A former pupil of Haverstock School is believed to be in an East African prison amid claims he could have operated as an international terrorist.

The Home Office has banned Mahdi Hashi from Britain, listing him as threat to national security.

But his family are demanding answers from the government after what they say is a decade of unexplained “harassment” by the secret services. They say the 23-year-old, who came to Camden Town aged six from Somalia, was plagued by spooks years after he refused to work for them as an “informer”.

The Hashi family maintain that Mahdi quit the country after refusing to spy on “practising” Muslims living in Camden. He has not been seen or heard of since the summer – other than a message smuggled out of a prison camp in Djibouti. But the government say it cannot help after Home Secretary Theresa May took the rare step of revoking his citizenship for “Islamicist extremism”.

In a frank interview, the Hashi family dismissed the claim and spoke of the prejudice and profiling faced by Somalis living in Camden each day.

Camden New Journal, 22 November 2012

See “Family claim Mahdi is being held in East African prison, so how did this former Camden schoolboy become a ‘terror’ suspect?”, Camden New Journal, 22 November 2012