MI5 agents are investigating children as young as 13 over extreme right-wing terror says spy chief
MI5 agents are investigating children as young as 13 over ‘extreme right-wing terror’ says spy chief
- Director general Ken McCallum delivered his annual speech on Wednesday
- He highlighted the threat of extreme right-wing terror, which he said was ‘sadly here to stay’ and had ‘grown and morphed quite substantially’ in the last decade
- McCallum said there was a ‘high prevalence of teenagers’ involved and revealed that the youngest person investigated by MI5 was just 13 years old
- He also rejected claims that racism against English footballers came from abroad, while warning that hostile states did pose a threat to UK businesses
MI5 agents are investigating children as young as 13 over extreme right-wing terrorism, the agency’s boss warned on Wednesday.
Director general Ken McCallum said the threat is ‘sadly here to stay’ and has ‘grown and morphed quite substantially over the last five to 10 years’ with a ‘high prevalence of teenagers.’
He added that tackling the problem needs ‘new expertise, new sources, new methods’.
MI5 took over lead responsibility from the police for countering extreme right-wing threats just over a year ago.
Of the 29 late-stage attack plots disrupted over the last four years, 10 have been classed as extreme right-wing, PA reported.
In a speech from the security agency’s Thames House headquarters in London on Wednesday, Mr McCallum said MI5 was ‘progressively finding more indicators of potential threat.
‘Extreme right-wing terrorism is sadly here to stay, as a substantial additional risk for MI5 to manage.’
He later told reporters that there are cases of ‘teenagers presenting potential terrorist risk in their community,’ adding: ‘The cast that I’m currently aware of, of the youngest person who has featured within our investigations, was a young individual who was 13 years old.’
MI5 agents are investigating children as young as 13 over extreme right-wing terrorism, the agency’s boss warned on Wednesday. Director general Ken McCallum (pictured) said the threat is ‘sadly here to stay’ and has ‘grown and morphed quite substantially over the last five to 10 years’ with a ‘high prevalence of teenagers’
Mr McCallum added that he was clearly not saying that ‘all 13-year-olds present a risk.’
In his annual address, the second since he took over the top role in April last year, Mr McCallum said extreme right-wing terrorism makes up a ‘substantial minority slice of the risk we’re managing’ – about one in five of MI5’s counter-terrorist investigations in Britain.
After highlighting the case of neo-Nazi former Army driver Dean Morrice, who was jailed for 18 years last month after stockpiling chemicals to make explosives, Mr McCallum said the right-wing threat has some ‘challenging characteristics,’ including a ‘high prevalence of teenagers’, an ‘obsessive interest in weaponry’ and ‘always the online environment, with thousands in extremist echo chambers exchanging hate-filled rhetoric or claiming violent aspirations to impress each other.’
Asked how fast he thinks the threat is growing, he said it was ‘genuinely quite difficult to know right now’ whether it was ‘still spiralling in absolute terms’ or was more on a ‘plateau’.
‘We must all keep an open mind and respond to the facts as we find them,’ he added.
After highlighting the case of neo-Nazi former Army driver Dean Morrice (left), who was jailed for 18 years last month after stockpiling chemicals to make explosives, Mr McCallum said the right-wing threat has some ‘challenging characteristics,’ including a ‘high prevalence of teenagers’, an ‘obsessive interest in weaponry’ and ‘always the online environment, with thousands in extremist echo chambers exchanging hate-filled rhetoric or claiming violent aspirations to impress each other’. Pictured right: A 3D printer found in Morrice’s home
He told how the presence of teenagers is a ‘rising trend in MI5’s counter terrorist case work’ and is becoming more so in extreme right-wing investigations.
Although suggesting some teenagers can be ‘swept up with this toxic ideology for a period’ due to its huge presence online, he warned: ‘It is already the case that in quite a range of our investigations we do sadly see teenagers, minors, under the age of 18, some under the age of 16, presenting sharp risk.’
