CONCERNS about the safety of serving Muslim military personnel and recruits were raised yesterday after it emerged that their personal details were among those of 600,000 people held on a laptop stolen from a Royal Navy officer’s car in Birmingham.

Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials fear that Muslims are particularly exposed to a potential threat following an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a serving British Muslim soldier in Birmingham last year. After that, all Muslim soldiers were said to have been given security advice.

The MoD is understood this weekend to be trying to contact all those deemed at risk following the laptop theft. The personal details of every person who wrote inquiring about a job with the navy, RAF and the Royal Marines in the last 10 years were held on the stolen laptop.

The MoD says the data include the names, home addresses, bank and passport details, national insurance and National Health Service numbers of thousands of staff and potential recruits. A Whitehall official said yesterday the details of many serving servicemen and women were among the data.

The information was not encrypted and would therefore be accessible to anyone with basic technical knowledge. But the possibility that serving Muslim personnel and recruits could be singled out if the data fall into the wrong hands is causing growing concern among defence officials.

“There’s a rumpus going on inside the MoD about the threat to Muslim recruits after this theft,” said a military insider. “They are very concerned about the Birmingham connection and of the alleged Birmingham plot last year.

They are terribly sensitive about this. They are trawling to find out how many Muslim applicants are on the database.”

British soldiers - and especially Muslims - are high on Al-Qaeda’s target list because of Britain’s role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muslims who join the British forces have been condemned as traitors to their religion by Islamic extremists.

The army, the RAF and the navy have been carrying out a recruitment drive in the West Midlands. Officers have been visiting schools in many inner city areas where there is a large Muslim population.

The data loss is considered so serious that Des Browne, the defence secretary, will make a statement on it to MPs tomorrow.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said yesterday: “This is either catastrophically lax procedure or this individual is very irresponsible. There are a very large number of questions that will have to be answered on Monday. This is a question that affects the whole government.”

The laptop was stolen during the night of January 9-10 from the boot of a car belonging to a junior navy officer who worked in naval recruiting and the material is said to have been collated at the Armed Forces Careers Office in Birmingham. The officer has been questioned by West Midlands police who are investigating the theft.

The office is based in the Pallasades shopping centre, above Birmingham’s main railway station. It was closed yesterday and no one was responding to telephone inquiries.

The theft is the latest in a catalogue of data scandals which have caused huge embarrassment for Gordon Brown, the prime minister.

Following the alleged Birmingham plot, six men have been charged with terrorism offences. which they have denied.

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