A spy, whose undercover operations helped thwart several al-Qaeda terror attacks, has accused a prominent Scottish school of discriminating against his daughter.
Aimen Dean, a Saudi Arabia-born British citizen, complained to the Registrar of Independent Schools, saying his five-year-old daughter was singled out at St George’s School in Edinburgh because the parents of other children feared he posed a security risk.
Dean and his wife Saadia said the school insisted on different drop-off and pick-up times for their daughter and they were often kept waiting outside the school gates before being buzzed in.
Appearing on a Channel 4 documentary earlier, he revealed he was a former member of al-Qaida for eight years during which he provided Britain with intelligence inputs.
While being in the organisation where he was told to make bombs, he passed vital information to Britain, helping Western forces find out terror hideouts in Afghanistan.
His undercover operations also led to the death of al-Qaida’s top functionary in Saudi Arabia, Yusaf al-Ayeri, and the detection of a plot to detonate a chemical bomb in the New York subway in 2003.
Dean said he told the school of his past and MI5 clarified that he posed no risk to the school’s security.
According to Dean and his wife, they took to their daughter’s school hours in their stride.
The couple claimed that when they tried earlier this year to get their autistic son admitted to the nursery school and offered to pay for extra support for him in class, the staff said the family should go back to the Middle East for “the wellbeing of both your kids”.
Dean complained of a “toxic environment” at the school where the staff shouted at his daughter.
He told the Guardian that his family was leaving the UK to find new schools in the Middle East for their children.
However, St George’s School disputed Dean’s claim.
Its spokesman said: “We are cooperating with the inquiry and have every confidence that once the registrar has considered the matter, St George’s will be found to have acted fully in accordance with all relevant safeguarding and regulatory procedures.”
