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We’re going to pick up a thread.

We left off a bit ago back from when Holmes and I were reporting in Birmingham, and this happened.

I just got a letter from the Council threatening an injunction frame here.

Buddy.

We are in trouble.

We need to figure this out very quickly.

Yeah, OK alright hums and I had been connecting dots for some Birmingham City Council members about the relationship between the Trojan Horse letter and utterly primary school.

The former council leader Albert bore had just responded by saying he was aghast at what we were telling him.

That what we discovered could have changed the whole course of the Trojan horse affair when next we new homes and I each got an angry letter from counsel lawyers demanding that we hand over any confidential counsel materials we’ve gotten hold of and stop our reporting on them and that if we didn’t.

They take us to the High Court of England and Wales and get a judge to gag us.

Within hours again, this threat Brian had fled the city.

As you know, I’m not in Birmingham right now.

I’m in an undisclosed location, hit hit in our report materials somewhere I didn’t know, and then like, sounds like we just spoke another country.

OK, and soon would both be in Belgium.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Brussels MIDI, our final stop, the main exhibit which I know.

It sounds overdramatic, but escaping the United Kingdom wasn’t my idea.

Homes and I were warned that the way the law works in England, it was possible they may not hugely likely, but possible that authorities could come knocking on our doors and try to make us hand over reporting materials.

We were worried about our sources that they might be identified and there was one document in particular that the lawyers said in their letters to us.

The Birmingham City Council wanted back.

One document that this all really seemed to be about that the City Council seemed dead set on making sure hams, and I would not tell you about the audit report.

Remember that one it was passed to us via gloved hands.

The auto report contained the findings of the investigation that Birmingham City Council auditors had conducted into the resignation dispute at early primary school.

The Council finalized it right before the Trojan Horse letter arrived on Albert Gore’s desk, and it was the official report.

Adjusting the Adderly headteacher, Rezvan Adar, had possibly forged the resignation letters of the four T as at her school because of the report, the City Council had even referred the case to the police, and of course it was the month after the audit was completed that the Trojan Horse letter appeared, suggesting the whole resignation situation and even the audit investigation itself was part of an elaborate Islamist conspiracy of which Van Adar was a victim.

Well, the Council was now saying to us, in essence you fools.

You should never trust that audit report and they reminded us in these letters of something we knew but had never fully understood.

After the Trojan Horse letter blew up publicly, the council had officially retracted the owner report.

They disavowed their auditors findings that Rezvan Adar might have been behind the resignation letters, and quietly they buried the document.

This document, which appeared to debunk the Trojan Horse letter.

Frankly, the retraction of the audit report to Brian and I.

It looked like a cover up, it’s why long before the Council threatened us.

I’d convinced Brian that we should get rid of the copy of the report that we had in the UK.

I knew it was sensitive and I could see where things might be headed that the Council might come after us for it so late one night and yet another dramatic scene, can you not shine that in my eyes?

I can’t see anything.

I’m just trying to when we find ourselves with some time to kill, they were empty field during a reporting trip in Wales.

Should do it here in a bit of bushes or something we decided to make a ceremony of it.

I just want to say.

As I’m lighting this document on fire, I really really missed the 1st amendment.

Hey.

There it goes.

That’s pretty.

In their threat layout, was the council’s lawyers denied directly that there had been a conspiracy to hide the order?

They said there’s been no cover up inside the council ranks, yet they offered no explanation for why they retracted it, that instead what evidence, if any, of the Council would uncovered after the fact they made them reject what their auditors had found.

It said vaguely that the report was unreliable and the law is informed us in bullying legalese that if we consider the Council audit report.

As a credible document, if we relied on, it does suggest that Mrs.

Darr had possibly concocted the resignation letters or altered the Trojan horse that we’d be making a huge mistake.

They said we’d be getting this story totally wrong, but they specifically said was that it would be quote mischievous and perverse of us to treat the audit report as credible.

They said unequivocally that Mrs.

Dar did not write the resignation letters or the Trojan Horse letter.

The Council was implying that there’s something they knew that we didn’t, something that made them change their whole understanding of the added case and of the Trojan horse affair.

I don’t know, there’s got to be some information they’re acting on into turn around.

Yeah, there had to be some information that they got that inspired that.

What did the Council know that we didn’t?

From serial productions and the New York Times I’m Jose side, I’m Brian Reed.

This is a Trojan horse affair.

The Council retracted the order report in the autumn of 2014, and it wasn’t some public announcement that decision happened behind the ornate facade of Council house in private meetings among officials and lawyers, but hopefully before the council threatened us.

Someone had leaked Brian and me.

What else?

A letter?

We’ve taken to calling this one the hey letter because it was written by top Council officer at the time named Peter Hay, and we’re hopeful it’ll provide some answers because Peter Hey wrote this letter to utterly primary school and in him explained over 2 pages why the Council did it, why they nullified the audit report.

