31 late-stage terror attack plots foiled in UK in last four years

Ken McCallum has said that 31 late-stage attack plots were disrupted over the past four years by intelligence officers, highlighting that the threat of terrorism in the UK remains ‘a real and enduring thing’.

The MI5 director general told BBC’s Today programme that the 31 plots included mainly Islamist attack plots but also ‘a growing number of attack plots from right wing terrorists’. He also suggested that the coronavirus pandemic had not diminished the threat, as many believe.

He said: "Even during the pandemic period, which we have all been enduring for the past two years, we have had to disrupt six late-stage attack plots. So, the terrorist threat to the UK, I am sorry to say, is a real and enduring thing.”

He also said that there ‘is no doubt’ that events in Afghanistan will have ‘heartened and emboldened’ some extremists and ‘so being vigilant to precisely those kinds of risks is what my organisation is focused on along with a range of other threats’.