Prevent Fact Sheet 27.10.09 - 16/11/2009
PREVENT: Response to recent media coverage
On Saturday 17th October, The Guardian published several articles on the Prevent strand of CONTEST- the Government's Counter Terrorism Strategy.
The articles claimed that the Prevent strategy is being used to gather intelligence about innocent people who are not suspected of involvement in terrorism and provided some material alleged to support this claim. This included an interview with the Quilliam Foundation (a recipient of HMG funding in connection with Prevent).
The article also drew on information in a publication called Spooked! How not to prevent violent extremism, written by Arun Kundnani and, published by the Institute of Race Relations earlier this month. The Government has written to Arun Kundnani seeking evidence to support the allegations made in his report and we will circulate the government's detailed response to the report.