I would like to take this opportunity to detail the reasons why the audit report is incorrect and hence retracted when Brian read aloud, though, it was not what we expected.

Both myself and the Council have found that the audit report is fundamentally flawed, incorrect, wholly unreliable, in one sided.

After a thorough investigation by the Council, we have come to the view that the conclusions reached in the report are completely incorrect and that the report was ill, considered misconceived and poorly timed.

The hey letter is packed with so many synonyms for the order report being wrong.

That we were certain somewhere in it.

Peter Heywood, walkthrough whatever evidence had come to light to make the council or return the order.

But he doesn’t really, he says a few times that the order report was one sided.

Because Ravana, DA and Adderly hadn’t cooperated with the investigation, they’ve been advised not to buy their lawyers.

While the TAS had an active legal case against the school.

Hey, seems to put a lot of significance on that as if the Council was surprised to learn that Mr.

Dar hadn’t taken part in the order even though that wasn’t a new discovery, the auditors talk about it at some length in the report itself.

Peter, he also mentions that the police had changed their mind about what happened Adderly, but again doesn’t say why.

He just continues groveling in him.

Please don’t sue us.

Kind of tone, it is wholly accepted that Miss Dar was in no way involved in fabricating the alleged letters and has fully cooperated at all times with the authority.

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for the personal distress and upset that this has caused Miss Dar and fully understand what harrowing experience this has been for her, the Council and I recognize that it was a mistake.

To produce such an incorrect and biased document which had little factual basis, what?

What is going on?

This reads to me like you know what hostage delivers like a speech to camera saying, I’m fine, I’m OK.

This reach to me like that.

What is the city talking about?

We were no clearer after getting this letter.

What the Council learned about Adderly that made them see things differently.

So we took the hey letter to Peter himself to ask him if he could interpret for us.

Tell us what evidence he and his colleagues came across that made them believe their auditors have been wrong about Rosanna.

Dar, it had been more than three years since he had written this abject letter, so Peter had to give it a quick re read and he seemed to spot something in it that explained the turn around.

There you go.

There you go, what?

Well, if you hold a constant mind when the evidence in front of you changes, what’s the evidence?

That’s what we want to know.

Set out in here is it though so.

You’ve got.

That that.

Well, I’ve sent over two sides.

The failure to take into consideration things.

Mrs Das involvement.

Change of information from the police.

The conclusions they’ve reached to and they need to kind of have a relook at it.

That was about as specific and answer as we got from Peter.

Hey, no more specific than his letter.

We went round and round on this but there’s nothing we’re missing that there was nothing else that you can remember that was causing this.

What do you remember about how this came about?

Like even this letter is very.

It’s very dramatic like you’re really apologizing a lot.

There’s a lot of adjectives.

What prompted this letter?

Do you remember writing this?

I don’t know.

And it’s odd ‘cause it’s not fully laid out at the top as it would be laid out.

Is this your Remembrance Day?

It’s got my signature on it.

To ask this is a story about possibly fake letters.

I’m serious.

Did you write this?

No, it’s got a signature on the bottom.

And it looks like my style.

I may have got some things wrong.

There are still some things in this whole instance that are unknown and are unclear.

And may remain unknown and unclear for some time.

We said goodbye to Peter hey, wondering if he was as bewildered as we were, did he honestly not remember why they disowned the audit?

Or was he getting so twisted up because he was withholding something?

The only concrete development he seemed to offer to explain why the Council flipped was because the police had undergone their own change of heart on the Adderly resignation case.

A quick timeline here the 4T as filed grievances against Ravana Dar in 2012, just as the school is about to hear those grievances.

The four disputed resignations appeared.

About a year later, in the autumn of 2013, Council auditors finished their investigation, issued the audit report, and the Council asked the cops to take on the case because it looked to the auditors as if the TAS had been victims of a fraud, which is a criminal matter.

The view was at that point.

That respond are the school and misbehaving in some way.

This is retired detective in present Private Eye.

Andrew Bannister, the City Council asked his department, the West Midlands Police to look into the Adderly resignations.

And they did.

They reviewed the Council audit investigation and they got a warrant to go into early primary school.

On the last day of March 2014, Detective Banister says they entered the school with the following hypothesis that he’s wanted all had orchestrated the resignations and the subsequent stacking of the staff, and that the material was there too.

Corroborate that the letters the original letters that resignation letters as you at the school hadn’t been handed over hadn’t been analyzed, and this was all because Arizona doll was corrupt.

But when the police left that visit to Adderly, they believe the opposite.

They were viewing, responded are as a potential victim in the fraud rather than a suspect.

The whole thing stars.

He won’t way and ended up different.

Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to figure out, right?

Right?

So we asked Andrew Bannister, what evidence did you find that caused you to change your view of Rosanna Dar, which in turn made the Birmingham City Council change its view of Rosanna Dar?

