Three UK terror attacks were foiled at ‘late stage’ in last year, counter terror chief reveals as she issues warning over ‘smouldering’ threat level

Police have foiled three late stag terror plots in the last year alone amid a ‘smouldering’ threat level, a senior officer warned yesterday. 

Vicki Evans, senior national co-ordinator for counter terrorism policing, said the two Islamist and one extreme right-wing plot they had prevented would have led to mass casualties. 

Some were ‘goal line saves’, she said in her first public comments since taking up the role earlier this year.

Ms Evans described the terror threat as ‘smouldering’, adding: ‘We have some really deep, dark hot spots, some pockets where we cannot leave the activity and the groups unattended, and we need to continue to maintain our focus on them to keep the threat at bay.

‘The breadth and depth of what the teams and the wider national security system are dealing with is truly staggering, it’s extraordinary.’ 

Overall, police and security services have stopped 43 late-stage terror plots since 2017, the police chief said, adding that one of her major concerns was that recent turmoil in Syria could ‘create a space for extremism and acts of terror’ in the UK.

Ms Evans said: ‘In light of events in Syria, I can absolutely confirm that we’re proactively reviewing our casework, proactively identifying whether there are any new risks in our system that have been inspired or committed by the events.’

The Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner warned that expressing support for HTS, the group that has taken control of the country, would be considered a crime because it has banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK. 

‘If we see evidence or receive reports of that happening in our communities or online, we will absolutely act in the way that we have done if we’ve seen support that any other prescribed organisation in our communities,’ she said.

‘History tells us that, unfortunately, any global instability creates space for extremism, for violence and acts of terrorism and you would expect me rightly to be concerned about the fact that we could have a void that is growing.’

Turning her attention to the radicalisation threat posed by social media, Ms Evans warned that children as young as ten are getting hooked on a ‘pick and mix of horror’ which is placing them on a ‘conveyor belt’ to terrorism.

She said officers were seeing a ‘rapidly increasing fascination with extreme violence’ among schoolchildren who are searching out horrific violence, ‘gore’, extreme pornography, and racism online.

Ms Evans said: ‘What is new and becoming far more common and more prevalent is this rapidly increasing fascination with extreme violence and extreme content that we’re seeing throughout our case work.

‘The type of material that we’re encountering, and my officers and staff are encountering in casework, is absolutely staggering and horrific.

‘So we are seeing search histories which contain violence, misogyny, gore, extreme pornography, racism, fascination with mass violence, school massacres, incels…

Ms Evans described the terror threat as ‘smouldering’. Pictured – file image of armed police 

‘Sometimes that’s coupled with terrorist material, sometimes it’s not. But what it absolutely is a pick and mix of horror.

‘I can genuinely say I wouldn’t wish the search histories that we see in some of our cases on anyone. These sort of grotesque fascinations with violence and harmful views that we’re seeing are increasingly common.’

She added: ‘We most definitely need to think differently about how we stop that conveyor belt of young people who are seeing and being exposed to this type of material, and unfortunately, sometimes then going on to commit horrific acts.’

Police arrested a record number of children, some as young as 12, for terrorism offences last year.

Children aged 11-15 now make up the largest proportion of referrals to the Government’s de-radicalisation Prevent programme.

Of the 6,884 referrals made to Prevent in the year to March, 40 per cent (2,729 referrals) were aged 11-15, and hundreds of youngsters under the age of 10 were also referred.