MI5 chief says far-right terrorist intent is growing in Britain — The Guardian
Ken McCallum, head of the British Security Service MI5, said that radical anti-immigration and anti-Muslim views in the United Kingdom are increasingly developing into terrorist intent. According to him, extremists are considering attacks on immigration centres and hotels housing asylum seekers.
McCallum said this during the annual threat assessment update at MI5 headquarters in London, The Guardian reports. He called the transition from radical far-right views to violence the most notable trend in the service's work over the past year. According to him, this has also contributed to an increase in the overall terrorist threat level in the United Kingdom.
Youth radicalisation
McCallum noted that young people are particularly susceptible to involvement in far-right terrorism. According to him, at one point this year MI5 was investigating the case of a radicalised 13-year-old in the United Kingdom.
He also recalled that a year earlier, a 16-year-old resident of Inverclyde was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to planning a mass murder by setting fire to a Muslim centre in Greenock.
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Threats from other states
The MI5 chief said that Iran is seeking to expand hostile activity in the United Kingdom and intends to select more complex targets, including military facilities such as RAF Fairford air base in Gloucestershire. According to him, MI5 operations against Iranian activity over the past year led to more than 50 arrests in the country. Much of this activity, McCallum claims, was directed against British Jewish communities and included terrorist plots and arson attacks.
McCallum called Russia, an aggressor state, the main aggressor, citing assassination attempts, bomb threats and cyberattacks against the West. He also said that Moscow had attempted to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum through RT and Sputnik materials and troll accounts on social media, while stressing the difference between possible attempts and their actual outcome.
Separately, the MI5 chief announced the creation of a new centre for assessing threats related to artificial intelligence. Among the risks, he named the possibility of hostile states or terrorists using AI to create new deadly biological weapons.
