Britain Had Prior Knowledge of Suspected RAF Fairford Bomb Plot, Minister Says
Britain's security services already knew about the group arrested over a suspected bomb plot targeting RAF Fairford, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has indicated.
Five men remain under investigation after armed officers found explosives in three vans parked minutes from the base in Gloucestershire. The arrests followed a report of suspicious vehicles travelling toward RAF Fairford, which hosts US Air Force missions against Iran, according to The Guardian.
Police were alerted in the early hours of Sunday by a local woman driving near the base. She saw vans and men acting in an unusual way and called 999. The caller, described as a farmer, later described her call in an interview with the BBC, according to BBC News.
Streeting thanked the caller but said she had a “partial picture” of the operation. He made the comment in an interview with Sky News, according to the Financial Times. In the same round of interviews, he said she had acted “quickly and thoughtfully.” That description is disputed. The caller has said the authorities had “dropped the ball.” Streeting declined to give details on prior information or the identities of those arrested, citing a live police investigation.
US President Donald Trump also spoke about prior awareness. He claimed the suspects had been watched for a long time and said the men “were looking to do big damage.”
Residents of 85 households in the village of Whelford were evacuated to a leisure centre in Cirencester. A 400-metre cordon, meaning a closed safety zone, was placed around the white vans while army bomb squad robots examined them.
Counter Terrorism Policing, the UK-wide network that takes over the most serious terrorism cases, is now leading the investigation, Gloucestershire Police confirmed in an update titled “Counter Terrorism Policing leading investigation following Whelford arrests,” according to Gloucestershire Police. Five people were arrested overnight, and the investigation is live. On Monday, British police were questioning the five men on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences, according to Reuters. The men were first arrested on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act, the law covering illegal explosives. They were later further arrested on suspicion of preparation offences, the more serious category covering planning terrorist acts, according to Reuters.
The broader context here is familiar after this kind of intelligence-led operation. One account stresses quiet monitoring over time. The other stresses a sharp-eyed member of the public and fast local policing. Both can be true at once, like watching a group from a distance to learn more and then having to move sooner because a warning call raises the immediate risk.
What matters next for officials in London and Washington is what is confirmed in the coming days. Charging decisions will show whether prosecutors focus on possession of explosives or on planning an attack. Any further detail on how long and how closely the group was watched will shape questions about security around joint US-UK bases. The brief evacuation of a whole village also shows the caution level once explosives were suspected near an active base.