While some youngsters pose a terror threat, others are a risk to themselves and ‘clearly in all such cases there is an important child protection angle that has to be factored in also,’ Mr McCallum added.
Asked why teenagers might be drawn to this ideology, he suggested that in some cases it may be a ‘piece of rebellion as teenagers find their way in the world,’ describing the threat as an almost ‘cult-like phenomenon’.
Although there are ‘rallying’ and ‘iconic’ figures, this was not a coordinated threat with a ‘coherent driving group,’ he said.
Figures from June 2020 and expert estimates suggest that while a terror suspect watchlist has doubled in size from the last year, far-right extremists are a tiny part of the problem.
Britain’s top anti-terror officer Neil Basu has repeatedly said that right-wing extremism poses the fastest growing terror threat to the UK.
But while MI5’s watchlist doubled to 43,000 between 2019 and 2020, experts say nine-tenths of those on the list are Islamist extremists.
Separate statistics from the Home Office on terrorists in custody, also showed that of 238 people held for terrorism in Great Britain, 183 were Islamist extremists while just 44 were far-right. It is an increase of just 11 people from the same period last year.
They include a 17-year-old schoolboy jailed in January 2020 after a manifesto listing ‘Areas to Attack’ was found in his room.
The numbers came a day after senior military and intelligence expert Colonel Richard Kemp told the MailOnline he believed the focus on far-right terror was a ‘false emphasis’.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr McCallum also rejected claims that hostile states are responsible for racist abuse targeted at England football players following their Euros defeat.
‘Much, I expect, of that kind of racist abuse that is out there is not itself a particular form of targeted state-led disinformation that would directly be of professional concern for my organisation.
‘Clearly it’s a wildly unpleasant phenomenon and none of us wish it had ever taken place.
‘It touches on values that we hold dear, it touches on how my colleagues in this organisation, including my ethnic minority members of MI5 feel about their life and their position. How race is dealt within our society, this is an important thing for us all.
‘But we don’t however see the particular bits of state-generated disinformation as being a major slice of the problem that you are rightly describing. I would also voice the thought, maybe at the risk of stepping slightly out of my own swim lane, that if we were to find ourselves overly looking to blame abroad for this phenomenon of racism we might risk not owning the portion of the problem that is ours within our own country.’
His comments came after England’s manager, Gareth Southgate, said in a press conference this week that he knew ‘a lot’ of the abuse ‘has come from abroad’.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr McCallum also rejected claims that hostile states are responsible for racist abuse targeted at England football players following their Euros defeat. Pictured: Fans of England player Marcus Rashford leave messages of support at a mural in Manchester after it was defaced with racist abuse following the Euro 2020 Final
On the subject of hostile states, Mr McCallum urged the public to be as alert to threats from them as they are to terrorism.
He warned of the ‘less graphic’ threats that have the ‘potential to affect us all’ from state, or state-backed organisations in Russia, China and Iran.
Challenging the assumption that the impact of hostile activity is felt only by government, institutions or certain individuals, he said the ‘consequences range from frustration and inconvenience, through loss of earnings, potentially up to loss of life’, adding: ‘We must, over time, build the same public awareness and resilience to state threats that we have done over the years on terrorism.’
After calling out the pervasive risks from espionage, disruptive cyber-attacks, misinformation and interference, he confirmed: ‘We’ve seen over 10,000 disguised approaches from foreign spies to regular people up and down the UK, seeking to manipulate them.
‘UK victims of state espionage range way wider than just government.
‘We see the UK’s brilliant universities and researchers having their discoveries stolen or copied; we see businesses hollowed out by the loss of advantage they’ve worked painstakingly to build.
‘Given half a chance, hostile actors will short-circuit years of patient British research or investment.
‘This is happening at scale – and it affects us all. UK jobs, UK public services, UK futures.’
Mr McCallum warned those working in a high-tech business, cutting-edge research or those exporting to certain markets that ‘you will be of more interest – more interest than you might think – to foreign spies’, but will add: ‘You don’t have to be scared; but be switched on.’