Detective Banister wasn’t at that school visit himself, but he knows the utterly case well, because he did a review of the investigation and the evidence, and he told us when police officers got to Adderly that last day of March, they were surprised to find that Rezvan Odar and her leadership team were eager to cooperate with them.

The cops hadn’t been expecting that, given Adderly’s refusal to work with the Council auditors.

And Banister says Mrs Darner colleagues had proof.

That that as did send resignation letters to the school.

My understanding is that they were able to say straight away that the letters had been delivered by hand by a third party, and it was on KTVI.

The school had CTE footage of letters being delivered by a school volunteer.

A woman named Fritz Anna baby.

Furtuna BB is the sister of two of the Muslim TAS.

She was also on the governing body at Adderly.

The camera footage showed that fits on a baby had walked into the school reception area on the day of the supposed resignations at 1:04 PM, with a stack of envelopes in her hand, the envelopes were placed in a tray at the front counter.

The admin staff saw them being there and the CCTV.

Corroborated that and those envelopes were collected by rozana.

Whilst going immediately into a staff meeting and that those envelopes were opened.

They were open in the presence of the senior leadership team of the school, so it tends to put a completely different.

Slamd on the matter.

Got it?

Yes, there we go.

That answers that question that does put a completely different slant on the matter.

Is how I would have reacted to Andrew Bannister if this fact that there were letters was new information which the police had uncovered that day, but it wasn’t.

The TAS didn’t dispute that.

Had asked for Zana baby to drop off some letters, they just said there were health related forms that Mrs.

Dohad requested.

While they were all on leave from work, not resignations.

This was all covered in the Council’s audit.

So this vaunted ktve evidence, aside from not being new, was pretty much meaningless because it only corroborated something both sides agreed on the envelopes had arrived at the school.

It did improve that their resignations inside those envelopes.

In fact, the whole mention of CTE footage for Burning City Council auditors it only made them more suspicious of Mrs Dyer because soon after envelopes arrived when she called the HR department at Bone City Council to tell them that some Tas had just resigned.

She mentioned unprompted that the school had seeked footage of a relative of the employees dropping off the envelopes.

The auditor notes the auditee of this detail.

Since why would you proactively reference ktve evidence before any conflict had arisen?

It was as if Mrs.

Dahl was anticipating that the TAS would challenge their resignations.

So yeah, as we told Andrew Bannister fruits on a BB being caught on ktve delivering letters.

That wasn’t new information that the police came across when they visited the school that was in the audit report.

They had that information.

So what new at the school I don’t.

I don’t think they had got it.

We spent a couple hours parsing this with Bannister.

What did the police uncovered that was new?

What facts changed their understanding of this situation and of Ravana Dar?

He talked about the alleged resignation letter of the white non Muslim teaching assistant.

Hillary Owens, which turned up on a separate day from the others and in separate circumstances that would not sound out of place in a game of clue.

She was the last person in the cloakroom prior to the letter being discovered in the pigeon hole.

But that didn’t get us anywhere either.

We could not understand what made the police switch to seeing Ravana darza victim instead of a potential culprit.

I supposed to receive wanna die?

You spoke to her personally.

Yeah, I have spoken to her.

I found this to be.

Open, forthcoming and.

Credible.

So what was she telling you?

Basically that she was trying to push the school in one way.

Staff are reticent and that that is subsequently come to these resignation letters.

This was all motivated to get her out of the school we were interested in knowing whether she told you something else that wasn’t in the audit.

No, I think what what she was able to do is probably put.

A greater.

Explanation on it and put it.

Put it in to contextualize it.

Detective Bannister kept saying the difference was this that even if the auditors had the same information, they hadn’t talked to anyone at the school, whereas the police had.

But what did they learn in doing that that was different?

What evidence came from that, or what testimony came from doing that that changed the position completely?

For what if my honest answer to that is it’s not evidence it’s interpretation.

OK, so we’re so that we’re understanding that correctly.

It’s not something we’re missing here.

If what Andrew Bannister was saying was right and all that had changed between the Council auditors, conclusion that was Van Adar was possibly the perpetrator of a fraud, and the cops conclusion that she was the victim of a fraud was a matter of interpretation and not any additional facts.

Then it made us wonder if the only new piece of evidence, and I’m using that term loosely.

The only new evidence that the cops had, which the auditors did not.

Was the Trojan horse letter.

The Trojan Horse letter had turned up in this window after the council issued its audit report, but before the police headed into Adderly, and it certainly brought new context to the situation at the school.

It certainly offered an intriguing new interpretation of what might have been happening there.

Except Detective Bannister had already made a point of telling us, right when we sat down with him that this case was not about the Trojan Horse letter.

In the first few minutes of our interview, he emphasized that at no stage where the West Midlands Police investigating that document absolutely not.

And it wasn’t an investigation into the Trojan Horse letter.

Which makes sense because we know the police determined early on that the letter was bogus and the plot it described wasn’t real.

