MI5 Chief Warns of ‘Dramatic Acceleration’ of Terrorist Activities in the UK

The United Kingdom is facing the greatest terrorist threat in its history, assessed on Tuesday by the head of the British security service MI5, Andrew Parker, after what he described as a “dramatic acceleration” of terrorist activities this year, including attacks in London and Manchester.

“Given everything that has happened and much that has not happened during 2017, it is clear that we are facing an intense terrorist threat from Islamist extremists in the UK,” Parker said during a speech in London.

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“This threat is multidimensional, rapidly evolving, and operates at a scale and speed we have not seen before, the highest pace I have seen in my 34-year career,” he said. “Today, there are more terrorist activities, they occur at shorter intervals, and they are harder to detect,” he noted.

The British government announced last month that police arrested 379 individuals for terrorism-related activities in the 12 months leading up to June this year, a 68 percent increase and a one-year record, which includes dozens of arrests related to this year’s terrorist attacks on London Bridge, Westminster, and Manchester Arena.

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The UK’s top counter-terrorism official, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Mark Rowley, recently stated that there are currently about 500 active counter-terrorism police investigations at the national level involving three thousand potential suspects.

Rowley told the BBC that police are investigating “extraordinarily diverse” cases of terrorist activities, ranging from “simple knife and vehicle attacks to highly sophisticated plots.”