“Over the last 10 years it’s estimated that something like 40 plots have been disrupted here in the UK.”
Theresa May, 28 June 2015

The head of MI5 made a rare public statement today, on the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 bomb attacks on London.

Andrew Parker said: “The terrible events in London on 7 July 2005 are enduring reminders of the reality of what MI5 is striving every day to prevent.”

He also said the authorities “thwart most attempts” to carry out terror attacks on UK soil, something the home secretary put a figure on in a recent interview.

Theresa May said about 40 plots have been disrupted since 7/7. Another statistic being repeated today is that only one person – drummer Lee Rigby – has been killed on UK soil as a result of Islamist terrorism in the last 10 years.

How successful have the security services been in foiling jihadi plots?

The analysis

Mrs May says about 40 planned terror attacks have been busted before they could come to fruition since 7/7.

She hasn’t clarified exactly what she meant, but our understanding is that we are talking about serious plans that would have led to loss of life. And we are talking about Islamist-inspired terrorism rather than events relating to Northern Ireland.

We think she is including plots that have come to light in public trials and other potential threats that are known only to the intelligence community – which makes it a difficult subject to FactCheck.

A trawl through the news archives reveals at least 12 major plots that we know about which could have caused massive casualties since 2005:

• 2006 More than 20 suspects arrested over plot to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid explosives. After a series of trials, seven men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder
• 2008 Conviction of Mohammed Hamid and others over terrorist training camps in the UK
• 2008 Plot to kidnap and behead British Muslim soldier unearthed after arrests in Birmingham
• 2008 Operation Praline – three convicted for possessing details of bomb-making and suicide vest materials. Royal family may have been targets
• 2009 Muslim convert Isa Ibrahim jailed after bomb-making equipment found at his Bristol flat
• 2011 British Airways worker Rajib Karim convicted of plotting to blow up a plane
• 2012 Nine members of terror group who planned to bomb London Stock Exchange jailed
• 2012 Shasta and Mohammed Sajid Khan convicted of plot to attack Jews in Manchester
• 2013 Four men who discussed attack on Territorial Army centre in Luton jailed
• 2013 Convert Richard Dart and others convicted of planning to attack soldiers in Wootton Bassett
• 2013 Omar Mohammed Khan and five others plead guilty to plot to bomb EDL rally. Five were caught with a homemade nail bomb, guns and knives
• 2013 Operation Pitsford – 11 men convicted of terror offences after massive operation in Birmingham

These are all cases where the defendants pleaded guilty to serious offences or were found guilty by a jury.

They don’t include the many times when – as in the case of Erol Incedal in April this year – people are found guilty of possessing terrorist material but cleared of involvement in an actual attack.

A number of other cases involving alleged specific terror plots are still going through the courts.

Mohammed Ammer Ali, 31, from Liverpool, has been charged with trying to buy 500g of the poison ricin over the internet.

Four London men – Tarik Hassane, 21, of Ladbroke Grove, Suhaib Majeed, 21, of St John’s Wood, Nyall Hamlett, 25, of Notting Hill and Nathan Cuffy, 26, of Notting Hill – face trial on charges of plotting to attack police officers or soldiers in London.

Nadir Ali Sayed, 22, from Hounslow, west London, Yousaf Shah Syed, 19, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Haseeb Hamayoon, 28, from Hayes, west London, were arrested three days before Remembrance Sunday and are charged with preparing acts of terrorism over an alleged plot to behead a member of the public.

All the defendants are due to stand trial and all deny any wrongdoing.

Arguably, there is another kind of case worth noting – where suspects have been convicted of terror activity but the evidence of a specific plot was inconclusive. These include:

• 2008 Rangzieb Ahmed of Rochdale given a life sentence for directing a terrorist organisation and being a member of al-Qaeda. Police said: “We don’t know where Rangzieb’s next target would have been, or what exactly he was working towards, but we are sure he was attack-planning”
• 2010 Ishaq Kanmi of Blackburn jailed for five years for terror offences. Counts of soliciting to murder former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ordered to lie on file
• 2009 Operation Pathway – Police arrest 11 Pakistani men over an alleged terror plot, but are forced to release them all without charge. But the Special Immigration Appeals Commission later ruled that four of the men were extremists

Only one person killed?

