Speaking on May 14th 2018 at an event in Berlin, MI5 Director General Andrew Parker warned that Europe faces “an intense, unrelenting and multidimensional international terrorist threat”.
“Daesh continues to pose the most acute threat, but Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups haven’t gone away,” said Mr. Parker, who also warned that police forces are “actively monitoring the trajectory of extreme right-wing terrorism.”
Other key points from Mr. Parker’s speech include:
- The current unprecedented tempo of attack planning shows no signs of abating. In the UK alone, since the Westminster attack in March 2017, the police and MI5 have thwarted a further 12 Islamist terror plots. That brings the total number of disrupted attacks in the UK since 2013 to 25.
- Whilst Daesh has now lost its “false Caliphate in its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, tackling the group as a movement will require sustained international focus for years to come.” Daesh is currently seeking to regroup and the threat will persist.
- Terrorism is not new. But, amplified and accelerated by the reach and tempo of technological change, it is now more global, more multi-dimensional and of a different order of pace and intensity.
