Russia is trying to create “mayhem” on the UK’s streets, the head of the MI5 has warned.
In a wide-ranging speech, the organisation’s director general Ken McCallum said Britain faces an increased threat from “Putin’s henchmen” and “plot after plot” from Iran.
He also revealed a growing number of children are being investigated for terrorism in the UK.
It comes as Islamic terrorism is also re-emerging, with Mr McCallum saying “the trend that concerns me most [is] the worsening threat from Al Qaeda and in particular from Islamic State“.
“After a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism,” he added.
Over the last month, more than a third of MI5‘s top priority investigations have had links to organised overseas terrorist groups.
Mr McCallum revealed that, overall, MI5 and the police have disrupted 43 “late-stage” terrorist plots since March 2017.
He said some plotters planned mass murder through the use of firearms and explosives.
Image: Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, spoke of the threats facing the UK. Pic: PA
The split of MI5’s counter-terrorism work is roughly 75% Islamist and 25% extreme right-wing, although Mr McCallum described a “dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies” as people access a range of online hatred, conspiracy theories and disinformation.
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In his first speech of its kind in two years, Mr McCallum said his team had “a hell of a job on its hands” and painted a picture of a multifaceted threat facing the UK, with resurgent terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda and IS, in addition to state terrorism from countries such as Iran and Russia.
Mr McCallum said state threat work has risen 48% in a year, revealing that since January 2022, MI5 and the police have responded to 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots.
He said the threat from Iran has increased “at an unprecedented scale”, warning that it – along with Russia – were “using proxies” such as organised criminals to “do their dirty work”.
While this has dented Russian intelligence services, Mr McCallum said they are on a “sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets” with “arson, sabotage and more”.
He had a message to criminals considering taking on work for hostile states, saying: “If you take money from Iran, Russia or any other state to carry out illegal acts in the UK, you will bring the full weight of the national security apparatus down on you. It’s a choice you’ll regret.”
UK faces ‘most complex threat environment we’ve ever seen’
Today’s speech from MI5’s boss doesn’t just lay out the range of threats to the UK, it makes clear how dramatically the job of protecting Britain has changed in recent years.
Ken McCallum talks of an early career “crammed full of terrorist threats” but says, while that hasn’t gone away, they now sit alongside “state-backed assassination and sabotage plots,” and on top of this there is a major European land war that is pulling on resources.
It all adds up to “the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen” and without saying it, one could take from this speech that the director general wants all the resources he can get from this new government’s spending review.
That said, the current terror level threat remains at “substantial” – two points below its highest level. Events in the Middle East have spilled over into hate crimes, but not yet a major act of terrorism – no significant plots are detected on this front.
But another element, not to be underestimated, is the far-right, which filled the gaps in MI5’s work when Islamic terrorism was receding. It remains a big factor, 25% of the threat, particularly when it comes to young people being radicalised.
I asked Mr McCallum about this in an off-camera briefing. Whereas Islamic terrorism takes its inspiration from extremist preachers or propaganda from terrorist groups such as Islamic State, where are these far-right extremists drawing their inspiration from?
The MI5 boss answered: “We don’t tend to see prominent radicalisers [among this group]”. He described a “pick-n-mix ideology” and a “crowd-sourced model” where people pull on hatred and misinformation from a multitude of mostly online sources.
That one in eight of the people his organisation investigates are under 18 years was, he said, “not something I expected to see”.
What’s clear is that it is hard to overstate how significant the online world is in enabling and inspiring today’s terrorists, and it seems to be getting to them at a younger age.
Mr McCallum says that in all forms of extremism “lone individuals indoctrinated online continue to make up most of the threats”.
But he added: “Sorting the real plotters from the armchair extremists is an exacting task.”
Mr McCallum also offered counter-sabotage support to businesses through MI5’s protective security arm, the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA).
But the statistic that 13% of people under investigation were children was one of the most unexpected developments – it is a three-fold increase in three years.
Mr McCallum said MI5 is seeing “far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism”.
He added: “Extreme right-wing terrorism in particular skews heavily towards young people, driven by propaganda that shows a canny understanding of online culture.”
Speaking later in an off-camera briefing, Mr McCallum said the fact that one in eight of the people his organisation investigates are under-18 was “not something I expected to see”.
As yet, the conflict in the Middle East has had little impact on UK terrorism.
Mr McCallum referenced last October’s knife attack in Hartlepool but said: “We are powerfully alive to the risk that events in the Middle East trigger terrorist action in the UK… [but] thus far, while our police colleagues have responded to rising public order, hate crime and community safety challenges, we haven’t – yet – seen this translate at scale into terrorist violence.”
Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.
Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.
“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”
Image: Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.
He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.
“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.
“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”
Image: Pic: Met Police
Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.
He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.
Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.
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Moment police arrest rapist student
Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.
“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.
“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.
“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”
Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”
Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”
The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.
An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.
An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.
Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.
A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.
Image: Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames
Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.
He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.
He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”
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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”
On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.
When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.
Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.
Major developers will only deal with one regulator under planning reforms which ministers say will “rewire the system” to get Britain building – all while protecting the environment.
A review by former Labour adviser Dan Corry into Britain’s sluggish system of green regulation has concluded that existing environmental regulators should remain in place, while rejecting a “bonfire of regulations”.
But Mr Corry suggested there might be circumstances in which the government look at changing the wildlife and habit rules inherited from the EU, which protect individual species.
The government has now explicitly ruled out any such change in this parliament.
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Campaigners have questioned whether the changes go far enough and will make a major difference to the rate and scale of building in the UK.
Speaking to Sky News, Environment Secretary Steve Reed insisted that accepting nine of the recommendations from the Corry review would amount to wholesale reform.
The minister said: “We can get a win-win for economic growth and for nature. And that is why we are moving ahead with proposals such as appointing a lead regulator for major developments so that the developers don’t have to navigate the architecture of multiple regulators.
“They just work for a single regulator who manages all the others on their behalf. Simplifying the online planning portal.
“These are huge changes that will save developers billions of pounds and speed up decisions doing damage to the environment.”
Mr Reed insisted that there would be “no more bat tunnels” built, even though the Corry review suggests that more work needs to be done to look again at the relevant guidance.
It says: “Rapidly reviewing the existing catalogue of compliance guidance, including on protecting bats, will identify opportunities to remove duplication, ambiguity or inconsistency.
“Natural England has already agreed to review and update their advice to Local Planning Authorities on bats to ensure there is clear, proportionate and accessible advice available.”
The review will mean:
• Appointing one lead regulator for every major infrastructure project, like Heathrow expansion
• A review on how nature rules are implemented – but not the rules themselves
• Insisting regulators focus more on government priorities, particularly growth
Economist and former charity leader Mr Corry, who led the review, said it shows that “simply scrapping regulations isn’t the answer”.
“Instead we need modern, streamlined regulation that is easier for everyone to use. While short-term trade-offs may be needed, these reforms will ultimately deliver a win-win for both nature and economic growth in the longer run.”
However, Sam Richards from Britain Remade, a thinktank trying to get Britain growing, said that while the steps are welcome, the number of regulators that report to the environment department would remain the same before and after the review. He questioned whether this would have the impact ministers claimed.