MI5 Sends Spotify-Style Video to Suspected New IRA Members

The video presents a reel of newspaper articles detailing police raids, criminal convictions, and controversies linked to the group. It questions whether recipients want such activities conducted in their name. The video references paramilitary actions including bomb attacks, drug running, and extortion rackets targeting vulnerable people.

It includes news stories from 2025 about internal frictions, money-lending operations affecting families, and the exploitation of vulnerable individuals to transport weapons. It also covers reports of drug dealers associated with the group.

This video follows warning messages sent by MI5 last year, which informed dissidents of potential financial sanctions for continuing to raise funds for the New IRA. A November report detailed text messages warning that fundraising activities were not anonymous and could lead to financial and legal repercussions.

The messages encouraged stepping away and considering impacts on families, friends, and communities. The security threat level in Northern Ireland remains at 'substantial,' indicating that an attack is likely. Security officials describe the threat from dissident groups as persistent.

Sir Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, has stated that dissident groups continue to aspire to mount attacks.

this month, the New IRA claimed responsibility for an attempted proxy bomb attack on a police station in Lurgan, where a pizza delivery driver was forced at gunpoint to transport the device. The group also claimed the 2023 shooting of John Caldwell, a detective chief inspector in the Police Service of Northern Ireland who investigated terrorist groups and organized crime.

The New IRA has been blamed for the 2019 killing of journalist Lyra McKee and a 2022 bomb attack on a police patrol vehicle, in which two officers were uninjured. The video, distributed this year, asks if threatening and exploiting vulnerable people has achieved anything and suggests that recipients might themselves be exploited by leadership.

It concludes by repeating the question about whether such actions are desired in the recipients' names. The approach builds on recent tactics of contacting dissident republicans via their phones.