Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, warned the GRU is on a 'sustained' mission (Image: PA)
Foreign spies, assassins and terrorists pose the “most complex” threat to Britain in decades, the head of MI5 has warned.
Ken McCallum said Russia and Iran are on a mission to cause “mayhem” with an increase in arson, murder, kidnap and sabotage conspiracies.
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He also revealed a resurgent ISIS and Al-Qaeda are once again plotting atrocities in the UK from abroad.
Mr McCallum warned “organised groups have the numbers and the know-how to carry out, or inspire, horrendous mass casualty attacks”.
Britain’s top intelligence officer warned: “While you’ll recognise the headline themes of terrorism, Russia, Iran and China from previous speeches, the shifts underneath present the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen.
“It will be clear to you that MI5 has one hell of a job on its hands. The first twenty years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats.
“We now face those alongside state-backed sabotage and assassination plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war. We don’t baulk at the challenge.”
In an alarming assessment of the threats facing Britain, Mr McCallum revealed:
MI5 and counter-terrorism police have foiled 43 terror plots since 2017 At least 20 Iranian assassination attempts have been thwarted over the past two years, with Tehran operating at an “unprecedented pace and scale”. The war in the Middle East could lead to Tehran becoming even more belligerent More than one in ten people being investigated by MI5 over terrorism offences are under the age of 18. British nationals are attempting to travel to Afghanistan to gain “terrorist capabilities”.
The state threat facing Britain is growing (Image: PA)
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The intelligence chief warned Vladimir Putin’s spies are on a “sustained mission to generate mayhem on British streets”.
This is because the UK looms “large in the fevered imagination of Putin’s regime” after supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia.
And the threat Moscow poses on Britain’s streets is “getting worse”, he warned.
Mr McCallum said Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, which was responsible for the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018, is behind the "sustained mission", adding that Putin’s “henchmen” are ramping up arson and sabotage operations across Europe “in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve”.
Britain’s top intelligence officer said Russia and Iran are hiring criminals to carry out their “dirty work” and acting with “increasing recklessness”.
At least 24 alleged saboteurs have been arrested so far this year after being recruited by Russian spy chiefs.
A wave of fires at arms factories and military-related industrial sites in the West has alarmed intelligence chiefs. Suspected plots have been detected in London, Germany, Czech Republic and Sweden.
Mr McCallum, speaking at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London on Tuesday, said: "In just the last year, the number of state threat investigations we’re running has shot up by 48%.
“The more eye-catching shift this year has been Russian state actors turning to proxies for their dirty work, including private intelligence operatives and criminals from both the UK and third countries.
“While altering MI5’s detection challenge, Russia’s use of proxies further reduces the professionalism of their operations, and – absent diplomatic immunity – increases our disruptive options.”
Britain should "expect to see continued acts of aggression here at home" from Russia.
Turning to Iran, he accused Tehran of orchestrating “plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale”.
Mr McCallum said: “Since January 2022, with police partners, we have responded to twenty Iran-backed plots presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents.
“Like the Russian services, Iranian state actors make extensive use of criminals as proxies – from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks.
“Last December a man was jailed for reconnaissance he had carried out against the then-headquarters of the Iran International media organisation.
“Detecting criminals prepared to have their strings pulled by states has at least some similarities to spotting would-be terrorists dancing to the tune of online radicalisers. It is a familiar challenge.
“So to those tempted to carry out such tasks, I say this: 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.”
The spy chief said MI5 and counter-terrorism police have disrupted 43 terror attacks since March 2017, including plots to detonate explosives and shoot innocent people.
And the threat from ISIS and Al-Qaeda is growing again after “a few years of being pinned well back” by military action in the Middle East.
Britain’s top intelligence officer pointed to the ISKP – an Islamic State offshoot in Afghanistan - atrocities in Moscow, where 145 people were slaughtered, and the Kerman bombings in Iran, where 103 people were killed, as a “brutal demonstration of its capability”.
He said: “In both Islamist extremist and extreme right-wing terrorism, lone individuals, indoctrinated online, continue to make up most of the threats. In dark corners of the internet, talk is cheap; sorting the real plotters from armchair extremists is an exacting task.
“I’ll finish here with the terrorist trend that concerns me most: the worsening threat from Al-Qaeda and in particular from Islamic State.
“Today’s Islamic State is not the force it was a decade ago. But after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism.
“The ISKP attack in Moscow was a brutal demonstration of its capability. We and many European partners are detecting IS-connected activity in our homelands, which we are moving early to disrupt.
“And Al-Qaeda has sought to capitalise on conflict in the Middle East, calling for violent action.
“To illustrate, over the last month more than a third of our top priority investigations have had some form of connection, of varying strengths, to organised overseas terrorist groups.
“Organised groups have the numbers and the know-how to carry out, or inspire, horrendous mass casualty attacks.”
Security chiefs are also monitoring Britons hoping to travel to join terrorist groups around the World.
He said: “There has been a bit of an up-swing in attempts to travel outbound from the UK towards terrorist connections overseas, not solely to Afghanistan.
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“It is quite hard to count. It tends to be lumpy – you don’t always have a smooth flow. I can recall a number of recent cases and current cases where we are seeking to prevent outbound travel by those in search of gaining terrorist capability overseas.”
Mr McCallum said MI5 was "powerfully alive to the risk that events in the Middle East directly trigger terrorist action in the UK", and while the "ripples from conflict in that region will not necessarily arrive at our shores in a straightforward fashion, they will be filtered through the lens of online media and mixed with existing views and grievances in unpredictable ways".
Although police had responded to "rising public order, hate crime and community safety challenges, we haven't, yet, seen this translate at scale into terrorist violence", he said, adding: "The overarching UK terrorist threat level remains at substantial - an attack is likely - and is kept under constant review."