But here’s where things get weird.

Homs and I had found police records, which showed that the Trojan Horse letter was a part of their investigation into utterly.

We got this one report that was written by Detective Banister, and he says in it that one reason the police decided responded are should now be treated as a potential victim in the case.

Was because detectives had considered the information outlined in a section of the Trojan Horse letter.

We showed that report to Bannister.

So the Trojan Horse letter was taken into account was used as evidence.

Basically, you’re saying that the Trojan Horse letter was used as evidence in in refocusing the investigation and treating DAR as a victim.

So that’s what this seems to be saying to me.

Yeah, it’s.

You you would have to ‘cause weather, weather, weather, weather it had a hard time explaining this one with the fact that the letters are fake with the Trojan Horse Letters.

Whoever wrote the Trojan Horse letter the facts within the Trojan Horse letter, there are some that you would look at it and go.

Well, that exactly mirrors.

What what?

What is taking place?

Was I cognizant that these circumstances fit with the letter?

Yeah, but enough that to be a moron not to, but even more specifically, you you treated the what the letters saying about Adderly as.

As relatively legitimate, because you’re pointing to it as a reason why Rezvan Adar should now be treated as a victim.

So you’re basically buying what this letter that you think could be fake is saying about.

Utterly.

Yeah.

Within days of visiting elderly and talked to respond, are the police theory of the resignation case inverted so completely that they secured a new round of warrants this time?

They were after the 40 years.

Now you’re arrested this morning, yeah, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

OK, is that right?

Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, OK, wonderful.

They conducted dawn raids at their homes and confiscated the women computers and electronics.

They arrested them all for conspiracy to commit fraud and took them down through station for interviews.

This is a recording of the police interrogating Hillary Owens the way so called English woman as she’s referred to in the Trojan horse that are OK.

We got this recording only after we spoke to Detective Bannister, and if there’s any doubt that the Trojan horse that had guided the police.

This puts them at to bed when Brian I first listened to it.

We’re kind of riveted.

The cop pulls out a copy of the Trojan Horse seller and starts questioning Hillary wins about it.

This is a letter you may or may not be aware of the Trojan holes.

You said I was going to ask if you were aware, but clearly you are.

I imagine you’ve read lots about it and press and what have you.

And I’m not gonna go through all of this, ‘cause it is quite lengthy.

If you had a chance to read all that.

Yeah, OK.

Is there anything in at the jumps out at you?

Well, only the thing about the English woman, right?

Which is clearly been put in.

About me.

Do you think that’s about you?

Well, could it be?

So I bet that you’re referring to is and I’ll read this out for the tape.

The white English women drop the corporate, sadly, part of the Trojan horse.

After Hillary owns first a bit about the English woman’s role in the plot, how she dropped off her own fake resignation letter, and how, if the whole scheme goes South and the TAS get found out, the English woman will take the heat for the Islamists.

When you read that, what did you think?

I was horrified.

That’s not me.

OK, and it suggests that it is.

Hillary wins has to fend off questions from the cop about whether she’s an Islamist plotter.

Was there any sort of campaign to remove Mrs.

Dar from the school?

Yeah, never.

OK, you had anyone ever spoken to you about?

Changing the the staff and then the school.

It’s nothing to do with us.

We’re TAS.

We’ve got no power whatsoever.

Had anyone ever floated the idea, not necessarily asked for help, but said this is what I’m going to do?

No, never.

This is why it’s so ridiculous.

It goes on to say that Mrs has an ABB yeah.

Fursona BB, the sister to the teaching assistants who’s captured on Ktve delivering envelopes to elderly and was a governor at the school.

She’s also mentioned in the Trojan horse seller as an operative in the plot against Mrs Dar.

The cop keeps reading the letter.

Sister Fursona has also been key to keeping us informed as to what the governing body and the head are discussing, etc.

And as a result we have been able to execute this perfectly.

We will soon be moved into another skill as a governor and overtime we will instigate the same process there.

What process was going on at the school?

I have no idea.

Have no clue.

Were you aware of any?

Underlying currents within the school?

Not at all.

This is completely out of the blue this this resignation letter of mine haha.

Can you think of any reason why someone would?

Put in a resignation letter on your behalf.

Have no clue if I knew that, I would tell him I have no idea where somebody would do something that evil.

Is anyone said gonna do this as a joke?

Luke, not a very funny joke to resign me from.

The only job I’ve got to.

To put me through.

Financial hardship it’s not a joke, no, I appreciate that.

I’m sorry, but it’s this is just too much.

And to think that I would do it myself just to unseat the head, it’s ludicrous.

Did anyone want you out of the school?

The only person I can imagine is the person who has two grievances against her, but I don’t.

I have no proof that it was she who did it.

But you believe that it’s Mrs.

I don’t know.

I honestly can’t say that I don’t know is that what you that’s the only thing I can imagine is the fact that I’ve got two unresolved grievances against Mrs.

