The threat from far-right terrorists is being neglected by governments and law enforcement, according to the most extensive survey yet of “lone actors” in Europe.

While Islamist plotters are given full attention, the authors of the 98-page report warn that in comparison, individuals and small groups of rightwing extremists in the mould of Norway’s Anders Breivik are in fact more lethal, almost as numerous, and much harder to detect by security services.

Britain leads any other European country for the sheer number of attacks or plots over the past 15 years that have been planned by individuals or self-starting cells, according to the analysis conducted jointly by four research institutes.

It also finds that almost half of rightwing attacks in Britain over recent years were partly motivated by the murder of Lee Rigby – a wave of violence that ranges from arson attacks through to bombings of Islamic centres.



Analysing 31 European countries, researchers found there had been 124 individuals involved in 98 attacks or plots over a 15-year period.



After the UK’s 38 planned attacks, France came second with 11. Germany and Sweden both had five. The report’s authors concluded that while such attacks have been rare in Europe – 10 countries had no documented attacks in 15 years – there has been an increase in the frequency of attacks after 2011.

High profile perpetrators in the UK include Lee Rigby’s killers: Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Others include Pavlo Lapshyn, a white supremacist terrorist who stabbed a Muslim grandfather to death and bombed mosques in an effort to trigger a racial war.

Lapshyn’s bombing campaign started after the murder of Rigby, with his final explosive detonating weeks later on the day of the soldier’s funeral – although police have said they do not believe he was motivated by the murder in London.

The joint report by experts from Royal United Services Institute, Chatham House, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands deemed such attacks “lone” even if they involved up to three people, as long as the individual or group was acting without either an order to act from outside or “direct support in the planning, preparation and execution of the attack”.

Out of the 124 perpetrators in the database, 38% were religiously inspired and 33% were branded right-wing extremists. The authors of the report said they were surprised by the finding, given the focus on Islamic extremism.

“Given the intense public focus on religiously inspired terrorism, the finding that rightwing extremists account for a similar proportion of perpetrators within the database is particularly significant.”

Melanie Smith, one of the co-authors of the report, said that the researchers were surprised at the high proportion of far-right, lone-actor terrorists recorded across Europe. This perception might also explain the allocation of resources by authorities.

“When we looked into where resources were going, it became clear that actually the vast majority were going to looking for religiously inspired terrorists … which kind of made sense to us because that’s what we were expecting too, but that’s not the case,” she added.

By European standards, she said the relatively high number of far-right attacks in the UK could be due to the ease of collecting data, but also due to inspiration by some organisations.



Analysts also identified distinctive differences in the profile of far-right perpetrators and their religiously motivated counterparts, who include self-styled jihadis.



Rightwing perpetrators – those who were motivated by an “emphasis on immigration policy, a wish to inspire patriotism and to defend their country from what they term ‘Islamisation’” – tended to be older: the majority of them were about 40 years old. They were also more likely to be socially isolated.

Plotters and attackers from the religiously-inspired cohort were far younger – most often less than twenty-five years old – as well as being less socially isolated. They tended to have the lowest indication of mental health issues.

From the 72 successfully launched attacks within the database, religiously inspired attacks caused only 8% of deaths. By contrast, rightwing terror attacks accounted for fewer executed attacks in total but just under half of deaths.

“The most frequent targets were civilians, in particular ethnic and religious minorities, asylum seekers and immigrants. A large majority of religious targets were Muslim,” the report found.



The single most deadly attack in the set was carried out by rightwing anti-Islamist fanatic Anders Breivik. On 22 July 2011, Breivik detonated explosive devices targeting government buildings in Oslo’s city centre, then made his way to a summer camp on the island of Utøya, where leftwing youth were having their annual retreat. Dressed as a policeman, Breivik then set about gunning down as many teenagers as possible. In all 77 people were killed and 242 injured.

Yet despite the horror of that day researchers found that just over three-quarters of attacks failed to cause any fatalities, and 58% caused no injuries.

“While lone-actor terrorist attacks can be devastating, a high proportion of plots fail to materialise in this manner,” the authors said.



The challenge to the security services in Britain and elsewhere was also underlined by a lack of discerning or “typical” traits of lone-actor terrorists, who often evaded the “tripwires” of intelligence services and police monitoring of established terror networks. The one outstanding common feature was that 96% of the perpetrators were male.

The challenges of identifying them were apparently deepened by the fact that two-thirds of lone actors had never been active within an extremist group. At the same time, the researchers stated that far-right groups such as Pegida, which has recently launched a British wing, might provide “moral oxygen” for some violent plotters.

Adding that their research suggested a need for increased coordination among EU member states, in particular when it comes to far-right movements operating across national boundaries, the report highlighted that no far-right organisations were currently listed as terror groups.

Information sharing between states must be improved to avoid the “internationalising” of certain movements who are able to move from one state where they are banned to another where they are not.

“A concrete example of existing imbalance is the group Combat 18 and its associated Blood and Honour organisation, to which numerous lone actors across different countries in the dataset have exhibited a link,” it states, citing a movement which originated in the UK.

In terms of how plotters were detected, it found that of the religiously-inspired perpetrators that exhibited “leakage” of their intentions, 45% “leaked” to friends or family, in contrast with only 18% of leakage by rightwing perpetrators. Rightwing lone-actor terrorists were more likely to post telling indicators online, where 41% of their leakage occurred.



A key recommendation was aimed at social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, who currently offer users the opportunity to report content posted by individuals or a page on their site.

Calling for mechanisms to be developed to give users the option of lodging reports that would identify potential lone actors, it added: “This option could perhaps read: ‘[this post] suggests this person is going to commit a violent attack.’”