It is true to say that Lee Rigby is the only target of an Islamist terror attack to have died since 7/7. But of course other murder plots have been put into action, only for the terrorists to botch the job:

• 2005 Two weeks after 7/7, on 21 July, Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed, and Hussain Osman, try to launch a copycat attack with rucksack bombs but failed to kill anyone
• 2007 NHS doctor Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed ram a Jeep loaded with gas canisters into Glasgow International Airport. Only Ahmed died in the attack. Bilal was later convicted of leaving two bombs in central London, including one outside the Tiger Tiger club in Haymarket
• 2008 Muslim convert Nicky Reilly set off a home-made nail bomb in the toilets in a Giraffe restaurant in Exeter, injuring only himself

2010 Roshonara Choudhry stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms at a constituency surgery in east London in 2010. She was jailed for life for attempted murder but he survived the attack.

And lest we forget, not all terrorism is carried out by Islamists.

In 2013, Ukrainian national Pavlo Lapshyn stabbed 82-year old Mohammed Saleem to death as he walked home from a mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham. The far-right extremist went on to try to blow up three local mosques, but there were no casualties.

Lapshyn was convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act, but use of the legislation against white defendants remains controversial in some cases.

The family of Dr Sarandev Bhambra, who was attacked with a hammer and machete by white supremacist Zack Davies, said the case would have been treated as a terrorist incident and given much wider media coverage if the victim had been white and the attacker Asian.

How many arrests and convictions?

We have to broaden our focus a little now, because Home Office figures keep a running total of all arrests, charges and convictions since the 11 September 2001 attacks on America. The latest statistics we have take us up to December 2014.

In 2014 there were 289 terror arrests, up 29.5 per cent from 223 the year before.

Since 9/11, 2,877 people have been arrested for terror offences. These arrests have led to 1,121 criminal charges and 769 criminal convictions, 452 for terrorism-related offences:

http://static.data.c4news.com/cewsg/index.html

Who is being arrested? Suspects arrested since 11 September are overwhelmingly (92 per cent) male. The biggest percentage – 38 per cent – are Asian, 29.5 per cent were white and 12 per cent were black.

In terms of age, the biggest percentage increase of arrests in recent years is in the 18-20 group:

http://static.data.c4news.com/g9MLj/index.html

We can’t tell from these  Home Office figures how many of the arrests were related to Britons travelling to or coming back from Syria. But in January the Met Police said it made 165 Syria-related arrests in 2014 compared to just 25 the year before.

In 2014 Met Police officers used stop and search powers granted by the Terrorism Act 2000 to question 394 people – 160 of them white, 88 Asian and 47 black.

Of those stopped, 25 (6 per cent) were subsequently arrested.

Who is being convicted?

Of the 452 people convicted of terror offences since 9/11, 288 gave their nationality as British, while others claimed to be citizens of 45 other countries. Here are the top 10:

http://static.data.c4news.com/h1qE0/index.html

All of this creates a significant burden on courts and prisons. In 2014 there were 38 trials and 31 convictions. There were 44 trials and 37 convictions in 2013.

There were 124 convicted terrorists in prison at the latest count. Of those, 123 claimed to be Muslims.

The verdict

We can’t quite prove the Home Secretary right but since she is including details of plots apparently known only to the intelligence community as well as ones that have been discussed publicly, that is probably an impossible task.

We’ve found 12 serious plots that have been openly been busted since 2005, and where the defendants have been convicted.

If we widen our search to include types of case – like those that undoubtedly involved terrorism but where there wasn’t evidence of a specific plot – the number rises, making Theresa May’s estimate look plausible.