The threat from international and domestic terrorism presents a “breadth of challenge greater than it has ever been,” according to senior US and UK police officers who oversaw the successful prosecution of Anjem Choudary.... CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
The Islamist preacher from East London is now serving a life sentence for directing a group banned under UK terror law and encouraging support for it online.
The officers highlight Choudary’s case as evidence of the ongoing danger posed by radicalizers and the violent groups they support. They also note that counter-terrorism forces are currently facing a wide variety of threats, including individuals who are drawn to violence without supporting an underlying ideology.
They express concern over young people being attracted to online extremism through conspiracy theories, actions of “hostile states” like Russia, and the “toxicity of our political environment.”
Following Choudary’s trial, the BBC interviewed Matt Jukes, the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing, and Rebecca Weiner, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism at the New York Police Department.
According to Jukes, the security landscape is “palpably different” than before. Weiner emphasizes the significance of online extremism, describing the current threat environment as an “everything, everywhere, all-at-once” situation.
With the wars in Israel-Gaza and Ukraine being fought amidst a “tsunami of disinformation,” Weiner states that it is challenging for people to discern truth from falsehood, leading to violence. She warns that people are being overwhelmed with false narratives and conspiracy theories.
Jukes notes a disturbing trend: an increasing number of individuals turning to terrorism due to a fascination with violence rather than ideological fanaticism. He states that in 20% of the cases his officers handle, the suspects lack a settled worldview, often oscillating between searching for neo-Nazi and Islamist material online.
This marks a shift from the past when individuals typically moved from a single ideology to extremism and then to violence. Jukes also mentions that young people are being exposed to “dehumanizing content,” including extreme pornography, and are being pressured in online groups to produce increasingly extreme content. This includes terrorist material created with artificial intelligence, with gaming serving as one of the gateways into online extremism.
The age profile of those drawn into this extreme environment is coming down – and he worries about “very young people who only need to take up a knife or use a vehicle as a weapon to carry out a deadly attack”.
Nearly one in five of those arrested as terror suspects in the UK in the past year were under 18.
Counter-terror police on both sides of the Atlantic have also been kept busy since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Fifty police investigations have been launched in the UK into support or encouragement of terrorism. There has also been a big increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes.
Government statistics for the year ending in March 2024 show terror-related arrests in the UK were up by 23% on the previous year (although they were lower than the period between 2013 to 2020).
Five years ago, says Mr Jukes, he would have been kept awake primarily by fears of an IS attack in the UK, but now he says one of his main concerns would be the growing threat from “determined and shameless” state actors.
For many years, he says “hostile actions of states” formed only a very small part of police and MI5 investigations. But this has grown more than fourfold since the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, says Mr Jukes, when a nerve agent was used to try to assassinate a former Russian spy and his daughter.
The spy, who had defected to the West, and his daughter were badly injured – but a British woman died after coming into contact with Novichok. Russia has always denied involvement.
There has also been an increased threat from parts of the Chinese state, he adds, and at least 15 foiled plots by Iran in the past two years to either kidnap or kill those in the UK it considers enemies of the regime.
“If these authoritarian organs of the state feel like the UK or the US is fair [game] for them to pursue their adversities, then everything we stand for in terms of being a safe, liberal democracy is challenged,” says Mr Jukes.
The two police chiefs also point to “toxicity” in the political environment, which has led to politicians becoming targets of violence – including two British MPs murdered in terror attacks, and the failed assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally on 13 July.
I ask if there is any reassuring news amid this scary picture of dispersed danger.
People can “take a degree of comfort”, says Mr. Jukes, that since the attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, “that terrible year”, police have disrupted nearly 40 “terrorist plots”.
“And we are doing that month-in, month-out, with real efficiency and effectiveness.”
