LONDON, Jan.21: In a shocking revelation, the Sunday Times has reported that Saudi Arabia helps the UK in monitoring every Muslim who travels from Britain to Makkah on pilgrimage in what ostensibly is being justified as a wider effort to piece together intelligence on suspected Al Qaeda activity.

The Makkah operation is thought to have been launched after the July 7 London bombings. MI5 had discovered that at least two of the suicide bombers had made the trip.

The importance of the intelligence operation was one of the reasons given by spy chiefs of MI5 and MI6 for maintaining ties with Saudi Arabia when the Saudi government was threatening to break off intelligence ties over a bribery investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into BAE, Britain’s prime defence contractor.

The OECD has recently admonished the British government for stopping the SFO investigation into the alleged scandal and has given London two months to explain its position in the light of the existence of an OECD anti-bribery law.

Quoting a senior Whitehall official, the paper said that the operation targeting trips to the holy city by more than 100,000 British Muslims is part of a trawl by MI5 and MI6 for information about movements of suspected terrorists. It follows evidence that British Muslim terrorists have visited the city before carrying out attacks in Britain and abroad.