How reporting a WhatsApp message stopped terror plot

On 13 April 2022, a video appeared in a WhatsApp group showing a young man holding a knife as words appeared proclaiming: "Now the battle has begun and it will continue until the day of judgement. So take out your sword, O youth, and destroy the kufr [disbelievers].”

- LIZZIE DEARDEN

The man in the video was Matthew King, and he was planning a terror attack targeting soldiers and police in the UK. Aged just 18, he had very recently converted to Islam and started supporting Isis after getting kicked out of school and spending a “great deal of time online” during the Covid pandemic.

His rapid transformation meant he was not on the security services’ radar and was completely unknown to counterterror police. King had been becoming steadily more extreme for months, telling a female friend he wanted to fight in Syria, become a “martyr” and torture and kill an American or British soldier.

“I guess jihadi love is powerful,” King wrote. “I just want to kill people.” But the tipping point was the WhatsApp video, which was posted shortly after King updated his status to read: “Kill non-muslims wherever you see them.”

A member of that WhatsApp group called the UK’s anti-terrorist hotline to raise their concerns, and the alarm was also raised by King’s concerned mother when she contacted the Prevent counter-extremism programme. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said officers “moved very quickly” to find out more about King’s beliefs and his activities.

"We became aware of his plot as a direct result of calls from members of the public," he told journalists, saying it was an "unusual" way for an attack to be thwarted. "It started with people telling us his behaviour was becoming increasingly extreme and unstable, and he had an extreme Islamist mindset." Police launched an investigation in April 2022 and what they uncovered triggered a high-level covert investigation in partnership with MI5, who deployed a "whole host of tactics" to monitor King and ensure he could not put his plans into action.