A FORMER pupil of Westcliff High School for Boys claims he was targeted as a teenager by a racist group which galvanised his support for an extreme Islamic organisation.

Maajid Nawaz, 32, who lived in Westcliff, claims the group Combat 18 attacked his friends for associating with him. He said the group’s influence prompted him to join the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, then headed by hate preacher Omar Bakri.

He has now turned his back on the organisation and co-founded the Quillam Foundation, which fights against the radicalisation of young Muslims.

Speaking of Combat 18, he told a national newspaper: “I was around 13 or 14 and they were big, heavy guys in their twenties.

“They would target my white friends for associating with me. On three or four occasions my friends were stabbed quite badly in front of my eyes.

“No one was ever convicted for these stabbings. My white friends, God bless them, were trying to protect me. I felt guilty they were suffering and we began to drift apart. I began associating with other Muslims and black and Asian kids.”

Mr Nawaz said he was left with a sense of injustice and isolation when he and his elder brother were wrongly arrested for armed robbery after a toy gun was taken for a real weapon.

He moved to Newham College in East London but was later expelled for radicalising the campus.

Mr Nawaz, who returned to Westcliff High to take A-levels, admits visiting Pakistan to set up radical cells and becoming a recruiter for the organisation before moving to Egypt in 2002.

He was suspected of trying to start a revolution there and arrested.

Mr Nawaz was sentenced to five years in jail and said during this time he studied Islam and learned the error of his ways.

He quit Hizb ut-Tahrir 14 months after his release from jail in 2006. He started the Government-funded Quillam Foundation last year with Ed Hussein who also once belonged to the extremist group.

Andrew Baker, headteacher at Westcliff High School for Boys, said: “We remember Maajid Nawaz very well indeed. We were not aware of his wider associations when he was at this school.

“We were pleased to welcome him back to school a short time ago when he came to speak to students against extremism in favour of consensus between different people and races and made an appeal to avoid terrorism.”