TERROR THREAT IN BRITAIN ‘WORST’ MI5 BOSS HAS SEEN.
Can’t prevent all attacks, official laments
LONDON • Britain’s domestic intelligence chief warned during a rare public speech Tuesday that the terrorist threat the country faces has accelerated at an alarming pace and is worse now than at any time in his 34-year career.
MI5 director Gen. Andrew Parker said his agency, also known as the Security Service, is constantly expanding and upgrading its capability, but cannot realistically prevent all attacks targeting civilians.
“In 2017, with all that has happened and much that has not, it is clear that we are contending with an intense U.K. terrorist threat from Islamist extremists,” Parker told journalists in London. “That threat is multi-dimensional, evolving rapidly, and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before.”
He noted a “dramatic upshift” in the threat this year, with successful attacks in London and Manchester that killed 36 people combined.
“Twenty attacks in the U.K. have been foiled over the past four years,” Parker said. “Many more will have been prevented by the early interventions we and the police make. There have been a record number of terrorismrelated arrests: 379 in the year to June.”
He said continental Europe has faced a similar surge, particularly in France, Belgium, Germany and Spain.
“The scale at which we are operating is greater than ever before,” he said.
Parker said MI5 has more than 500 live investigations involving roughly 3,000 people known to be involved in extremist activities.
In addition, he said, more than 20,000 individuals have been scrutinized in the past for possible terror ties and there are undoubtedly “violent extremists” who have thus far not been detected by the Security Service.
The risk is further heightened by the possible return to Britain of citizens who joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria and Iraq, Parker said.
He said MI5 is wellequipped to cope with the deepening threat, with its ranks set to grow from 4,000 to 5,000 over the next few years.
Parker cautioned, however, that it is impossible to stop every attack.
“Attacks will occur sometimes because this is a free society, a liberal democracy, and we do not monitor everybody all the time,” he said. “Nor would we want to live in a country that was like that.”