Dahl.

And then suddenly I resigned.

Why would I do that?

Why would I go to the bottom of writing two grievances and then resign?

And that’s why we’re here today.

We’re trying to find out what’s happened.

It’s ridiculous.

Sorry OK, you take your time, sorry.

This is too much.

I imagine it’s a lot of pressure and there’s all these robbers going on in the paper saying these awful people.

Islamic plot this jihad.

It’s nonsense.

I was just doing my job.

The arrests came to nothing according to Detective Bannister.

The police found no trace of the resignation letters or the Trojan Horse letter for that matter, on any of the tabs or frozen a BBS electronics.

They found no conclusive evidence at all.

Nothing.

They’ll prove that EA is guilt.

Long after the arrests, the cops would eventually dropped the case, but in the meantime, the police, having changed their take on the Adelaide dispute and arresting the TAS that was the Burning City Council to question its audit report.

It’s Peter hey confirmed to us.

He and his colleagues at the Council started doubting their assessment.

That Mrs Dar was maybe a fraudster.

On top of all of that, Allie Primary School was now formally threatening to sue the council over the way it had handled the resignation case.

We learned about this by holding a light behind a poorly redacted Council document.

In response to the threat, Peter Hay and his Council colleagues started meeting with Mrs Darr and other added leaders.

And after months of back and forth, there ultimately promised to renounce their order report and Adderly prompts.

You drop its legal threat against them.

Peter hey composed his we’re so sorry retraction letter and the Council as part of this whole agreement, restored legal support to elderly defending Ramona task or in the employment case brought by the 40 days.

I don’t know if any cop or Council official pause to consider what’s happening there.

Letting a fake letter influence their decisions, but evidently Mrs Darr was quite convincing when she had the Trojan horse at her disposal in early 2014.

She wrote to her union and the National Association of head teachers complaining that they hadn’t been supportive of her in the resignation dispute and placing them quote on notice of Operation Trojan Horse.

She wrote it is clear to me that I’ve been the target of a prolonged, organized and systematic attack designed to discredit me and make my position as head of oddly untenable.

A union Rep quickly set a meeting with her and offered to help her out.

And then there was the Employment Tribunal where the TAS had brought their unfair dismissal case against utterly score.

What’s the Trojan horse that emerged.

Mr Dowd drafted a witness statement for the tribunal that focused entirely on the letter in which she went through the Trojan Horse plot step by step to explain how she’d been one of his targets.

That as intern tried to enter the Council’s audit report as evidence to support their claim that Mrs.

Dar was the one plotting to oust them.

But the Council’s law is fought that lays petition and they were successful.

The judge in the tribunal case, while he knew an audit report existed, never got to see it, but the Trojan horse after the judge definitely saw that the Council submitted the letter as a primary piece of evidence in their defense of Adderly.

And that defense was that Rezvan Adar had been the victim of an Islamic plot carried out by the four teaching assistants as described in the letter.

The Council argued in front of the judge that the Trojan horse that was true literally true.

It worked.

In a final extravagant act, one with big consequences for everybody involved, lawyers defending Mrs DA in the school use the Trojan Horse letter to sway the judge in their favor.

The judge Rohan Pironi and his fellow panel members ruled that the three Muslim TAS were involved in deception to remove Mrs Door from the school.

That that each intended to make her believe that.

Quit by arranging to have resignation letters submitted with their fault signatures on them, and then pretending to know nothing about it.

In other words, JIRANI adopted the Trojan Horse version of events Adderly well mostly when it came to the quote UN quote English Phase Hillary Owens.

The Judgment Panel ruled that she had been wrongly dismissed from a job she hadn’t been part of, a deception, and ordered the school to pay her damages.

Here’s how that racially split decision came to be.

Counselors wanted or did not present any direct evidence that the TAS had concocted the resignations.

But the Council’s lawyers use their Trojan horse letter to undermine the Muslim TS credibility.

They turned the case from a straightforward unfair dismissal claim into a fight about religion, specifically Salafism the ultra conservative interpretation of Islam.

Just to explain how Salafism became relevant to this case.

Remember the Trojan horse that I purported to be plans for a Salafi plot?

It was explicit about that distinction from reading the case files along with comprehensive notes taken by one of the lawyers.

There’s no transcript, and talking to people who were there.

We know that is what the case turned on, whether the TAS or Salafi Council lawyers press the teaching assistants on this and hearing, were they Sally fees, Hillary wins, offered the tribunal a statement from her reverent TW.

Pilkington vouching for her regular attendance at church.

But it didn’t go so easy for the Muslim Tas.

In one of the most pivotal exchanges, the hearing, one of the TAS, Rainham, was asked to explain the difference between a Salafi and a Sunni Muslim, and she said she didn’t know.

Daniel Zach is a solicitor who represented Hillary Owens was there when it happened.

He told us that in response when we City Council’s lawyers started questioning her about, well hang on where does your husband work and what was the answer to the Salafis school?

