Fiona Hamilton
MI5 is “paying very close attention” to Islamists in the UK amid fears that the events in the Middle East could inspire a terrorist atrocity, its director-general said.
Ken McCallum warned that Islamist radicals as well as antisemites and neo-Nazis pose a threat to the Jewish community in the wake of the “monstrous attacks” by Hamas. Spies are understood to have stepped up their monitoring because of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
McCallum said that MI5 is “attuned to the risk” that lone terrorists could be inspired by violence in the Middle East, or that terrorist groups “may choose to strike in a new way” after Israel was caught by surprise by the nature of the assault by Hamas.
The situation could also embolden Iran, he said, with the hostile state already linked to more than a dozen assassination and kidnap plots in Britain.
McCallum, speaking at an unprecedented security summit with the UK’s closest intelligence allies, said: “There clearly is the possibility that profound events in the Middle East will either generate more volume of UK threat and/or change its shape in terms of what is being targeted, in terms of how people are taking inspiration.”
McCallum appeared in public for the first time with counterparts from the Five Eyes Alliance, Britain’s decades-old intelligence partnership with the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Their gathering in California’s Silicon Valley is intended to send a “powerful signal” that the world is facing its greatest threat since the end of the Cold War, McCallum said, citing the aggression of authoritarian states such as Russia and China.
MI5 and its allies unveiled a campaign warning businesses in the West of the “exponential growth” of China’s economic espionage. Behind closed doors the agencies will be discussing the impact of the Hamas attacks.
Speaking to reporters, McCallum warned that the threat from Iran could intensify. In 12 months MI5 had foiled 15 Tehran-linked plots aimed at dissidents and media organisations. The regime could also “move into new directions”, McCallum said, raising the spectre of a wider terror threat.
Mike Burgess of Australia, David Vigneault of Canada, Christopher Wray of the United States, Andrew Hampton of New Zealand and Ken McCallum of the UK meet in California
He said that the UK was working with Israel to “establish the facts as quickly as possible”. Six Britons are dead and up to ten are thought to be held as hostages in Gaza. McCallum acknowledged that his agency might provide leads or intelligence to teams trying to track them but declined to give details.
He emphasised that the UK’s threat level had not changed but that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which makes the decision, was monitoring the situation and that MI5 was “paying very close attention”.
He added: “Terrorists can draw inspiration not just from things they see happening inside the UK but things they see happening in the Middle East or on the continent or elsewhere.”
The Metropolitan police said there would be a “highly visible” police presence for the Euro 2024 qualifier between England and Italy at Wembley after police shot dead a gunman who killed two in Brussels.
McCallum pointed to repeated warnings by MI5 and police about the threat of self-initiated terrorists who are inspired by online propaganda or videos of violence elsewhere.
“And so of course, in the current climate, we and our partners are particularly attuned to the risk that terrorist organisations may choose to strike in a new way, or perhaps that individuals choose to respond often in spontaneous or unpredictable ways,” McCallum said.
“Sadly in the particular case of Jewish or Israeli individuals or entities, they face risk potentially from those of an Islamist extremist mindset and those of an extreme right-wing, antisemitic or neo-Nazi type mindset. We see both those forms of terrorism in the UK.”
Israel was caught by surprise by Hamas’s assault. Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, described it not as an intelligence failure but a “failure of imagination”.
Asked if the attack prompted a re-think of the type of activities that could be carried out against the UK, McCallum said that he told new recruits on their first day that “we work against people who are creative, and who will continually seek to get around our nation’s defences”.
He added: “I spent the bulk of my career countering terrorism. It never loses the power to sicken me. MI5 will continue to work without fear or favour to protect the UK national security wherever we see threats.”
Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, echoed concerns about the impact on domestic terrorism. He said: “The threat picture continues to evolve and here in the US we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or other foreign terrorist organisations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.
“And we are also particularly alert to the potential these events have to inspire violence against Jewish Americans or Muslim Americans, institutions and houses of worship.”
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