Police foil 24 Islam and ‘Nazi’ terrorist plots in just 2 years

POLICE and MI5 have foiled 24 terror plots in the UK since April 2017, Britain’s top police officer said yesterday.

Met chief Dame Cressida Dick revealed how 16 were international, Islamist-inspired conspiracies and eight were linked to extreme right-wingers.

One of the latest suspected Islamist plots involved slaughtering worshippers and visitors at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral.

A 36-year-old woman appeared in court last week charged in connection with the alleged plan to carry out a suicide bomb attack there.

Other thwarted plots include a plan by Britain’s first, all-female terror cell of two radical sisters, their mother and a friend for a knife rampage in Westminster in 2017.

It is understood police and MI5 have thwarted two attacks in the past month – one Islamist and one farright. The threat level to the UK from terrorism is severe – the second highest category.

It means an attack is “highly likely”.

Despite the danger posed by Islamist extremists, the far-right are the fastestgrowing challenge, anti-terror, police say.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the head of Britain’s counter-terror policing, told last month how right-wing terrorism remains a “relatively small

percentage” of the total demand on police.

“But when nearly a third of the plots foiled by police and security services since 2017 relate to right-wing ideology, it lays bare why we are taking this so seriously,” he said.

“As a proportion of our overall threat it’s definitely increasing, whereas the Islamist threat is staying the same, albeit at a very high level.” Teenagers and the mentally ill are particularly vulnerable to being radicalised, with children as young as 14 drawn to right-wing extremism, said Mr Basu.

Hope not Hate chief executive Nick Lowles said a small group of “hardcore Nazis” are increasingly willing to commit violent acts.

Mr Lowles stressed the need to have robust security for candidates in any forthcoming election.

Lone wolves such as farright extremist Thomas Mair pose the biggest danger, security experts say.

Mair, 52, shot and stabbed to death Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, when he ambushed her in the street in Birstall, West Yorks, in June 2016.

The unemployed gardener had links to various rightwing groups including the English Defence League and the National Front.

The thwarted plots are believed to have included would-be lone-wolf attackers targeted by police and MI5 after contacting extremists on the internet.