Doesn’t help, yeah.

The other two Muslim TAS give similarly evasive answers on the stand.

Zach, I said his sense was the women kind of panicked.

Probably figured if they acknowledged any link to Salafi Islam they were going to lose not only with Salafism a third row.

In this case it’s kind of become a third row generally because some terrorists have come from a side effect background also that question what’s the difference between a Salafi and a Sunni?

It’s a tricky 1 to answer because Salafis arsenis.

They’re just more originalist interpretation for what it’s worth, Zaki said he found everything else.

Satya said throughout the case about what happened about nor resigning consistent and credible, but that one slide.

If we think how damaging was that answer.

Yeah, I think that destroyed the credibility.

Could you feel it in that room?

Could you feel it like, yeah, yeah, you can tell from the judges reaction, it just sort of hung there.

I just wrote in this decision we find the 1st 3 claimants Holy Incredible on this issue.

So that’s how it happened because of the Salafism stumble and a few other reasons, including the fact that the TA sister Fersina baby did not testify, the judge in the panel found that a Muslim Tas had schemed against the headteacher.

Hillary wins, on the other hand, they found that her resignation letter had also been forged, just not by her.

As for who was responsible for that forgery, the judge never explained.

I just feel it’s increasingly likely that it’s the Trojan horse letter, in which case if it is you’ve just this.

This whole situation was so exasperating.

It was hard to finish our sentences.

The Birmingham City Council.

These are the same people who talk about the Trojan Horse letter.

This way is probably a hoax.

It’s probably a fake.

I’m not claiming the letter is true.

There’s never been a plot the way it was presented.

Some of the inaccuracies in it and just the sheer convenience of it leads me to believe that it was a fake, yet their own lawyers argued in front of a judge successfully that the letter was proof of a real plot.

They embraced a fake letter while rejecting their own fact based audit report.

Hamza night started with what we thought was such a basic question.

What evidence did they have that we didn’t and now we felt as if we’d wandered fully through the looking glass into a land where Mrs.

Darr had somehow gotten the Trojan Horse letter to be treated as real and not the doublespeak E.

It’s fake, but could still be pointing at actual issues, real.

Really, really, there’s no other evidence here.

Oh, we can.

We can say that as a fact as a fact.

Other evidence here, nothing new came to light.

After the break, we eat our words.

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com/trojan horse I’m Anna Martin, the host of the Modern Love podcast.

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One day Brian.

Now we’re on the phone.

We’re going through the order report together for the umpteenth time and you notice something that would never clog before.

In the audit, when you read the auditor summary, she mentions nothing.

About the school claiming that there were witnesses who saw Mrs door open the envelopes and resignation letters come out, that is not in the Honor report.

Here’s what Brian was talking about.

Remember the sequence of events Detective Andrew Bannister laid out for us the sister of the TAS Fursona BB, was recorded on ktve walking into a deadly with a stack of envelopes.

She handed them to receptionist who placed them in Rivanna.

Does Mel tray?

And then, as Detective Bannister told us, those envelopes were collected by Rosanna.

Whilst going immediately into a staff meeting and that those envelopes were opened.

They were open in the presence of the senior leadership team of the school.

Detective Banister said that Mrs Darr opened those envelopes in front of the schools leadership team, specifically two deputy head teachers named Mark Walters and Anita Ashraf, Mark Walters and Anil Ashraf told police they had been in the office with Mrs Darr when she opened the envelopes left by force on a baby and had personally seen Mr.

Paul resignation.

Letters from inside them.

This detail was also an important element of at least defense at the Employment Tribunal because of course 2 eyewitnesses.

Without them, the school could only prove the envelopes had been delivered, which again the Muslim TAS didn’t dispute.

Is only by having eye witnesses that the school could back up Mrs.

Doors.

Account that when she opened the sealed envelopes, she’d found resignations.

Marketing list presidents at the envelope opening was foundational to the case, unquestioned by either side.

The judge took it as a given, and so had we until this very moment when Brian realized it was not mentioned in the audit report, which means that either the auditor like left it out egregiously or wasn’t in the document she was reviewing, where the school was laying out its defense.

Ideally had laid out its version of what happened the day the letter came in in a legal filing with the Employment Tribunal.

The schools formal defense had submitted this early on long before the Trojan Horse letter before the police investigated, so Brian dug up that record and the deputies witnessing the envelope opening.

It wasn’t in there either.

There is no mention in the schools defense that there were witnesses inside the room when resignation letters came out of the envelopes.

Well, that was something the school had made sure to mention.

The point asked footage, but no witnesses to the envelope opening.

Why?

Why would that not be part of their official defense that they’re submitting to the tribunal?

Will they leave that out?

I kept flipping through binders of paper work through the earliest records we have from back when the resignation letters were first refuted in late 2012 and early 2013, and I saw nothing about the deputy head teachers having watched Mrs.

