Official suspended over lost al-Qaeda papers

Published on Wednesday 11 June 2008 22:11

THE official at the centre of a police investigation into the loss of secret government documents about al-Qaeda has been suspended from his job, the Cabinet Office said last night.

It is understood the two documents – both marked "Secret" – relate to al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the security situation in Iraq and were lost on Tuesday. The documents were handed to the BBC, which reported details of the security breach.

The highly sensitive documents were assessments made by the government's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Data provided by the committee can be used to help form future policy and would have been extremely useful to any terrorist group.

Security experts yesterday called for whoever had lost the documents to be prosecuted.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said: "There has been a security breach. The Metropolitan Police are carrying out an investigation." He declined to discuss the contents of the documents.

The BBC said the documents were left on a train from London Waterloo to Surrey by a "very senior intelligence official" working in the Cabinet Office. Each page was numbered and marked "For UK, US, Canadian and Australian eyes only".

The document set out the latest government assessment on al-Qaeda, along with a "top secret and in some cases damning" assessment of Iraq's security forces.

It is understood a full-scale police search was launched when it was realised that they were missing, as officials were concerned at the possibility of such sensitive papers finding their way into the wrong hands.

It is the latest in a series of embarrassing losses of government information, including the disappearance of details of millions of child benefit recipients on a disc sent through the post.

Bob Ayers, a security expert, said last night: "For a senior intelligence officer to leave this kind of material on a train constitutes criminal damage and he should be prosecuted."