Senior Tory says six men were thrown out of security service amid ‘serious concerns’ and demands investigation

A senior Tory MP today called for an investigation into whether MI5 mistakenly recruited al-Qaida sympathisers.

Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the counter-terrorism subcommittee, said six Muslim recruits had been thrown out of the service because of serious concerns over their pasts.

The MP said he was writing to the home secretary, Alan Johnson, to call for an investigation into the matter.

Two of the six men allegedly attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan while the others had unexplained gaps of up to three months in their CVs.

Mercer told the Telegraph that the September 11 2001 terror attacks on the US should have prompted the British government to expand the security services, but this did not happen until the bombings on London’s transport network on 7 July 2005.

“It took an attack on this country for such measures to be started,” he said.

“But at this point it was an unseemly rush of which our enemies, not unsurprisingly, took advantage.”

Mercer added that he was concerned al-Qaida sympathisers who may have infiltrated the security services had not all yet been rooted out.

He said the two recruits who had allegedly been to training camps were not dismissed until after they had been given several weeks of training at MI5, but the others were identified before they started training.

A Home Office spokesman later said: “MI5 takes vetting very seriously indeed. All candidates are required to undergo the most comprehensive process of security vetting in the UK.

“Applicants go through extensive vetting and it is not unusual for a number to drop out or fail at the earliest stages for a variety of reasons.”