Dar opened the envelopes, then hums, and I look back one more time at records from the police investigation into Adderly, which happened much later.

We re read that report that was written by Detective Andrew Bannister, in which he talks about what the cops learned on their visit to utterly and there it was.

The senior leadership team had witnessed the envelopes being opened.

He lists that as like a new fact, yes.

So that was been confusing us because we’re like, why is that new information?

Why is that new information?

But maybe it was new information.

Maybe it was like you know, one of the first times the school was saying this.

We called Detective Bannister the visit to the school was that the first time that the police learned that the deputies had been in the room when Mrs Door opened the envelopes?

I can’t state categorically, but I believe that’s the case because that would explain why you guys would change your view.

Want to say before?

We had not gotten the message.

We also called Hillary Owens, solicitor in the tribunal case, Daniel Tzakis.

When did this become their defense?

The fact that there were.

People in the room, whenever it that’s their first defense.

They filed dates, referred to CCTV.

Daniel Zak has told us, and this is corroborated by records from the Employment Tribunal that the first time Adderly mentioned that the deputies had been in the room with Mrs.

Dar as she opened the envelopes and pulled out.

Resignations was in November 2013, which means the deputies responded are the school no one to our knowledge told outside authorities about this for nearly a year, not when Birmingham City Council cut off legal support to utterly, not when the Council mounted and.

Audit investigation and asked repeatedly for Adderly to provide evidence and testimony, not when the school had to file a formal defense when the tags were taking out early to the tribunal.

Through all that, they never mentioned these crucial eyewitnesses.

Did that strike you guys, and if so, like it did?

Yeah, so why withhold that for so long?

Well it’s yeah.

That’s a good question.

November 2013.

That immediately struck Brian in me as an interesting time for these two eyewitnesses to have emerged, because that’s the same month that the Trojan horse that I emerged.

November 2013 is when the Trojan horse error arrived at Burma City Council.

And that wasn’t the only evidence to suddenly appear.

Bolstering at least case.

A few months later, Adelise lawyers wrote a letter to the parties in the Employment Tribunal saying that there was another document they wanted to introduce in the hearing.

At this point, lawyers for the school had already submitted loads of evidence and records, but they were determined to get in this late submission.

It was, they said, an investigative report that the deputies, smog Walters, and any latter of had put together in the days right after the supposed resignations, and in him the deputies note that the two of them saw Mrs Darr opening the envelopes.

This investigative report, by the way, consists primarily of Mark Walters, and indeed Ashraf.

Fact checking each other by asking each other what each other saw.

It’s the only record we’ve seen the proposed to be contemporaneous evidence from December 2012 of Mark Walters, and indeed Ashraf, witnessing the envelope opening.

Yeah, as at least lawyers explained to the tribunal for some unknown reason the school had forgotten to enter this document alongside the reams of submissions that already filed.

The judge allowed it, and by the time he’s here in the case, these witnesses seem like an early established fact, one that the judge relied on in making his decision.

Can we apologize for something after we piece together this timeline, we met up again with former Council officer Peter Hey, author of the Hey Letter, in which he wrote about how royally the council had botched their audit report.

We told Peter, hey, we were sorry we hadn’t realized before we pressed him on this question for a couple hours that there was essential information missing from the audit report that deputy head teachers Mark Walters and Anila Ashraf had been in the office with Mrs Darr as she opened the Muslim TAS envelopes.

This is this is the one we were mistaken about that everyone was present.

Yeah, do you remember?

Does that ring a bell, yeah?

Peter hey remembered it immediately that it was one of the main things Adderley brought up as they were threatening to take the council to court.

The school was saying your auto report is so messed up because you couldn’t talk to us and so we weren’t able to tell you that there were two witnesses in the room.

Yeah, and they were making a big point of that specifically rather than the the gentleman who went to Australia.

Mark Walters.

Thank you ‘cause that stands out in my head.

Being clear about not having been interviewed or having things to say that’s part of their reason for wanting to meet us was to say, come on a minute.

You haven’t heard the whole story.

The two witnesses to the envelope opening Mark Walters and Anila Ashraf.

We’d heard about them in our reporting.

They both work with Mrs.

Dar at a previous primary school, and when she got the head teacher job at Adderly, they followed her there.

People who knew these deputy head teachers had a lot to say about Mark Walters.

Especially they told us that he and Mrs.

Dar were very close, like attached at the hip, close.

They’re both incredibly talented teachers, but that Mrs DA was a leader and Mark Walters much more of a follower.

We’ve had a number of anecdotes from different people about how devoted and acolyte Mark was to Mrs Da.

People also told us that Mark Walters had done something surprising which obviously had stuck with Peter Hay.

After he’d submitted a witness statement to the tribunal, saying he’d seen Mrs.

Dar open the envelopes, he abruptly left his job at early in the middle of the school year and moved far away to Perth, Australia.

