Five Held Under Terror Laws Near US Bomber Base Used in Iran War
RAF Fairford arrests have left five men in custody under terrorism laws after three suspicious vans were reported heading towards the airbase. Here is what police have confirmed, and what remains speculation.
At a quarter to one on Sunday morning, somebody in Whelford picked up the phone. Three unfamiliar vans had arrived in a village of a few dozen homes on the edge of one of the most strategically important airfields in Europe. The caller did the ordinary, sensible thing. Julian Tubsbery, evacuated from his home in the early hours, told the BBC that the vans turned up in the middle of the village and a resident reported them to police at once.
By daylight the village had been emptied. A 400-metre cordon surrounded the vehicles while Army bomb-disposal specialists examined them, around 85 households were advised to leave, and a nearby leisure centre was opened for those with nowhere else to go. Aerial footage appeared to show a bomb-disposal robot moving between three white vans in woodland near the base.
This is a live counter-terrorism investigation. What follows separates what the authorities have confirmed from what is being reported, and both from what is being guessed.
WHAT IS CONFIRMED
Gloucestershire Police’s Assistant Chief Constable, Richard Ocone, set out the sequence on Sunday afternoon. Police received a call at around 12.45am about three suspicious vehicles travelling towards RAF Fairford; armed officers responded and arrested five men in the Whelford area on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act. The men were then further arrested on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act, contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act. That offence sits in the Terrorism Act 2006, and it carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. It criminalises conduct in preparation for an attack, which is precisely why it is used when police believe they have intervened before anything happened.
Counter Terrorism Policing now leads the inquiry. Its national coordinator, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, said: “We are in the early stages of an investigation, and five men remain in custody.” Under counter-terrorism law the men can be held for up to 14 days before charge. They have not been identified, and no motive has been suggested.
Gloucestershire Police had earlier said: “We believe this incident is contained.” A government spokesperson said Prime Minister Andy Burnham is receiving updates.
Five men, three vans, arrests under explosives and terrorism law, an Army disposal operation and a national counter-terrorism investigation. On its own, that is serious enough. It does not need embellishing.
WHAT IS NOT CONFIRMED
Police have not said what was in the vans. That matters, because parts of the media have already decided. One outlet reported that the men were discovered with explosives; the police statements say nothing of the kind. They describe an arrest on suspicion and an examination that was still under way. Suspicion is not a finding, and an examination is not a result.
Nor have police explained the images of several arrested men, shirtless and handcuffed, that circulated on Sunday. The Daily Mail published video purporting to show several men under arrest in the early hours, apparently shirtless with their arms behind their backs. The defence website The Aviationist suggested they had likely been made to undress as a precaution against suicide vests. That is a plausible inference. It is not a police statement, and it should not be reported as fact.
Claims that the SAS was deployed are circulating online. The Tribune can find no confirmation from the police or the Ministry of Defence. The confirmed military presence is the Army’s explosive ordnance disposal team.
Finally, and most importantly, police have not said that RAF Fairford was the target. Their words are that the vans were seen travelling towards it. Mr Ocone asked the public not to speculate but to follow official channels for updates. That request deserves to be honoured, not least because five men who have been charged with nothing are entitled to a fair trial if it comes to one.
Whelford’s residents spent Sunday in a leisure centre because of a decision taken in Whitehall and Washington.
A BASE THAT WAS ALREADY BRACED
What makes Sunday’s arrests harder to dismiss as chance is what happened in the days before them. Spotters reported alerts over the base’s tannoy on 26 September, aircraft being dispersed across the airfield, crash gates blocked and reinforced, and an apparent move to FPCON Delta. A local resident told PA Media that very heavy vehicles, including big tractors, had been placed across all the gates in recent weeks.
FPCON Delta is the top rung of the US military’s force-protection ladder. It applies where an attack has happened or where intelligence indicates terrorist action against a specific location is imminent. It has not been officially confirmed at Fairford. Open-source monitors reported Delta at Fairford and Charlie at Lakenheath and possibly Mildenhall, and the US Air Force’s reply was unrevealing: “For operational security reasons we will not discuss specific force protection measures.” One British outlet claims Lakenheath has confirmed it is operating at FPCON Charlie, but it does not say who confirmed it or how, so this article treats both alert levels as reported rather than established.
The reported posture is itself the story. If the American command raised protection at Fairford before the vans arrived, then somebody had intelligence of a threat. Whether British police acted on the same intelligence, or whether a vigilant villager got there first, is something the public is entitled to know once the investigation allows.
WHY FAIRFORD, AND WHY NOW
Fairford is not a quiet training field. It has been used by US B-1 bombers targeting Iran and is a forward operating location for US Global Strike Command. After the US-Israeli war on Iran began on 28 February, the British government allowed the American military to use the base to strike Iranian missile sites. Ministers said in March that they had agreed to US requests to use British bases for “specific and limited defensive purposes.”
The following is the Tribune’s view, not established fact. Whatever the ministerial language, that decision made Fairford a front-line installation in a live war. A war does not stay politely inside the perimeter fence. Its risks spread into the lanes and cottages around it, to people who were never asked and never voted on it. Whelford’s residents spent Sunday in a leisure centre because of a decision taken in Whitehall and Washington. They carried the cost of that decision before anyone in government had explained it to them.
None of this establishes who the five men are or what they intended, and the Tribune draws no conclusion on either. It does mean that the government owes Parliament a statement when the investigation permits. That statement should cover what threat assessment lay behind the reported security escalation at US-used bases in the days before Sunday, whether local communities were warned, and whether the terms of US use of British airfields are being reviewed in light of the risk they now evidently carry.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Counter Terrorism Policing has up to two weeks to charge, release or seek to extend detention. The Army’s findings on the vans will decide much of the story. Until then, the honest position is the one the evidence supports: a serious incident, a swift and apparently effective police response, and a series of large questions that nobody in authority has yet answered.
Credit for Sunday belongs first to whoever made that call at 12.45am. The rest of us owe it to them, and to the five men who have not been convicted of anything, to wait for the facts.
Whelford never chose to live beside a war. The least it is owed is the truth about what drove into the village at a quarter to one on a Sunday morning.
