An undercover agent who risked his life to infiltrate the extremist networks at Abu Hamza’s Finsbury Park mosque claims he has been betrayed by MI5 and Scotland Yard.

Reda Hassaine immersed himself in the radical circles around Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza al-Masri, who were indoctrinating Muslims and recruiting young men to join al-Qaeda and the Taleban. He signed no contract with his spymasters but told The Times that he was promised that the authorities would provide him with the safety and protection of British citizenship.

However, seven years after his cover was blown and he was beaten up by followers of Abu Qatada, Mr Hassaine is still fighting for his passport. His situation has parallels with that of the Iraqi interpreters who had to battle for asylum in Britain.

“Gordon Brown says he wants people in the Muslim community to help the security services, to pass information about terrorists,” said Mr Hassaine, 46. “But look how I have been treated. First I was discarded and now I’ve been frozen out.

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“I see guys walking the streets of London who I know were involved in fraud and criminality at Finsbury Park and they have their British passports. I have been denied the ability to travel freely, to work, to resume a normal life. I feel very bitter about it.”

Mr Hassaine’s former wife and children had their citizenship applications processed within a month, but his letters and phone calls repeatedly meet with blocking replies or no reply at all.

The Algerian, who has lived in London since 1994, believes he is being punished for being a whistleblower. He has been an outspoken critic of the failure of British intelligence and policing to recognise and tackle the terrorist threat from Islamists in London until after the September 11 atrocities.

Lawyers for Mr Hassaine, a journalist, have written to Treasury solicitors appealing for a resolution to his case before he begins a High Court challenge. They wrote: “Mr Hassaine was paid very little money by the Crown for his work but agreed to do so on the promise that British citizenship would be arranged for him and his family and that he would be properly protected. Instead he has been threatened with deportation and his life has been put at great risk.”

Mr Hassaine fled to Britain in 1994 after Islamist radicals in Algeria began targeting journalists in their brutal campaign to turn the country into a fundamentalist state. He received death threats and one of his friends was shot dead.

It was when he saw men he knew to be members of the Algerian GIA terrorist group around Finsbury Park mosque that he volunteered to inform on their activities. Mr Hassaine began working for Britain in 1998, firstly for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and then for MI5. His handler offered him £300 per month plus £80 expenses. For the next two years he produced weekly reports on Abu Hamza’s sermons and information on who was coming to meet the radical cleric.

Abu Hamza is now in jail facing extradition to the US and Abu Qatada is in jail facing deportation to Jordan.

Mr Hassaine said: “I did what I did, not because I wanted money, but because I knew it was the right thing to do. I am not asking for any reward now, all I want is the security and safety that was promised.”

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