One of Britain’s senior-most spy chiefs warned on Tuesday that a terrorist strike in the UK remains “likely” as he said that there were about 3,000 “violent Islamic extremists” in the UK, most of them British.
Andrew Parker, the director-general of the British Security Service MI5, also warned against the threat posed by British-born, or so-called home-grown, terrorists.
“There will be terrorist attacks in this country. The threat level is severe and that means likely,” Mr Parker told the Guardian.
“That sort of tempo of terrorist plot and attempts is concerning and it’s enduring. Attacks in this country are higher than I have experienced in the rest of my career — and I’ve been working at MI5 for 33 years. The reality is that because of the investment in services like mine, the UK has got good defences. My expectation is that we will find and stop most attempts at terrorism in this country,” he said.
He said there were about 3,000 “violent Islamic extremists in the UK, mostly British” and that his agency would expand from 4,000 to 5,000 officers over the next five years to deal with that threat.
The 54-year-old spy chief also revealed that UK police and intelligence services had foiled around 12 terror plots in the country since June 2013.
