ASIO seriously considering raising Australia's terror threat level to high

Updated

The head of Australia's domestic spy agency, David Irvine, says the country's official terror threat level could be upgraded in the next few days.

ASIO's director-general told the ABC's 7.30 that the threat had been building in Australia over the past year and he had an "elevated level of concern".

The threat has been at medium since 2003, which means an attack is possible and could occur.

Australia's terror threat levels Low : terrorist attack is not expected

: terrorist attack is not expected Medium : terrorist attack could occur

: terrorist attack could occur High : terrorist attack is likely

: terrorist attack is likely Extreme: terror attack is imminent or has occurred

Source: ASIO

Source: ASIO

If it is raised to high, it means an attack is likely.

Mr Irvine, who retires from the job at the end of the week, said he was "actively considering" increasing the terror threat level.

"I would say that at the moment it is at a very elevated level of medium," he said.

"I'm certainly contemplating very seriously the notion of lifting it higher because of the numbers of people we are now having to be concerned about in Australia, because of the influence of Syria and Iraq on young Australians both in terms of going to those places to fight, but also in terms of what they are doing here in Australia with a potential intent to attack."

Mr Irvine said there were more than 20 people in Australia who had fought in Iraq and Syria and posed a threat to national security, however, he declined to confirm whether all those thought to be engaging in or supporting jihad overseas were under active surveillance.

"You can rest assured that the Australian authorities know what they're looking at and are taking very appropriate steps to monitor the situation and you can also be assured that if we see something developing or in fact evidence of a crime already having been committed then we're going to move quickly to nip that in the bud," he said.

"The other thing I can say is certainly in recent months we've had quite heightened operational activity because of the numbers of people involved and so on and the Government has recently given us additional resources to try to cope with that increased problem."

Mr Irvine said that although Australia had been involved in arming the outgunned Kurdish opponents of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, it was unlikely that it would contribute to an elevated terror threat.

"That's a sort of a popular line that you hear, but the fact is that Australia has been named as a terrorist target in Al Qaeda publications and the like for a number of years," he said.

"And current Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, propaganda and talk is of continuing to conduct terrorist attacks in the West including in Australia. So we do have to be concerned."

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, who is a member of the National Security Committee of Cabinet, said it is up to Mr Irvine to set the threat level.

"These are very sensitive matters but it's important to note that these threat levels are set by the director-general," he said.

"They're not set by politicians. The sorts of issues he's talking about have been concerning the Government for some time."

Meanwhile a former senior intelligence agent said the number of foreigners travelling to Iraq and Syria to join jihadist groups is staggering.

In the past three years around 12,000 foreign fighters have left their homes in Europe, the US and the Middle East to join groups in Iraq and Syria.

Robert McFadden has investigated and interrogated members of Al Qaeda and said it is almost impossible to track the movements of new jihadists.

"Because there are so many legitimate and... ways to get into Syria, a passport stamp that goes through Europe and into Turkey for example, on any given day just the sheer numbers are just staggering," he said.

Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, defence-and-national-security, security-intelligence, australia

First posted