Britain’s counter-terrorism police chief has stated that the force is going through a “significant shift” as a growing portion of its work is now focused on threats from hostile states such as China, Russia, and Iran. Matt Jukes, head of counter-terrorism policing, said on Feb. 16 that the number of investigations into hostile state threats being conducted by his officers has “quadrupled” in the last two years. He described the workload as “unprecedented” and said it marked a “really significant shift” in focus for teams primarily working on terror probes.
Despite this, Jukes noted that fighting terrorism is still the “majority” focus of counter-terror police, which he said disrupted several terror plots at the last minute last year. However, he said tackling hostile state activity has become a “growing part” of work for counter-terror police, with “missions outside of terrorism” such as tackling state threats, espionage, and war crimes now accounting for around 20 percent of casework.
Last November, Britain’s internal intelligence service MI5 laid bare the “very real threat” posed by hostile states such as China, Russia, and Iran. Jukes confirmed that the number of investigations focused on state threats has “quadrupled in recent years” and that this referred to “dozens” of cases over the last two years, not hundreds. He also noted that “scores” of officers could be working on hostile state threats due to the “intensity” of the investigations, adding that the nature of the cases was “palpably different” from terror probes.
In addition, the senior police officer said officers are looking into reports of the alleged presence of “so-called Chinese overseas police stations,” as well as gathering evidence in relation to alleged war crimes in Ukraine in support of the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation. Britain has also long faced a threat from Russian espionage, and on Friday, a security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin was jailed for 13 years and two months for spying for Russia.