UK’s MI5 and Scotland Yard: 100’s of Terrorism Cases, 1000’s of Suspects
Law enforcement and security services in Great Britain are currently conducting upwards of 500 terrorism investigations, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s internal intelligence service. Its intelligence services are operating on a round-the-clock schedule as a result of the increase in threats, the head of MI5 said Tuesday.
MI5 (Military Intelligence 5) Director General Andrew Parker addressed an audience in London on Wednesday, during which he spoke about the international counter-terrorism threat the UK is facing and what MI5 and other police and security agencies are doing to thwart those threats.
“The challenge that we face is undoubtedly a stark one. More threat, coming at us more quickly, and sometimes harder to detect. But it is a challenge that we and our partners are rising to and are facing down. We are committed to this for the long haul. Our unrelenting focus will remain on doing everything in our power every day to keep Britain safe,” said the MI5 chief. “The scale at which we are operating is greater than ever before,” said Parker, who heads Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. The British foreign intelligence agency is MI6 (Military Intelligence 6) which is the UK’s answer to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“[British intelligence agencies] are now running well over 500 live operations involving about 3,000 individuals known to be currently involved in extremist activity in some way,” DG Parker noted.
“British security forces are confronted by an increasing number of attack plots and have managed to foil 20 over the past four years,” the MI5 chief announced. “Just in the last seven months, we, [Scotland Yard], and local police forces have thwarted seven terrorist plots by Islamist extremists of the 20.”
Britain has been struck by five terror attacks so far in 2017, four of which occurred in London while one occurred in Manchester. Methods used by terrorists included bombings and deadly violence using vehicles and knives.
“Several of the jihadist attackers in those incidents are part of the more than 20,000 people known to security services. Although they haven’t officially admitted it, British security and public safety officials are only capable of keeping about 4,000 suspects under some type of surveillance,” according to Nicholas Rennaldo, a former police counter-terrorism task force member.
Parker’s reaction to Conservative Base’s source, Rennaldo, and other critics is: “We can’t hope to stop everything,” he said, despite a record 379 terror-related arrests in the 12 month period ending in June 2017.
Also, MI5 and Scotland Yard, a/k/a Metropolitan Police Service, reports that four terrorist-attackers were mortally wounded by British police officers in 2017 during their attacks in London: one attacker was killed outside the Parliament building while three others were killed near London Bridge. Meanwhile, one Islamic extremist died in a suicide bomb attack in Manchester.
Two other men have been charged over separate terror attacks — a bomb which partially detonated on the London Underground last month, and an attack on worshippers outside a mosque in the capital in June, according to a Scotland Yard statement.
