Eight terror attack ‘close calls’ foiled in UK last year, as probes into hostile state threats quadruple

The UK’s anti-terror police foiled eight late-stage terror plots in the last year, a senior officer has revealed, but are dealing with evolving threats from “self-initiated” terrorists and hostile foreign states.

Last year was the first year since 2016  in which no-one was killed or seriously injured in a terror attack in the UK, but at a briefing at Scotland Yard on Thursday, head of counter-terrorism policing Matt Jukes told reporters his team was facing an “unprecedented” workload.

There are more than 800 live investigations, and police had seen calls to the anti-terrorism hotline increase in the last year. Meanwhile the counter-terrorism internet referral unit, which works to tackle terror threats online, examined 2,500 items of extremist or terrorist content last year and removed about 5,000.

“There is still far too much hateful, extremist material motivating individuals online that is exhibited in a prevalence of misogyny, racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and clearly all of that gets mixed in with terrorist ideologies,” Jukes warned.

“Last year we stopped eight late-stage terror plots,” he said. “And the reality is that a number of those were close calls, I would describe several of them as goal-line saves.”

Jukes said would-be attackers had picked targets and either had or were gathering weapons when officers intervened. The terror threat in the UK had evolved, he said, and now included “many more self-initiated terrorists than it had in the past”.

“This is making the threat harder to spot, it’s making the individuals harder to stop,” he said. “We’re seeing a relatively small but increasing number of references to incel culture… and to school massacres.”

Jukes said counter-terror police had been involved in thwarting plots by people trying to stage school massacre-style attacks. “We have absolutely seen cases in which we’ve intervened with young people to prevent them going on potentially to carry out attacks in their school.”

The counter-terrorism police force’s workload had also evolved in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Missions outside of terrorism” now accounted for around 20% of their casework - tackling state threats and espionage, and probing war crimes, he said.

The number of investigations focused on state threats had “quadrupled in recent years”, he said, adding that this referred to “dozens” of cases over the last two years, not “hundreds”.

There had been at least 15 potential plots since January last year by Iranian intelligence services to kidnap or kill British or UK-based people considered enemies of the regime, Jukes said.  “We have had to respond to very real concerns about the potential threats projected from Iran against people based in the UK.”

Officers were also looking into reports of the alleged presence of “so-called Chinese overseas police stations”, but had not found any criminal evidence yet. “I want to be absolutely clear that any attempt to intimidate, to harass or to harm individuals who are UK nationals, or who have made the UK their home, won’t be tolerated,” Jukes said.

Meanwhile, police are continuing to gather evidence of potential war crimes to pass to the International Criminal Court. So far 100 reports were being considered by officers from people across the UK about the war in Ukraine.