ISIS and al-Qaeda pose a “resurgent” terrorist threat, Britain’s MI5 chief warns

London
CNN
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ISIS and al-Qaeda pose a “resurgent” threat to the United Kingdom, the country's domestic intelligence chief warned in a rare public intervention on Tuesday, as he outlined a changing terrorism landscape that is increasingly targeting children and the internet.

More than a third of MI5's recent top priority investigations have involved links to foreign terror groups, the agency's director general Ken McCallum said in a speech in London, with ISIS in particular resuming its “efforts to export terrorism”.

And more than one in eight people the service investigates for involvement in terrorism are minors, McCallum said, a tripling since 2021.

McCallum's speech comes amid a series of Western warnings about the increasing threat of state-sponsored sabotage by nations such as Russia and Iran, and as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East rattle global security.

In total, his agency has prevented 43 late-stage terrorist attacks since March 2017 – with organizers often in the “final days of planning mass killings,” McCallum told reporters. About three-quarters of the agency's work concerns Islamist extremism, and a quarter concerns right-wing extremist groups, he said.

“We recognize the risk of events in the Middle East directly triggering terrorist actions in the UK,” he said. But while there has been an increase in public unrest and hate crimes, this has not yet translated into terrorist activity, he said.

However, ISIS is once again firmly in the agency's crosshairs. Five years after the fall of ISIS's self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the group has transformed into a terrorist network with cells spread across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

“After being detained for several years, they have resumed their efforts to export terrorism,” he said. And al-Qaeda “has sought to capitalize on the conflict in the Middle East and is calling for violent action.”

Russia and Iran are working to cause “chaos.”

McCallum said on Tuesday that Russia's GRU intelligence agency was driving an “ongoing mission to create chaos on British and European streets” and was conducting operations that included “arson, sabotage and more.”

And he revealed that MI5 and British police had responded to 20 Iranian-backed terror attacks in Britain since the start of 2022.

“MI5 has a hell of a job ahead of them,” McCallum said. “The first 20 years of my career here were fraught with terrorist threats. We now face them alongside state-sponsored assassination and sabotage attacks, against the backdrop of a major European land war.”

Speeches by the head of domestic intelligence are unusual and are often used as an opportunity to inform the British public about the nature of the terror threat facing the country.

The UK has joined its allies, including the US, in being vocal about allegations of Russian sabotage since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Despite the expulsion of more than 750 Russian diplomats from Europe – “many of them spies” – McCallum said, “we should expect aggression to continue here at home.”

The GRU has long been accused by the West of orchestrating brazen and high-profile attacks, including cyberattacks, meddling in U.S. presidential elections and the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury, England.

In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the American agency had crippled a network of over 1,000 hacked Internet routers that the GRU was using for cyber espionage operations against the United States and its European allies.

“If you take money from Iran, Russia or any other state to commit illegal acts in the United Kingdom, you will have the entire burden of the national security apparatus on you,” McCallum said on Tuesday. “It’s a decision you’ll regret.”

At the same time, he highlighted a number of new trends that his agency was responding to. Most striking was the increase in the number of investigations against minors for terrorist offenses; Right-wing extremist terrorism in particular captivates young people, “driven by propaganda that shows a clever understanding of online culture.”

He listed three recent convictions of British teenagers to highlight the diversity of threats. “One was planning to attack a British synagogue. Another released material that led to deadly mass shootings in the United States. A third party made plans to stab people at a music festival and spread terrorist propaganda online,” McCallum said.