He didn’t end up testifying at the hearing.

As Brian put it rather succinctly, when he first had this epiphany about the deputies.

Or are they in the room?

Figuring this out, the late timing of these witnesses coming forward.

It helped explain so much throughout our investigation, there had been these fleeting moments when we would get a peek into what officials were really saying about Rosanna.

Darn utterly behind the scenes.

Take this with Detective Andrew Bannister, who in the middle of our interview without us even asking said there was suggestions and you may well be party to this.

That Rizwan diary is the author of the Trojan Horse Letter.

Where did you pick that up?

It was what it was.

It was one of the one of the hypothesis that was banded around at the at the time.

The Council who by.

I think everybody, including the media.

Now I think it’s it’s something I’d probably.

Consider.

It was a relief to hear Banister say something so logical, but when we ask Detective Bannister?

OK, So what did y’all do to look into the hypothesis Bannister told us?

Not much of anything, he said.

As far as he remembered, the cops did not search responders, computers, or any computers at Adderly at all.

Instead, we know they went and arrested.

The teaching assistants searched their electronics for the Trojan Horse letter, and used the letter to interrogate the TAS.

For years we’ve been staring at these contortions of logic by officials and couldn’t understand them.

Now they make more sense.

Officials clearly were suspicious of Mrs.

Dar, some of them entertained the thought that she could have written the Trojan Horse letter.

But here’s our best analysis of why everybody dropped it when the eyewitnesses spoke up, vouching for Mrs.

Dar, saying she did receive resignation letters.

Suddenly, the authorities got rattled.

They thought they missed something huge testimony that transformed their whole understanding of the resignation dispute, and that perceived blunder, along with mounting national concern about possible extremism in their City Schools, seem to inspire in Birmingham officials and overall loss of confidence.

About their assessments of the Trojan Horse letter.

Maybe that letter they thought was bogus wasn’t so bogus after all.

Maybe it had some other truths in it that they’d overlooked.

So this seemingly tiny question, we’re marking aneela really in the room.

It’s fundamental.

Because their statements propped up the resignation letters which propped up the Trojan Horse letter, which propped up the national panic these two deputies, their account underpinned the Trojan horse affair.

Maybe this was the thing you had to go after to dismantle the social fact of Operation Trojan Horse.

When we approached Anila Ashraf about this, she came to her front door, looked at as Cooley said no comment and shut the door.

Then she got Birmingham City Council to send our lawyers a threatening letter claiming that homicide returned to her house a number of times to harass her and her family members which is absolutely untrue when we showed up at early primary school in hopes of talking with Rosanna Dar about all this.

The front office staff insisted she was off site.

We said we were happy to wait.

Which we did until school got out, at which point Mrs.

Darr had a staff member come out to the schoolyard to tell us actually she was in the building, but she would not be seeing us.

And then there was the gentleman who went to Australia, now former deputy head of Adderly Primary School, Mark Walters.

I tried to reach him at the new school he worked at in a suburb of Perth, but he was ignoring my calls, ignoring my emails.

And maybe we would have left it at that if we hadn’t met a South African dentist who had a good relationship with Mark Walters.

Before the Trojan Horse affair came between them and he urged us don’t give up on mark that Mark might, with some effort, give us some answers.

And the dentist had his own reasons for wanting to see Mark.

And so in the final installment of the Trojan Horse affair, we all three, a doctor, a dentist, and I set off for one of the most remote cities in the world to chase a remote confession, I’ll just go, knock, there’s no point of hanging around.

You came all the way from the UK to meet this man to this committee.

That’s next in an appointment in Perth.

The Trojan Horse affair is produced by Brian Reed and me, along with Rebecca Lacks.

The show is edited by Sarah Koenig.

Additional editing by Eric Glass and by contributing editor Aisha manager Siddiqui fact checking a research by Mary Connolly and Ben Flynn, original school by Thomas Miller with additional music by Matt McGinley.

And Stephen Jackson sound design mixing in music supervision by Steven Jackson in Philade Michalski, at the audio non visual company.

Judy Snyder is our executive editor.

Neil drumming is managing editor, supervising producers and they Chubu executive assistant is Alberto Delay on some Donick is an assistant managing editor of the New York Times.

Special thanks to my high school journalism teacher Debiste Elevato, along with Crystal of Otto and Jill Stroobant.

Also Jane and Felix Posen, Rebecca Levi and shares.

Many Leonard.

The Trojan Horse fame is made by serial productions and the New York Times.

The Trojan Horse affair is supported by better help online therapy.

Here are some more tips from better help on improving your relationship with yourself.

Be mindful of your relationships with others and keep the ones that are healthy for you and try keeping your environment or home area the way you like IT support your love for yourself by having a sanctuary and don’t forget a convenient way to get affordable accessible therapy is with better help for 10% off your first month, visit betterhelp.

com/trojan horsethatsbetterhelp.

com slash.

Trojan horse