A FORMER Islamist extremist who later became a leading deradicalisation practitioner in the UK has died suddenly after suffering a brain aneurysm, aged 48.
Hadiya Masieh was taken to hospital with a headache but died two days later, friends said, the Daily Mail reported.
Masieh was born into a Hindu family in West Yorkshire and later joined the extremist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir while studying at Brunel University. She left the group after the 7/7 London bombings.
Masieh worked for decades as a Prevent practitioner and was involved in deradicalising women who were planning to commit terrorist acts or travel to Syria to join ISIS. She also worked with women who returned from Syria and were ordered to undergo deradicalisation through the Prevent programme.
Her most high-profile cases included five friends of Shamima Begum, the east London schoolgirl who travelled to Syria in 2015 and joined ISIS. The five girls, who were classmates of Begum at Bethnal Green Academy, were stopped by police before leaving the UK.
Friends said all five were successfully turned away from extremism and are now leading normal lives. One friend told the Daily Mail: “Had Hadiya not helped them, these girls would have found a way to Syria, and may have been dead by now or in a detention camp like Shamima.”
Masieh also worked with Samia Hussein, a British-Somali woman who travelled to Syria in 2015 and returned to the UK in 2020.
