Dean was already familiar with Scotland: as one of the UK’s key spies, operating at the highest levels of al-Qaeda, he had visited the country undercover six times before, to be briefed by MI6 officers in safe houses in the Highlands or a occasion, a hotel on the island of Iona. Saadia was from Pakistan and originally from Kashmir, and Dean recalls that the beauty of the Highlands resonated with her. “I want to see mountains. I want to see green and all that,” he said. “It’s a place I’ll never tire of.” By December 2019 it was decided. At first they rented and then found a newly built house near Edinburgh, settling into a new life. They applied for their infant daughter to join the nursery at St George’s School, one of Scotland’s leading private schools. “We thought it would be perfect for her,” he said. “Actually, it was wrong.” For Dean, this new life was the ultimate reward. For eight years he had worked undercover for MI6 deep inside Al Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist group run by Osama bin Laden, which in 2001 carried out the 9/11 bombings and a series of other atrocities. Then a citizen of Bahrain, he had been recruited by Al Qaeda to become a bomb maker after fighting in Bosnia, like thousands of other young Muslims, against the ethnic cleansing campaigns of Serbian nationalists. In 1998 Al Qaeda announced itself to the world by bombing two US embassies, in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured thousands more. Dean said these atrocities shattered his faith in the case. Attacking civilians had no theological or political justification, he thought, nor a borderless war against the West. A few months later, he was recruited by MI6. At the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, Dean was the West’s most important human asset inside al-Qaeda. Philip Ingram, a former colonel in British military intelligence, saw Dean’s reports from Afghanistan. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is important stuff. There’s someone in there who has a very detailed understanding.” He quit espionage in 2006 and became an Islamic terrorist financing specialist at HSBC. A British citizen, in 2015 he outed himself in a BBC interview, before publishing a critically acclaimed account of his time in the group, Nine Lives, and starting his own podcast series on fundamentalism and world affairs, Conflicted. In September 2021, Channel 4 aired a three-part documentary on Bin Laden to mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings. Dean was a star witness. By then, their daughter had started at St George’s and seemed to be flourishing. But a few weeks later “everything turned sour.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. On October 14, Dean and his wife were called into an emergency online meeting with the school’s principal, Alex Hames, and a senior colleague. The couple were told that several parents had expressed concerns about his presence, fearing that he could be targeted for murder on school grounds. They were asked to change their daughter’s drop-off and pick-up times and, according to Dean, to delete a photo of her in her school dress from Dean’s social media accounts. Dean says Hems confirmed the school had new assurances from MI5 that he was not a threat to the school’s security, repeating his promises from 2019. However, Dean claims Hems told the pair: “Don’t expect a welcome here in scotland, especially edinburgh. People here are conservative with a small C and won’t be as welcoming as people in London.” The couple reluctantly complied, Dean said. For the next seven months their daughter arrived at school 20 minutes after her classmates and was picked up 30 minutes after school ended. But again things did not go smoothly. He claims some parents stayed outside, giving hostile and mocking looks, and many times he and his daughter were left waiting for long periods at the gate, sometimes in the rain, for staff to take her to school. After complaining about a delay, Hems apologized. Repeatedly late for class, his daughter allegedly yelled at a staff member. This, the couple says, deeply affected her self-confidence. Dean remembers his daughter telling them, “They’re not nice. They keep yelling at me “Sit down, sit down”. Why do I have to go to school here? Why does school hate me?’ Unable to placate the unknown parents who had complained – and worried about facing any hostility – the couple decided not to risk allowing their daughter to attend the parties. However, in April they applied for their son to join St George’s Kindergarten. he is autistic, so the couple offered to pay for one-on-one help in the classroom for him. Staff had indicated it would be accepted, they say, but to their shock the offer was rejected. During a meeting at school, with their son playing nearby, Dean claims a teacher said he had “a radical idea”. In his complaint to the secretary, Dean claims he said: “What keeps you back here in Edinburgh? Why don’t you leave the country? The Middle East offers fantastic facilities for children such as [your son].” Dean claims a colleague agreed, stating: “You have to consider the welfare of both your children.” This shocked them deeply, he said. It felt like a total rejection, something they feared could be repeated in another British school or city. Rather than risk relocating, Saadia told Dean she wanted to sell up and leave the UK. A week later, the couple told St George’s they were leaving. In mid-May, feeling their relationship with the school had become irreparable, an enraged Dean accused other “racist and bigoted parents” of sparking the crisis in a message to a parents’ WhatsApp group and warned: “You’ve messed with the wrong person. here!” He posted, but quickly deleted, a third message asking some named parents to confirm whether they were the complainants. Hames responded, Dean said, by banning him from the school, calling his message “deeply offensive” and “upsetting ». On June 7, Hems met the couple at school, where she pressured them to agree to mediation to settle their dispute, which the couple rejected. Dean said Hems rejected his request for an apology and to allow their daughter to resume regular school hours. He claims he told them: “You are Al Qaeda. This is scary for other parents. I did my research. Al Qaeda is a terrifying cause across the UK.’ The school said it “very strongly disputed” Dean’s claims and was confident the registrar would find he “acted fully in accordance with all relevant safeguarding and regulatory procedures”. Hems is also understood to strongly reject his account. Dean told the Guardian he was going public with his complaint because he feared it would fail others who risked their lives for the UK. “[Next time] We will help the children of Afghan interpreters or brave Russian spies. It’s tempting to sweep it under the rug and never talk about it again. This scenario will happen again, whether it’s York, Brighton, London or wherever, if we don’t take a stand on it now.”
