School Cancels "Terror Charity" Event / Marcus Dysch

Monday 10 February, 2012
A school-based charity event organised by a group with links to Hamas has been cancelled following consultation with anti-extremism experts from the Department for Education.

Human Appeal International was expected to run a women-only social evening at Parrs Wood High School, a specialist technology college in Didsbury, south Manchester, on February 18.

HAI claims to work with the victims of "poverty, social injustice and natural disasters" in 27 countries, including the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan and Iraq.

But it is also on the US State Department's list of charities linked to terrorism.

Parrs Wood had received complaints from representatives of Manchester's Jewish community and pro-Israel activists about its renting of a room to the group.

Concerns had also been raised with the DfE and a department spokesman confirmed earlier this week that experts from its preventing extremism unit had spoken to headmaster Andrew Shakos to remind him of impartiality guidelines.

It is understood that following the discussions the school took the decision to cancel the event. Mr Shakos and governors are also thought to have ruled that no charities with political links will in future be able to rent rooms at Parrs Wood.

A message posted on Human Action International's Facebook page this morning confirmed the event had been "postponed".

HAI previously hosted a "Day for Gaza" fundraising event at Parrs Wood, close to its UK office in nearby Fallowfield, in 2009.

In 2003, the FBI said HAI had a "close relationship" with Hamas. Two years later, it was named by Israeli authorities as one of a number of organisations that had diverted donations to fund terror and support the families of suicide bombers.

School apologises for 'terror charity' visit


Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters (without spaces) shown in the image.