Six members of a Russian proxy spy ring dubbed “the Minions” are facing years behind bars for one of the “largest and most complex” enemy operations to be uncovered on UK soil. Met counter-terrorism chief Commander Dominic Murphy described the situation as one of the most significant he had encountered in over 20 years. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00As part of our investigation, we discovered that this group of Bulgarians were operating in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Russian intelligence service.
00:08And when we understood what they were doing, that they were targeting individuals and organisations,
00:14this became so significant for us that we needed to execute our warrants and disrupt the threat.
00:19So they were a threat to national security in information gathering, but also they were targeting individuals, including journalists.
00:26So it says something about our ability to have a free press here in the United Kingdom.
00:31And we know that whilst they were conducting lifestyle surveillance here in the UK, sophisticated lifestyle surveillance,
00:37they were nonetheless passing that to the Russian intelligence services.
00:41And that's where the threat really comes, where we're concerned about how they'll use that intelligence in other operations.
00:46This is one of the most significant I've seen in more than 20 years of counter-terrorism,
00:50I would say we are seeing an ever-increasing demand from our state threats mission and national security mission,
00:55alongside our counter-terrorism mission, but we're working ever more closely with partners to meet that threat.
01:00As I say, this was a sophisticated surveillance operation.
01:03They had adapted everyday items to be audio and video surveillance items,
01:09and they had a sophisticated set-up for how they were tasking activity and undertaking activity.
01:14Yes, it was, but we were a match for them and we were able to, as a result of great work by detectives in counter-terrorism, disrupt their activity.