The second most senior intelligence officer in MI5, with seven years’ experience of countering international terrorism, was yesterday appointed as the next head of the Security Service.

Jonathan Evans, who has been deputy to Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the current director-general of MI5, since 2005, was chosen from a shortlist of three.

Dame Eliza informed Charles Clarke, then Home Secretary, in the spring of 2005 that she intended to step down in April 2007, by which time she will have completed ten years as both director-general and deputy director-general of the service. She succeeded to the top post, the second woman to do so after Dame Stella Rimington, in October 2002.

Her agreement with Mr Clarke was made three months before the July 7 suicide bombings in London.

Mr Evans, 49, was in charge of the first counter-terrorist investigation in Britain to target al-Qaeda. He was assistant director of international counter-terrorism in 2000 when MI5 and West Midlands Police uncovered a plot by a Bangla-deshi-born man, later found to be connected with al-Qaeda, to cause an explosion. Moinul Abedin, from Birmingham, was sentenced in February 2002 to 20 years in prison.

MI5 regards the Birmingham case as the first evidence of al-Qaeda activity in Britain.

Mr Evans’s experience of dealing with al-Qaeda in this country was one of the principal reasons he was chosen to succeed Dame Eliza.

Like Dame Eliza, he is a career MI5 officer. He joined the service in 1980 during the Cold War, and over the next two decades gained experience in all of the agency’s core areas, including counter-espionage, counter-terrorism in Northern Ireland and protective security. He advised the Government, industry and national utilities on how to guard against terrorist attacks and how to safeguard classified information.

During the 1990s he was seconded to the Home Office, where he helped to develop policy on protecting VIPs. On his return to MI5 he worked ashead of the service’s secretariat, reporting to the director-general.

In 1999 he was appointed assistant director of international counter-terrorism, and two years later was promoted to director, in charge of operations against al-Qaeda and affiliated home-grown and foreign terrorist organisations, ten days before the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11. He joined MI5’s management board the same year. He became deputy director-general in 2005.

Mr Evans will take over from Dame Eliza on April 8. He was appointed by John Reid, the Home Secretary, with the agreement of Tony Blair.

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