Trojan Horse-linked school - employment tribunal ruling

It upholds one unfair dismissal claim but rejects three others

Judges in an employment tribunal involving a Trojan Horse-linked Birmingham school have upheld a claim for unfair dismissal by one teaching assistant - but rejected the cases by her three Muslim colleagues.

Last month, the tribunal heard claims by the four teaching assistants at Adderley Primary Schoolwho said they had been unfairly dismissed after forged letters of resignation were submitted in their names.

Judges have now agreed with only one of them - practicing Christian Hilary Owens - while rejecting the claims of the other three, Yasmin Akhtar, Rehena Khanom and Shahnaz Bibi.

In its decision, the tribunal decided “on the balance of probabilities” that Khanom, Akhtar and Bibi were involved in the production of the resignation letters, but found Owens to be “a convincing and truthful witness”.

Details of the case involving the four women figure prominently in a letter which surfaced in late 2013 detailing a plot dubbed “Operation Trojan Horse”.

The letter, supposedly penned by one conspirator to another, set out a step-by-step plot by hardline Muslims to take over non-faith schools.

During the employment tribunal involving the four Adderley teaching assistants, it was claimed the women were part of a conspiracy by Salafi Muslim parents to try and Islamise the school and force out head teacher Rizvana Darr.

Ms Owens’ lawyer Daniel Zakis welcomed the ruling in the unfair dismissal case against Birmingham City Council and the school’s governing body.

He said: “Ms Owens is delighted by the judgment which puts to bed the ludicrous suggestion by the governors of the school that she was part of the Trojan Horse plot.

“The tribunal accepted all of Ms Owens’ evidence and she is relieved that after three years the truth has been established and it is now accepted that she did not resign from her position at the school.

“It is disappointing to say the least that it has taken over three years and significant cost to reach this conclusion when the school was advised in March 2013 that Ms Owens’ resignation could not be relied upon by Birmingham City Council.

However, the judges were not convinced by the evidence from the other three staff members, saying they “gave incredible evidence about their knowledge of Salafi Islam” and lacked credibility in denying knowledge of parental abuse aimed at Mrs Darr.

During the hearing, two of the women claimed that Mrs Darr had ordered all images of pigs to be removed from the school library and classrooms, but the judges said such claims were “incredible” in the light of other evidence.

The judgment said the authors of the Trojan Horse dossier must be connected with one of the parties to the case, in what is the first official effort to identify its source.

“Undoubtedly, whoever wrote the letter had intimate knowledge of the allegations going to the heart of this case. The writer must have had information passed to them from either the respondents or the claimants’ side,” it said.

Much of the evidence revolved around how and when the four letters of resignation were delivered, with Owens’ purported letter appearing a day after the other three.

The women’s resignations were the subject of an inquiry by the council’s internal audit unit in 2013, which concluded that the letters had probably been forged and that the dismissals could not be sustained.

See more on this Topic