The UK faces a growing risk of terrorist attack by ISIS or Al-Qaeda, an increase in the radicalization of children and growing state threats from Russia and Iran.
MI5 director general Ken McCallum has said Tuesday, warning that his spies had a “terrible hell.” Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, said a third of the most threatening plots investigated by its spies involved links to ISIS and al-Qaeda or other foreign-based organisations. He added that at the same time, the country had seen a tripling of the number of children being investigated for terrorist plots, with minors now making up a third of its spy agency’s cases. the Middle East and extremist content online, and warned of the risk of online links leading to “deadly actions in the real world”, said other risks included the threat of Russian spies, who he said were in a “mission in progress”. wreak havoc on British and European streets” with “arson, sabotage and more” and Iran, which he said was behind 20 “potentially”. deadly plots aimed at that country in the past two years. McCallum said both countries tried to recruit criminals to do the “dirty work” for them, but warned that anyone tempted would feel the “full weight of the national security apparatus” and that it would be “a” election you will regret.”
McCallum’s stark assessment of the wider threat to Britain – which also faces Chinese attempts to steal intellectual and trade secrets – came during a speech in London and reinforced fears that the conflict in Gaza and now Lebanon will give a new impetus to the Islamists. extremists here and elsewhere. He said MI5 was “very aware” of the risk but had yet to see it “translate into large-scale terrorist violence”. But he warned that the terror threat was nevertheless intense with 43 British plots foiled by MI5 and counter-terrorist police since March 2017, including some plans for mass killings with explosives or firearms. He said that the growing threat from ISIS and al-Qaeda was the challenge that worried him the most. “We and our European partners detect ISIS-related activities in our countries and act quickly to disrupt them,” he said. “Al-Qaeda has sought to take advantage of the conflict in the Middle East by calling for violent action. To illustrate this, in the past month, more than a third of our priority investigations had some form of connection, more or less strong, with terrorist groups organized abroad.
McCallum said recent convictions included a Coventry man jailed for life last year for designing a 3D-printed weaponized drone for ISIS in West Africa and two Birmingham brothers jailed for trying to join ISIS in Afghanistan . He added: “These cases are not isolated cases. Others will be judged. Organized armed groups have the manpower and know-how to carry out or inspire terrible attacks with mass casualties.”
Regarding the impact of the conflict in Gaza and now in Lebanon, Mr. McCallum said that “the consequences of the conflict in this region will not necessarily reach our shores directly; they will be filtered through the prism of online media and mixed with existing opinions and grievances in unpredictable ways.”
He added that past experiences suggest that distorted images and visions of what is happening in the Middle East could have a long-term radicalizing effect, especially in young minds. In conclusion, Mr. McCallum said: “MI5 has a hell of a job to do. The first twenty years of my career were filled with terrorist threats. “We now face these threats alongside state-sponsored assassination and sabotage in the background of a great land war in Europe. »
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