Did police really quiz this student over a ‘free Palestine’ badge?

Just over four years ago, the Sunday Times published a remarkable story. At a ‘Students not Suspects’ meeting at Goldsmiths students’ union, a young man called Rahmaan Mohammadi retold his account of being referred to Prevent by his school. He believed that his ‘Free Palestine’ badge had, in part, motivated the referral. The experience had, unsurprisingly, left him shaken:

‘When police come to your house and say, ‘I want to speak to you’, with this massive folder with your name on it, that’s intimidating. It makes you feel alienated.’

But was it actually true?

‘Students not Suspects’, a campaign run by the National Union of Students, undertook a nationwide tour of students’ unions in 2016. This culminated in a national conference featuring former Guantanamo detainee and CAGE outreach director, Moazzam Begg, and a speaker from the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which the previous year had given Charlie Hebdo an ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award, two months after 12 of its staff were shot dead in a terror attack.