By Rebecca Camber Crime And Security Editor and Dan Woodland
01:10 13 Dec 2023, updated 01:12 13 Dec 2023
- Matt Jukes warned conflict has heightened the danger of an attack on London
Britain is facing ‘unprecedented levels’ of counter-terrorism arrests as people are being ‘energised’ towards extremism amid the war in Gaza.
Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, who leads national counter-terrorism policing, has warned Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 have heightened the danger of an attack on London.
He told MPs that in the last two months there has been more terrorism arrests than in the whole of last year, highlighting a ‘concerning environment where people are energised towards potentially support for extremist ideologies’.
Calls by the public to the anti-terrorism hotline have doubled, while there has also been a 12-fold increase in referrals about extremism online and a 25 per cent increase in counter-terror intelligence.
MPs were warned that counter-terrorism policing resources are under enormous pressure as they are dealing with the ‘biggest convergence of threats’ since the London Olympics in 2012.
Across England and Wales, there has been a 680 per cent increase in anti-Semitic crimes and 140 per cent in reported Islamophobic crimes, while there have been 500 investigations for alleged breach of terrorism legislation.
The Met has devoted 28,000 officer shifts to policing protests since October, at a cost of £17million in London alone.
Nationally, officers have had to tackle 900 protests in the last two months.
Addressing the shocking statistics, Mr Jukes told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee: ‘There are states or parts of states that are fuelling some of the division, the polarisation we have seen, particularly with communications online.’
He said he is also concerned about ongoing intimidation of British MPs and ‘antidemocratic’ protests outside their homes.
Since September the number of crimes related to the targeting of MPs has doubled as politicians have been attacked for their views on the conflict.
‘This is an exceptional period where we have a sense of counter-terrorism risk which is immediate,’ Mr Jukes told MPs.
‘We have seen in the course of the protests a whole spectrum of behaviour, the extreme of which crosses over into terrorism legislation.
‘The arrests for those offences that relate to supporting or glorifying terrorism are in unprecedented numbers when compared to the last decade and are part of a concerning environment where people are energised towards potentially support for extremist ideologies.’
He added: ‘The threat is going to manifest at two speeds. We have got the immediate of people being energised or galvanised by the amount of hateful material that is being circulated. There is a real risk as we saw in Paris recently of an individual being energised by these events.
‘The FBI director talked last week about red lights blinking everywhere and I think that’s part of what we’re beginning to see – that increase in calls from the public, that increase in online traffic, and increasingly young people involved.’
Mr Jukes fears that graphic images from the conflict are being used by terror groups as a recruitment tool to lure in impressionable British teenagers.
The Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit has received 2,100 reports since the Hamas attack on October 7, the highest level of referrals the unit has ever received since it was set up in 2010 to remove online terrorist material.
Mr Jukes’ colleague, Met Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist, told the hearing: ‘What we are seeing in London is the biggest convergence of threats we have seen for a very long time with the impact of major global events being felt on the streets of London.
‘The scale of the policing challenge is enormous.’
Mr Twist added: ‘I worry about the impact of social media. A contingent of what we see is quite clearly put up to fuel division, to fuel polarisation and make things worse.’
Later, the former Home Office extremism tsar Dame Sara Khan told the committee that Britain’s lax laws had left Hamas supporters free to glorify terrorism.
She said it was not illegal for extremists to celebrate the Hamas attacks on Israel as long as they avoided specifically encouraging a terrorist act and steered clear of directly supporting the proscribed organisation.
Ms Khan, who is now an independent adviser on social cohesion to Michael Gove, called for new laws to tackle hateful extremism, saying it was ‘pretty shocking’ that neo-Nazis and Islamist groups were able to preach hatred without fear of arrest due to the UK’s ‘permissive environment’.
Lord Walney, independent adviser to the Government on political violence and disruption also told the committee that consideration should be given as to whether existing legislation could be used to curtail ongoing pro-Palestinian protests.
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
