IRAQIS living in the UK will not face draconian security curbs in the event of war, ministers have decided.

The Home Office has decided against using internment camps or forced mass deportation, despite intelligence service warnings that Iraqi terrorists may slip into the country as refugees. Iraqis are now the largest group seeking asylum in Britain.

The Government is anxious to avoid a repeat of the chaos before the 1991 Gulf War when scores of Iraqis were jailed or forced to leave the country.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will leave it to MI5 and Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch to identify those who are potential security risks and can be detained under existing terror legislation.

One Whitehall source said yesterday: “You can forget the idea of any mass round-ups and internment camps.

“Government has taken on board the disastrous moves made in 1991 and ever since emergency terror legislation has been introduced in the UK, David Blunkett has been very careful about detaining someone without trial. This time there will be an intelligence-led operation.”

Leaders of Britain’s 60,000-strong Iraqi community are seeking assurances that there will be no crackdown on them or on refugees who reach the UK, insisting that most oppose President Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, want to meet ministers and strongly oppose any repeat of 1991 when the security services were accused of glaring mistakes over the names and addresses of suspects they had identified. Kenneth Baker, then Home Secretary, had to revoke deportation orders.

Iraqis who had lived in Britain for years had their visas cancelled and some Iraqi students who had been in the military were held in army camps on Salisbury Plain.

Intelligence chiefs have given warning of a possible new security threat from among the thousands of Iraqi asylum-seekers who arrive in Britain every month. They fear that terrorist “sleepers” could be posing as refugees fleeing Iraq before war breaks out.

Immigration investigators and the security services say that they are already stretched tracking down missing Algerian asylum-seekers after the discovery of a suspected terrorist cell allegedly making ricin in a North London flat and that they do not have the resources to monitor the 3,000 Iraqis a month now entering Britain.

Investigators have uncovered evidence of how smuggling gangs instruct new arrivals on how to use Britain’s asylum laws. They are told to destroy all identity documents and claim to be Iraqi Kurds who fear Saddam Hussein.

The numbers arriving make it impossible to verify their stories. One security source said: “You don't need many to slip in and set up terrorist cells. It took fewer than 20 people in the US to carry out the September 11 attacks and since the summer 12,000 Iraqis have arrived in the UK.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu