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Jihadi who got classroom of pupils to act out the Westminster terror attack has been convicted thanks to the hard work of detectives and security services.

A "high-risk" strategy to arrest a terror suspect before the extent of his crimes were fully known has paid off after the school administrator, who made children re-enact the Westminster terror attack, was convicted.

Umar Haque, 25, of Newham, east London, first came to the attention of law enforcement when he tried to travel to Turkey in April 2016. He was stopped and his passport was revoked by the Home Office after research into terrorism was found on his phone.

But it was not until almost a year later, according to Commander Dean Haydon, that the first evidence came to light of his plan to radicalise children, after Haque had been arrested for driving without insurance.

In May 2017 Haque was arrested on suspicion of terror offences as police established he had been working at a school.

Commander Haydon said: "We intervened early, that was probably a high-risk strategy on our part but we needed to fully understand what was happening in the school."

It turned out Haque who worked at one school, and had previously been employed by another was also teaching at a mosque's education centre. He had been in contact with 250 children aged 11-14.

He was showing them graphic terrorist videos of beheading and other serious violence in a bid to radicalise them towards Islamist extremism.

"He made them role play terrorist attacks, part of that was the role of re-enacting attacks on police officers," Cmdr Haydon added.

The children were told repeatedly to act out the then recent Westminster terror attack in which PC Keith Palmer and four other innocent people were murdered.

He planned to create "an army of children" who would stage a wave of attacks on up to 30 identified targets, mostly in London. It was his aim to teach the youngsters to drive and continue radicalising them until they reached adulthood.

The Met says none of those in charge at the institutions – the Lantern of Knowledge  school, and the madrassa at the Ripple Road Mosque, in Barking -  were aware of what Haque was doing. Nevertheless the radical, employed as an administrator not a teacher, was left alone with groups of children on a regular basis. The Charity Commission is now carrying out its own investigation into the mosque.

Some 110 children had been identified as having been shown propaganda by the jihadi, with 35 of those now on a long-term safeguarding programme.

Cmdr Haydon said: "They were paralysed by fear in the classroom, he told them he had significant connections into Daesh.

"He showed them pretty shocking videos of beheading, involving serious injury, murder, mostly overseas, he threatened them that if they were to talk to their teachers, parents, or allude to anybody outside of that classroom of what was going on that they would meet a similar fate.

"It doesn't appear that any of those children raised the alarm bell of what was going on. There was a wall of silence."

Six of those children gave evidence during his trial.

Umar Ahmed Haque, 25, pleaded guilty to one count of dissemination of terrorist publications and three counts of collection of information useful to terrorists.

A jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of two counts of preparation of terrorism attacks and one of collection of information useful to terrorists. The jury was hung on one count of of dissemination of terrorist publications and he was found not guilty of conspiracy to possess a firearm.

Abuthaher Mamun, 19, of Barking, who helped Haque, was convicted of one preparation of a terrorist act.

Muhammad Abid, 27, Newham, was found guilty of having information about acts of terrorism.

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