Top cop says terror threat set to grow
AUSTRALIA: Victoria’s police chief has a grim warning for those who are already worried about terror activity – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton yesterday said foreign fighters returning home from the Middle East pose the greatest threat to Australia.
‘‘If you think we’ve been busy in counterterrorism in recent years I can tell you, that’s going to ramp up, and we’ll be even more busy in the years ahead,’’ Ashton said at the start of a two-day international counterterrorism forum in Melbourne.
The state’s top cop says an ‘‘exodus’’ of foreign fighters will create a completely different terrorism paradigm for local police.
Conflict in the Middle East has created challenges with 200 Australians now part of the ‘‘foreign fighter phenomenon’’, Ashton told the forum.
When they decide to come home there’ll be an ‘‘escalated threat domestically’’.
‘‘That places us in even more dangerous footing than we have been in the past,’’ he said.
Police must be prepared for lone wolf attacks as well as much larger co-ordinated threats, the chief commissioner told delegates, including law-enforcement experts from the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Belgium and the FBI in the United States.
Ashton said Victoria Police isn’t just facing threats from religious extremists with risks associated with other groups that are cropping up just as significant, he said.
Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the closed forum would help Australian police better ‘‘prevent, disrupt and respond’’ to terrorism. – AAP