Category Archives: UK security and counter-terrorism

MI5 agent ‘abused and threatened’ ex-partner, BBC investigation reveals

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Story made public after an attempt by the attorney general to gain an injunction to prevent broadcast

An agent working for MI5 with a background in rightwing extremism abused his former partner and used his connection with the domestic intelligence agency to threaten her further, according to an investigation by the BBC.

The man – known only as X for legal reasons – is said to have terrorised the woman and at one point attacked her with a machete and threatened to kill her, as shown in a video captured on her mobile phone. “There was so much psychological terror from him to me, that ultimately culminated in me having a breakdown,” the woman said.

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Omagh bomb suspect Liam Campbell extradited to Lithuania

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Man held liable for the Omagh bombing, is due to face charges related to weapons smuggling for the Real IRA

The man found civilly liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed has been extradited to Lithuania after a lengthy legal process.

The Irish supreme court ruled last week that Liam Campbell could be extradited to the Baltic country in relation to offences of smuggling, the possession of firearms and terrorism.

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Foreign agent scheme omitted from UK national security bill

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Plans to require lobbyists to register their work for other countries delayed as key details yet to be worked out

Plans to require lobbyists, PR firms and other professionals in the UK to register their work for Russia, China or any other foreign country have been unexpectedly left out of the national security bill published on Wednesday.

Insiders said key decisions about what activities would have to be registered had yet to be taken, meaning the foreign agent scheme will have to be introduced via a government amendment to the bill in a few weeks.

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Hostile foreign states pose ‘real risk’ of influencing MPs groups

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Standards committee report calls for reforms to all-party parliamentary groups to avert ‘next great parliamentary scandal’

Hostile foreign states and others pose a “real risk” of gaining access and wielding influence through all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs), the Commons standards committee has warned.

Calling for reforms to avert what it described as the “next great parliamentary scandal”, the committee also voiced concerns that a dramatic rise in the number of the informal cross-party groups also risks “inappropriate influence and access” because they are so difficult to monitor.

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MI5 investigated Texas synagogue hostage-taker in 2020

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UK intelligence officers concluded Malik Faisal Akram posed no threat, which allowed him to travel to US and buy gun

The British man who took hostages at a Texas synagogue had been under investigation by MI5 as a possible Islamist terrorist threat as recently as 2020, Whitehall sources acknowledged on Tuesday morning.

British intelligence closed the investigation, however, after officers had concluded Malik Faisal Akram from Blackburn posed no threat, and as a result he was able to freely travel to the US and purchase a gun.

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Chinese national trying to improperly influence politicians, says MI5

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Warning circulated to MPs and peers about woman targeting parliamentarians

A security warning from MI5 has been circulated to MPs and peers claiming that a female Chinese national has been seeking to improperly influence parliamentarians.

The “interference alert” names an individual “knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party” with MI5’s logo at the top.

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James Pond: Chinese state news agency releases spoof mocking MI6 focus on Beijing – video

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Britain’s spy chief has thanked China’s state news agency for 'free publicity' after it posted a James Bond spoof that mocked the western intelligence community’s growing focus on threats posed by Beijing. The rare response by the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on Thursday comes as China and Britain clash over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority and creeping authoritarianism in the former British colony of Hong Kong

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MI6 chief thanks China for ‘free publicity’ after James Bond spoof

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Rare response from Richard Moore comes after state news agency posted video mocking western intelligence

Britain’s spy chief has thanked China’s state news agency for “free publicity” after it posted a James Bond spoof that mocked the western intelligence community’s growing focus on threats posed by Beijing.

The rare response by the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on Thursday comes as China and Britain clash over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority and creeping authoritarianism in the former British colony of Hong Kong.

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Glorification of Plymouth shooter by ‘incels’ prompts calls for action

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Request for problem to be taken more seriously comes as data shows sixfold rise in visits to incel forums

The man who gunned down seven people, killing five, in a rampage in Plymouth is being lionised by an online “incel” community, with some ironically venerating him as a “saint” and celebrating the attack as an aid to their recruitment drive.

Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother, Maxine, 51, after a row before going on to fatally shoot four others and then himself in August last year. Before his death, he expressed misogynistic and homophobic tendencies, as well as angrily lamenting his failure to find a girlfriend.

