Right-wing extremism ‘is UK’s biggest new threat’

RIGHT-WING extremism has become the UK’s fastest-growing terror threat, the head of counter terrorism has warned.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu yesterday revealed that seven of the 22 terror plots foiled since March 2017 have been linked to far-Right ideologies.

Mr Basu said teenagers as young as 14 were being drawn into dangerous farRight beliefs through social media.

He spoke out ahead of the sentencing of a 16-year-old Hitler fanatic from Bradford who wanted to make a bomb to kill many people because he thought it would make him look cool.

Yesterday Mr Basu said: ‘It can’t be right that we are pursuing and arresting 16-year-old Nazis in this country.

‘What I want to happen is we intervene much earlier and law enforcement does not have to be involved.’ He revealed that the youngest person to be ‘involved’ in Right-wing terrorism was a boy of 14.

Far-Right groups in the UK ranged from Islamophobic groups to individuals who believed in Satanism, he said.

About 10 per cent of more than 800 live terror investigations were linked to right-wing terrorism, while the Government’s controversial Prevent programme has seen referrals nearly doubling since 2015/16 to 18 per cent.

‘It’s small (numbers) but it’s my fastestgrowing problem,’ Mr Basu said.

‘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.’

‘We need to intervene much earlier’