Terror Attacks More Difficult To Stop As People Radicalised Online, Warns Police Chief

Preventing terror attacks is “more diffiult than it’s ever been”, one of Britain’s most senior counterterror police offiers has warned in an exclusive interview with The Independent.

- Lizzie Dearden

Dean Haydon, the senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said changes to the way attacks are planned, targeted, and carried out had made them harder to spot, while the profile of terrorists has “completely changed”.

“The main threat we currently see is from people within this country that are being self-radicalised,” he added. “The timelines have been shortened. You can go out and buy a kitchen knife in a supermarket and decide, ‘This afternoon I’m going to commit an attack at X location.’ In the name of whatever ideology, and it’s a terrorist attack.

“Would we see that coming? That’s really diffiult to detect. Our collective challenge is far more diffiult than it has ever been.”

Almost every terror attack launched in Britain since 2017 has been carried out by a lone attacker, including the recent Liverpool bombing. The security services say 32 plots have been foiled in the same period – 18 jihadist, 12 far-right, and two from other ideologies.