We have a hell of a job on our hands, says director-general as he reveals 20 Iranian-backed plots against dissidents and journalists
MI5 is grappling with the dual threat of hostile states trying to cause “sustained mayhem” on British soil and the resurgence of Islamic State, the nation’s spy chief said today.
Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, warned that renewed efforts by Isis to carry out mass murder plots in the west was the terrorism trend that “concerns me the most”.
He also revealed a dramatic increase in investigations of assassination, kidnap, arson and sabotage plots by Russia and Iran.
McCallum said Russian intelligence agents were operating with “increasing recklessness” and Iran could “repurpose” its criminal network to attack Britons if hostilities escalated with Israel.
He said MI5 had “one hell of a job on its hands”, with the greatest level of threat in decades including:
• The risk that events in the Middle East could trigger terrorist action in the UK
• The disruption of 43 late-stage terrorism plots since March 2017
• A “staggering” threefold increase in the number of under-18s being investigated by MI5. Teenagers now make up one in eight terrorist targets
Giving his annual threat briefing at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre, McCallum said that in the past year alone the number of state-sponsored threats investigated by MI5 had increased by 48 per cent.