Biometric data of over 100 UK terrorism suspects lost - watchdog

LONDON (Reuters) - Mistakes by British police and security services have meant the fingerprint and DNA records of more than 100 terrorism suspects have been lost, Britain's biometrics watchdog said on Friday. Biometrics Commissioner Alastair MacGregor said that between October 2013 and March 2016, the records of some 810 people had been deleted before national security checks had been carried out to see whether they should have been kept. Of these, MacGregor said that in at least 108 cases, the biometric data would have been retained because of security concerns. Under rules brought in after 2013, DNA samples and fingerprints of people who are arrested but not convicted of a crime must be removed from a national database, unless they were suspected of a serious offence such as terrorism. "It is obviously very important that steps quickly be taken to establish whether – and, if so, how – replacement material should be obtained from those individuals and/or other action should be taken to minimise any risk which they pose to national security," MacGregor said in his report. MacGregor said there were numerous reasons for the errors, such as delays in transferring the samples, processing cases and the provision of intelligence from the security services. The latest figures are a revision from the number included in his annual report two months ago when it was estimated that 450 profiles had been wrongly removed. (Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)