Terrorists ‘heartened and emboldened’ by events in Afghanistan, says MI5
The Director General of MI5 said that two decades on from the 9/11 terrorist attacks the UK is still engaged in a global struggle against extremism.
Ken McCallum revealed that UK security services had worked with police to disrupt 31 late stage terror attacks in four years, with the risk of extremism likely to worsen as a result of Afghanistan falling to the Taliban.
Six terror attacks were stopped during the pandemic with both Islamist and right-wing extremists posing a serious threat to Britain.
In comments to the BBC he warned that events abroad “have an effect on the streets in the UK” and said the“global struggle to defeat extremism and guard against terrorism” remains ongoing.
McCallum said, “there is no doubt that recent events in Afghanistan will have heartened and emboldened some of those extremists and so being vigilant to precisely those kinds of risks is precisely those sorts of risks is precisely what my organisation is focussed on along with a range of other threats.”
Yesterday 200 people were flown out of Kabul, where the Taliban seized power in August, as the race to evacuate UK and US nationals as well as eligible Afghans is ongoing.
The Taliban has said the group will not let Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks, become a haven for terrorists planning to strike the West. McCallum cautioned that increasingly sophisticated and well-developed attacks could arise if terrorist groups reconstitute.
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