A MYSTERIOUS email from the ringleader of an alleged al-Qaida cell was the trigger for terror raids that saw a dozen suspects rounded up in the North-West, a report revealed yesterday.

The security services thought the email’s author – a student at Liverpool John Moores University – was sending a coded signal about an imminent attack.

In the message, sent days before the arrests, Abid Naseer said he was looking forward to conducting a “Nikkah” with a girl called Nadia. He said their “affair” was turning into “family life”.

Nikkah usually refers to an Islamic ceremony, often alongside a wedding. But agents watching Naseer’s house said they had never seen any women inside or any wedding plans.

And when the suspects were later quizzed no one could say who Nadia was or appeared to know anything about the Nikkah.

The 12 terror suspects were swooped on in co-ordinated raids across the North-West in April. Five were arrested in Liverpool, with dramatic “combat-style” stings on two suspects outside JMU’s library. Naseer and four others were studying or due to study at either JMU or Liverpool Hope University.

One of the five Liverpool detainees was released after only a few hours. All the others were later released without charge.

The new details were published in a Home Office-commissioned report into the raids by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile of Berriew.

He criticised the police forces involved, saying had they known more about arrest laws and worked more closely with the Crown Prosecution Service, fewer suspects would have been arrested.

He said days into the suspects’ detention the CPS had to tell officers “unequivocally” there was no grounds to hold the men any longer.

He said: “I cannot exclude the possibility that, in relation to one or more of the suspects, no arrest would have taken place.”