MI5 looking for Ulster recruits
MI5 is today stepping out of the shadows to begin a recruitment drive in Northern Ireland.
For the first time the secretive security service is openly inviting people in the Province to work for its new local office.
An advertisement seeking applications from IT workers and language specialists appears in the News Letter this morning.
More ads, for other posts, are expected later in the year.
A senior Whitehall source said the translators in the Belfast HQ "will listen live to intercepted telephone calls from anywhere in the UK".
He added: "They will be transcribing the conversations of international terrorist targets and sending the transcripts back to intelligence analysts in Thames House (London MI5)."
Interpreters in Arabic dialects, Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Somali and Persian are among those most highly sought as al Qaeda contacts are monitored.
MI5 is due to open its new office at Palace Barracks, Holywood, before the end of the year. It will be the intelligence agency's second-biggest facility in the UK.
It will also take over responsibility for national security and counter-terrorism from the PSNI and will assume the lead in monitoring the dissident republican threat.
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Weather for Belfast
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
