Scotland Yard has been urged by the former intelligence chief Baroness Neville-Jones to sack one of its anti-terrorism advisers after The Times discovered that he is wanted by Interpol and authorities in his native Tunisia because of his links to an alleged terror organisation.

The Metropolitan Police admitted last night that it had pumped money – estimated to be tens of thousands of pounds – into an annual interfaith forum hosted by the adviser, Mohamed Ali Harrath, for the past four years.

Lady Neville-Jones, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee and is a former governor of the BBC, demanded answers yesterday from Scotland Yard, the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, about the extraordinary state of affairs surrounding Mr Harrath, who advises the Met’s Muslim Contact Unit on how to combat extremism. He also runs a Muslim television channel.

“Unless and until the Interpol red notice is removed it seems quite wrong that Mohamed Ali Harrath should be employed as an adviser,” Lady Neville-Jones, the Shadow Security Minister, said. “The Government must answer some very serious questions about its border control and vet-ting systems. Both the Home Office and Metropolitan Police have access to Interpol’s information. Did the Home Office access this information before allowing Mohamed Ali Harrath to enter, and did the Metropolitan Police check it before allowing him to work for them? If not, why not?

“If they did access Interpol’s data, how could the Home Office let in and the Met employ an individual with a red notice for alleged links to a suspected terrorist organisation? The FCO must be aware that the Tunisian Government, an ally in the fight against terrorism, has asked for the extradition of this man.”

Mr Harrath has admitted setting up the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT) which, according to the Tunisian Government, advocated the establishment of “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence”.

In evidence before Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission in 2003, an MI5 witness accused the FIT of terrorism activities in France.

Mr Harrath denies this, saying that his movement was wrongly blamed by the French courts. He described the FIT as a “nonviolent political party founded in 1986”, and said he has been persecuted and tortured by the Tunisian authorities because of his opposition to what he and other critics deride as a “one-party state”.

Scotland Yard refused to be drawn on The Times’s revelations about Mr Harrath. It emerged, however, that the Met has been providing funding for an annual Muslim gathering, Global Peace and Unity, hosted by Mr Harrath’s Islam Channel.

The event was addressed this year by leading politicians, including Sha-hid Malik, the Justice Minister, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, and Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary. Scotland Yard was unable to provide exact details about the funds, beyond saying that it had been £10,000 on one occasion.

The Islam Channel was rebuked by Ofcom, the media regulator, for showing a biased film about Jerusalem that gave only the Muslim viewpoint. Ofcom found last year that the channel had broken its broadcasting code by twice showing the documentary Jerusalem: A Promise of Heaven, which argued that Muslims had been deprived of ownership of the holy city.

The documentary earned some notoriety after being discovered in a suitcase found in the home of Saajid Badat, a Muslim, of Gloucester, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to plotting to destroy an aircraft with a shoe bomb. At the time police said that he had agreed to blow up a passenger aircraft from Europe to the US and was prepared to kill himself and hundreds of innocent people. When the channel was summoned before Ofcom, it argued that a complaint about the documentary was itself “partial” as it came from a “Jewish organisation”.

Ofcom stated: “The Islam Channel failed to ensure that this major matter of political controversy was treated with due impartiality.” It decided it was not a sufficiently serious breach to warrant a statutory sanction. However, at the same time , Ofcom did fine the channel £30,000 over a separate complaint of breaking election impartiality rules by letting candidates for the Respect party present programmes.

It gave the channel a broadcasting licence after deciding that Mr Harrath was a fit and proper person.

Times Recommends

• Everyone will get vaccine against swine flu
• Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby
• BBC jets out stars to tout for prizes