How Brighton’s gangs became increasingly radicalised

Between October 2013 and January 2014, five teenaged boys from Brighton, three of them brothers from a family called Deghayes, travelled to Syria to join Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist militia and one of the main jihadist groups fighting the Syrian army. A dozen more young people from Brighton were also eager to go. Radicalisation had swept through the group like a ‘contagion’, catching parents and police unawares and baffling counter-extremism experts. In his disturbing No Return, Mark Townsend traces the various hidden causes of the Deghayes case, events that he claims ‘transformed the entire approach of the government’s counter-extremism programme, both in policy and ideology’.

Townsend, who is home affairs editor of the Observer, completed his book in just two months, having followed the case for more than half a decade. Writing confidently and with authority, he is clearly well acquainted with the details. At the centre of his account are the Deghayes boys: the oldest, Amer, the twins Abdul and Abdullah, followed by Jaffar and Mohammed.