Life-threatening operations by Russia, Iran and China are intensifying in UK, police say
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Police say the three states are using the vulnerable, the disenfranchised and children to carry out attacks in the UK.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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- Senior British police report a fivefold increase in hostile state activity from Russia, Iran, and China in the UK.
- These states are increasingly undertaking "threat-to-life operations" using proxies, including criminals and vulnerable individuals.
- Proxies, sometimes as young as their mid-teens, are used for attacks and kidnappings, often for small amounts of money.
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LONDON – Russia, Iran and China are behind a growing number of life-threatening operations in Britain, including attacks and kidnappings, often deploying criminals and sometimes children as proxies, two senior British police officers said on July 15.
The British authorities in recent years have repeatedly voiced concern at what they said was malign activity by the three states in Britain, ranging from traditional espionage and actions to undermine the state, to sabotage and assassinations.
Those accusations have been rejected by Moscow, Beijing and Tehran, which say they are politically motivated.
On July 15, the two British officers told reporters there had been a fivefold increase in hostile state activity since the Novichok nerve agent poisoning
Commander Dominic Murphy, who heads London’s Counter Terrorism Command, said the breadth, complexity and volume of hostile operations from Russia, Iran and China had grown at a rate neither they nor their international partners, or any intelligence community, had predicted.
“We are increasingly seeing these three states... undertaking threat-to-life operations in the United Kingdom,” he told reporters.
In most instances, proxies, usually criminals acting quite often for small amounts of cash, were carrying out the states’ work for them, said Assistant Chief Constable Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for UK Counter Terrorism Policing.
The proxies also included vulnerable people or those who felt disenfranchised, with people in their mid-teens among those arrested or under investigation.
“We are concerned that they might find themselves in an online environment where they’re encouraged or egged on to do something and don’t understand what they’re being asked to do,” said ACC Evans, adding that the authorities were less concerned that the children were ideologically motivated.
Earlier in July, three men were convicted over an arson attack
In 2024, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 said that since January 2022, there had been 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill British nationals or individuals based in Britain whom Tehran regarded as a threat.
“We know that they are continuing to try and sow violence on the streets of the United Kingdom, they too are to some extent relying on criminal proxies to do that,” Commander Murphy said of Iran. REUTERS