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UK spy chief suggests Beijing risks ‘miscalculation’ over west’s resolve

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Island’s status and surveillance technology making China ‘single greatest priority’ for MI6

China is at risk of “miscalculating through over-confidence” over Taiwan, said the MI6 head, Richard Moore, in a statement clearly intended to warn Beijing to back off any attempt to seize control of the island.

Giving a rare speech, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief said in London that China was at risk of “believing its own propaganda” and that the country had become “the single greatest priority” for MI6 for the first time in its history.

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MI6 needs tech sector’s help to win AI race with China and Russia – spy chief

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New boss Richard Moore to say adversaries are ‘pouring money’ into technology and the agency needs outside funding to keep up

MI6 will have to become “more open to stay secret” and work with tech companies to counter threats posed by China and Russia who seek to gain advantage by mastering artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

In his first speech as the foreign spy agency’s head on Tuesday, Richard Moore is expected to admit that “unlike Q in the Bond movies”, MI6 cannot develop the tools it needs in-house to counter hybrid physical and virtual threats.

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The spies who hated us: reporting on espionage and the secret state

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Our security correspondent speaks to a predecessor about an era of spooks, leaks and open hostility from MI5

It is time for morning coffee and Richard Norton-Taylor and I are discussing secrecy, deception and brown envelopes, which comes naturally to the pair of us, as past and present defence and security correspondents of the Guardian.

Norton-Taylor joined the paper in January 1973 (when, incidentally, this writer was not yet two), starting in Brussels and switching to security a few years later. The first part of his career was dominated by a series of landmark official secrecy battles.

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Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists

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Newly declassified papers show shocking role played by Britain in slaughter

A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.

British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist cancer”.

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UK ‘colluding in torture’ by leaving women and children in Syria camps

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Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS

Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.

The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.

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RAF intelligence base linked to US drone strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani

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Research concludes it ‘was probable’ that Menwith Hill was used to assist in the controversial assassination

Campaigners have called on ministers to explain whether the secretive Menwith Hill intelligence base in Yorkshire is involved in recent drone strike assassinations, after the publication of a report that raises questions about UK involvement in US attacks.

The research concludes it “was probable” that Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was killed in January last year using information obtained from the British site, essentially an outpost of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

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Covid and Afghanistan ‘reveal weakness of UK’s security policy’

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Cross-party MPs and peers say the response to the two crises has exposed system as inadequate

The rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed “serious weaknesses” in the government’s approach to dealing with national security, according to a highly critical cross-party report.

MPs and peers found that the two critical events had highlighted the shortcomings of the national security council – a cabinet committee of senior ministers and officials designed to handle major security challenges. The Lords’ and Commons’ joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) said the system had been exposed as inadequate. It warned that national risk management across government is “loose, unstructured, and lacking in central oversight and accountability”.

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Tech firms not doing enough to fight terrorism, says Met police chief

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Cressida Dick calls for more action to stop online radicalisation and questions push towards end-to-end encryption

The UK most senior police officer has accused technology firms of failing to identify, monitor and report the activity of terrorists, in a plea for improved access to social media platforms.

Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, also questioned the push to expand end-to-end encryption in a speech to law enforcement officials on Monday.

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Islamism remains first-order security threat to west, says Tony Blair

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In speech marking 20 years since 9/11 attacks, former British PM warns that non-state actors may turn to bio-terrorism

The west still faces the threat of 9/11-style attacks by radical Islamist groups but this time using bio-terrorism, Tony Blair has warned.

Blair also challenges the US president, Joe Biden, by urging democratic governments not to lose confidence in using military force to defend and export their values.

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UK wrestles with effects of Taliban rule on terror, drugs and aid

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Analysis: whether Britain should recognise Afghanistan’s new regime, and how soon, is a fraught question for officials

With the Taliban now firmly in control of most of Afghanistan, British government figures have been wrestling with what that means for everything from counter-terrorism to the drugs trade and aid.

How soon should Britain’s battlefield foes be recognised as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan? What attitude should the UK take to the burgeoning resistance coalescing around former Afghan government figures as the threat of renewed civil war looms?

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‘Old-style espionage’: Briton’s arrest feels like cold war throwback

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Analysis: eastern bloc spy agencies historically would target western staff in junior roles

The arrest of a British citizen in Berlin for allegedly spying for the Russians has a distinctly cold war flavour.

In recent years the Kremlin has been accused of carrying out a number of spectacular cyber-operations. They include the hacking and dumping in 2016 of thousands of Democratic party emails. Moscow’s audacious goal, according to Washington: to help elect Donald Trump as US president.

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