors, I get IT A A muslim pakistani guy from birmingham thought this would be his calling card, would give him access to sources and stories that other journalists might not get. Instead, he found themselves sitting alone in his car at a site three development rock, talking into his phone.

Um god, i'm just looking at the method already eight minutes long. So this is i'm sorry about this may. Listen, I think some people tied to the elderly case had to stuff to hide and will get to some of them.

But regardless, I have to say this is exactly how I would react to a british journalist coming to knock on my door. This is the same press that's been called out for a systemic islam hob a by its own media watchdog. The same press has admitted that editors asked reporters to find muslim stories because they sell papers.

And when these stories were analyzed, the majority with negative, with the most common thing being terrorism, the same press that we're pleaded with by the head of a muslim organisation for more even handed reporting about us because he feared people bring poisoned like they were against jewish people in the one thousand nine hundred and thirties, responded with two one articles, ridiculous argument, attacking him and asking for his arrest. So yeah, I had hoped that being a local muslim guy would mean that people in buying more treatment differently, they trust. But instead we walk around on a rock.

Introducing myself as a journalist only meant, after seeing all those headlines designed to her, us. Are gonna in this industry, that I wasn't something different. I was also a sick person.

I was also, apparently, anya, this is IT. You saw of this one question. The rest does not matter.

The rest just kind of false, where words, anyway, back in the beginning, I ramble on to bring about admission. Sure, the people. I thought I was helping work into me, but I still believe our goal was straight forward.

The all you had to do was focused, everyone, on the question of who wrote the letter, turn everybody's head back to elderly, if you could. Substances pe, that he was indeed written by. I was wAnita someone close to her for the resignation case.

If this was a hopes and intended by someone for a different purpose and completely made up, and you get that as proof, everything that comes after IT is a matter for me. Solving who wrote this letter is more powerful than just like this little case here in birmingham. I feel like this becomes, you know, the flag that everyone can wait them to be like.

Let's be skeptical about any accusations from here on, because look, look, what happened with this one spired out of control for no reason. This story, this letter, then becomes bigger than this one series. IT becomes like a little reference point, a reference point to be like, to be skeptical.

There was a problem with my premise, though, when I first got interested in Operation trojan horse, I thought the government impress had made mistake in overlook, who wrote the letter. A bigoted mistake, but honest one assumed that this provocative document had surfaced, and the medium has gotten into usual frenzy. Words like extreme is a major hard of being thrown around.

And in a rush to act, the government lost itself in the hysteria. And instead of taking the rational approach of just looking into the adel case, IT end up in barking on a thoughtless adventure. I figured what I was trying to correct wasn't always saying, but now I IT wasn't overside at all. That's next on the trojan horse fair and the missing age.

The trojan a horse are is produced by brian reid and me, along with the recollects. The show is edited by Sarah ic, additional editing by ara glass and by contributing editor. I am a seeking fact and research by amErica online and been filing original school by Thomas meller with additional music by mammoth and Steven Jackson, sound design mixing in music supervision by Stephen Jackson, and filled them a hoskyns the audio on visual company judice skitters are executive editor, new drummer is managing editor, supervising producers and day tube executive assistant is a voto delay on some dork is an assistant managing editor of the new york times.

special things to harm his parents siad and a tia atter also alin mEllie, a via decoration failed raza s. Bitch from radio media dog and Victoria activity.

the trojan horse affair is made by zero productions and the new york times.

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