UK Counter-Terror Police Shifts Focus to China, Russia, Iran as Hostile State Threat Grows

An armed soldier and an armed police officer patrol the streets in London, on May 24, 2017. Carl Court/Getty Images

Britain’s counter-terrorism police chief has said the force is going through a “significant shift” as a growing part 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 carried out 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.

Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations Matt Jukes updates the media outside of New Scotland Yard in southwest London on Oct. 21, 2021. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

The senior officer said fighting terrorism is still the “majority” focus of counter-terror police, which he said disrupted several terror plots at the last minute last year.

But 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.

Jukes told reporters at Scotland Yard: “We are shifting, in part, our focus from an exclusive attention to the terrorist threat to a really significant shift in focus on the threat from foreign states.

“For counter terrorism policing that means, at present, that around 20 percent of our casework is focused on missions outside terrorism. That means countering state threats, investigating war crimes, and working with MI5 and other partners to address espionage.”

The number of investigations focused on state threats has “quadrupled in recent years,” he said, adding that this referred to “dozens” of cases over the last two years, not hundreds.

But he stressed how “scores” of officers could be working on hostile state threats because of the “intensity” of the investigations, adding that the nature of the cases was “palpably different” from terror probes.

‘Very Real Concerns’

Last November, Britain’s internal intelligence service MI5 laid bare the “very real threat” posed by hostile states such as China, Russia, and Iran.

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said these adversaries “have massive scale and are not squeamish about the tactics they deploy,” adding that there had been at least 10 plots by Iranian intelligence services to kidnap or kill British or “UK-based” people who were “enemies of the regime.”

Jukes confirmed that that number has now grown to 15. “We have had to respond to very real concerns about the potential threats projected from Iran against people based in the UK,” he said.

Chinese Police Outposts

The senior police officer also said officers are looking into reports of the alleged presence of “so-called Chinese overseas police stations.”

Last year, human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders unveiled dozens of Chinese overseas police “service stations” around the world, including two in London and one in Glasgow.

The phone number for the Glasgow station is coupled with an address belonging to a Chinese restaurant while the London stations shared addresses with a Croydon food delivery place and a Hendon estate agent.

The unofficial “service stations” purport to be providing assistance to Chinese citizens who need to renew their driver’s licenses and report criminality such as fraud by Chinese in China and overseas.

But Safeguard Defenders said the facilities have been used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime to carry out an illicit campaign of transnational repression.

Jukes told reporters: “I want to be absolutely clear that any attempt to intimidate, to harass or to harm individuals who are UK nationals, or who have made the UK their home, won’t be tolerated.”

He said police have not identified relevant criminal evidence in the UK yet, but added: “Attempts to set up shop to act outside the conventions of international law enforcement are not acceptable, and they will be stopped. We’ve got the resources to do that.”

Russian War Crimes

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Team, which is part of the Counter Terrorism Command, is continuing to gather evidence in relation to alleged war crimes in Ukraine in support of the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation.

As the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, the War Crimes Team has renewed its call for anyone in the UK with direct evidence of potential war crimes to come forward.

So far 100 reports are being considered by officers from people across the UK about the war in Ukraine, Jukes said.

Britain has long faced a threat from Russian espionage.

On Friday, David Ballantyne Smith, a security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin, was jailed for 13 years and two months for spying for Russia. A judge said his actions were “intended to damage British interests.”

In 2018, Britain accused Russian spies of carrying out a nerve agent attack targeting former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. Moscow denied the charge.

Lily Zhou, Chris Summers, and PA Media contributed to this report.