Spies ship Spotify-style messages and shut financial institution accounts of terrorists to cease assaults
A multi-agency operation is closing dissidents’ bank accounts, voiding car insurance and stopping benefits payments in a bid to frustrate and strangle them to give them less time to organise attacks
Forensic investigators at the scene after a car explosion outside a police station(Image: Niall Carson/PA Wire)
Suspected terrorists have been sent Spotify Wrapped-style videos to “take better paths”. One-minute reels sent to members of the New IRA by MI5 shows paramilitary activities such as bomb attacks, drug running and extortion rackets targeting vulnerable people.
The video is sent to republican dissidents suspected of involvement in planning attacks and other criminal activity, similar to the way Spotify summarises listening trends to its subscribers at the end of the year. It asks: “Is this what you want done in your name?”
And a multi-agency operation is closing bank accounts, voiding car insurance, severing social welfare payments and denying early prison release of those linked to the group, said to be responsible for a spate of attacks in Belfast.
Jacqueline McClafferty, a member of the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association, is among the people to have found themselves in the crosshairs of the new strategy. Returning to Belfast after a break in Tenerife, she found 12 officers waiting for her.
She has also received WhatsApp messages urging her to dissociate from the New IRA or face financial consequences. as part of the ” administrative strangulation” tactic of the authorities.
But she told the Sunday Times: “I was held for an hour or so. They questioned me about who paid for the holiday before letting me go. I’m an Irish republican. I’m not a dissident. This doesn’t dissuade me.”
The security service’s threat level is set at “substantial” in Northern Ireland, meaning an attack is likely. The threat is said to be seen as “persistent, rather than growing”.
Last month, the New IRA claimed responsibility for an attempted proxy bomb attack when a pizza delivery driver was forced at gunpoint to transport the device to a police station in Lurgan, Northern Ireland.
The group also claimed responsibility for the shooting in 2023 of John Caldwell, a detective chief inspector in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who had investigated terrorist groups and organised crime gangs.
It is thought to be the largest dissident republican group opposing British presence in Northern Ireland. The group has also been blamed for the killing of the journalist Lyra McKee in 2019 and a 2022 bomb attack on a police vehicle.
The video, sent this year by MI5, contains newspaper clippings of New IRA criminality in 2025 and says: “Another year – what has threatening and exploiting the vulnerable achieved?
“Ask yourself: aren’t you also being exploited? I doubt your ‘leadership’ are thinking about you when they are on multiple holidays a year.”
The video flashes up news articles that exposed internal frictions, New IRA money-lending rackets targeting families and how the group exploited vulnerable men to carry weapons for them.
It also highlights news about drug dealers linked to the group. It ends: “Is this what you want done in your name? Real change starts with you.” The video message appears to build on a recent MI5 tactic of reaching out to dissidents on their phones.
It was reported last year that the security service had sent texts warning that anyone continuing to fundraise for the dissident organisation would face “financial and legal repercussions”.
Security experts say the psychological toll of endless friction is precisely the point. Hans-Jakob Schindler, the director of the Counter Extremism Project based in New York and Berlin, said the disruption bypassed the sluggishness of the courts.
He told the Sunday Times: “If they are consumed with talking to their bank about their mortgage, they have less time to organise the next attack. Strategies like this recognise that while you cannot eradicate the problem overnight, you can severely reduce its scale.”
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