Terror plots coming too fast for MI5

BRITAIN is experiencing a terrorist offensive as unrelenting as it is unprecedented, drawing from a growing pool of Islamist extremists, and with some murderous plots taking just a few days from inception to the point of attack, the head of MI5 has warned.

Andrew Parker, the director general of the state security service, said he had never faced such a high tempo of attempted and successful bombings, shootings and stabbings in his 34 years with MI5.

With jihadis returning from fighting in Islamic State ranks in Syria and Iraq, and the internet providing the means, the pace of violence shows no sign of falling.

Mr Parker said MI5 and police had stopped seven attacks by Islamists in the past seven months.

In the past four years, 20 major acts had been detected and in the first six months of this year 379 suspects had been arrested.

There are, at present, 500 live operations under way targeting 3000 people, with 20,000 more who have been on the counter-terrorism radar and others who are not even known to the law agencies.

Mr Parker said the internet had provided terrorists with access and immediacy.

“They can go online to get explosives and learn how to build a bomb,” he said.

As a result they could “accelerate from inception to planning to action in just a handful of days, exploiting safe space online, which can make it harder to detect and gives us a smaller window to intervene”.

“The threat is multidimensional, evolving rapidly and operating at a scale and pace we have not seen before,” he said.

“It’s the highest tempo I have seen in my 34-year career. Today there is more terrorist activity, coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect.”

Adding to the threat, hundreds of British Muslims who joined IS in the Middle East are expected to head home. More than 800 had made the journey out, said Mr Parker, and about 100 of them were believed to have been killed.

A relatively small number had returned, but as IS faced defeat it was advising would-be fighters to carry out their jihad in other countries, he said.