'Friendly' nations among countries interfering in Australia, says domestic spy chief

ANKARA

Australia's domestic spy chief has accused some friendly nations of running foreign interference operations in the country.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday, Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess said the people would be "shocked to learn the identity of the countries his agency has caught actively interfering in diaspora communities."

Without naming, he claimed that three to four countries have been caught "actively" seeking to interfere in diaspora communities.

"I can think of at least three or four that we have actually actively found involved in foreign interference in Australian diaspora communities," he told the ABC's Insiders program.

"Some of them would surprise you, some of them are also our friends."

He warned that he would name them if the threat posed a "significant risk to Australians."

The dramatic development came days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese raised Australia's official terror alert level from "possible" to "probable" on the advice of ASIO.

Last month, Canberra unveiled plans to introduce a string of new measures, including the expansion of the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, to fight the growing threat of foreign interference.

Australian national security agencies, according to the ABC, in recent months have discovered a local public servant and a doctor had been recruited to help track down a critic of a "foreign regime", which then offered thousands of dollars to its agents to do "whatever was necessary" to silence the dissident.

Security authorities fear that the chances of a violent extremist act are now "more" likely than when authorities lowered the alert level to "possible" in November 2022.