THE family of one of the suspected Islamic terrorists arrested on Tuesday has claimed that MI5 agents had tried to recruit him as a spy.

Omar Khayam, a gifted young cricketer with ambitions to play for England, was arrested in Crawley, West Susex, as part of series of co-ordinated police raids.

His uncle, Sajad Ahmad, said the security services had urged the 22-year-old student to go to Pakistan next month with his younger brother. Mr Ahmad also said he had had three meetings in the past month with an MI5 agent he named as “Mr Goulding”, including a rendezvous in a supermarket car park.

He claimed MI5 knew his nephew had bought airline tickets for flights to Islamabad on April 6 for three of his relatives — all of whom are now in custody. The security services took the unusual step of denying that Mr Khayam was at any time working for them.

It it is claimed that security agents spoke to Mr Khayam when he returned from Pakistan four years ago. They assured him he was in no trouble and left him to pick up his studies. Since that brief introduction in 2000, Mr Khayam has enjoyed what can best be described as an intriguing relationship with the intelligence services.

At that time he appeared to be one of many teenagers who were impressed by followers of the radical al-Muhajiroun group who had set up their own meeting place in an anonymous semi-detached house in a Crawley backstreet.

Local imams fought off a radical group’s attempts to take over the main mosque in the town but say they were powerless to stop at least four young men from Crawley travelling to Afghanistan to fight for the Taleban. At least one of them, Yasir Khan, 26, was reportedly killed in the fighting. Last night the cleric that many in Crawley blame for recruiting their youth, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, denied he had any part in sending them to fight abroad. The 44-year-old father-of-seven told The Times he had briefly taught Mr Khayam in 2000. He said the engineering student “was a peaceful young man with family problems who left us because of those and not because of any differences in ideology”.

Senior diplomatic sources said that Mr Bakri’s public pronouncements advocating the training and despatch of young British Muslims to fight abroad had been noticeably watered down since the 2000 Terrorism Act had introduced penalties for such activities on British soil.

His website no longer boasts of the “martyrs” killed in fighting in Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan but Mr Bakri admits he has provoked controversy by “refusing to condemn or condone” Muslims who carry out suicide attacks.

Neighbours said yesterday that Mr Khayam spent long periods abroad, mostly in Pakistan. Mr Ahmad insisted that his nephew was not a security threat. He described him as a normal British youth.

Mr Ahmad said MI5 told his nephew there were people they thought were a threat to national security. “The MI5 agent said they do not have enough resources and asked if his nephews would leave (the country) to make it easier for them,” Mr Ahmed said.

“MI5 are satisfied my nephews wouldn’t do anything to hurt their country or threaten national security. They wanted them out of the way so they could concentrate on other people. They can’t cope with the problem as there are too many people.

“I told Omar and he agreed to go. But my younger nephew didn’t want to go, he became depressed and upset, and so we contacted a solicitor who spoke to MI5 for us. But in the end he had to go. The tickets were bought for April 6 to Islamabad for them to carry on their education for a year.

Mr Ahmad said that MI5 suggested his nephews were associating with the“wrong sort of people” and that a year in Pakistan would help to break that contact.

He showed the name and phone number of the MI5 officer with whom he claimed to have dealt, which were inputed into his mobile phone.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Tree stump 'shows image of Virgin Mary'
• BBC drops Strictly judge for younger model
• Trafalgar Square 'reduced to a spectacle'