The British Government, the police, the anti-terrorist department and the rest of the bodies involved in the investigation of the alleged terrorist attack against the Fairford military air base, dismantled this Sunday, are reluctant to reveal the identities, motives or sponsors of the five arrested suspects, in an investigation that is still in its initial phases. But the shadow of Iran hangs over this incident. The team leading the investigations handles this hypothesis as one of the most realistic, although at this time they maintain many other lines open.
The detainees are all British nationals, aged between 23 and 25 years old and living in different neighborhoods of London.
"I am very aware of the levels of speculation that have arisen around the motivation behind this incident, and the geopolitical issues it has raised. But, at this point in the investigation, I ask that the Anti-Terrorist Police be given space to work meticulously and clearly," Vicki Evans, the deputy assistant commissioner at the head of that department, asked this Monday.
The military base located in the county of Gloucestershire has been used in recent months by American fighter jets to participate in the war offensive against Iran. And British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband warned his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi last week during a brief meeting in New York that “the United Kingdom would not tolerate intimidation, threats or hostile activities on its territory.” The security services suspect that Tehran's hand is behind the attack that caused the burning of several ambulances belonging to the Hatzola emergency service, of the Jewish community of Golders Green, in London. Or behind the fire arson at a power station in July.
The Fairford military base has been used by US military fighter jets as part of their war operation against Iran, which began on February 28. Although at first the British Government of the previous Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, denied the Donald Trump Administration authorization to use its bases, in a subsequent decision it gave the green light to this use as long as it was for carrying out defensive actions. In Tehran's eyes, this nuance is irrelevant, and it considers London complicit in the offensive.
Also in July, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps flagged the activity in Fairford, warning that "any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces."
A strange coincidence
The police intervened, according to the official version, after a neighbor, who has not been identified, warned of the presence in the area of a group of five men camouflaged with their hoods, who were maneuvering around three vans near the military base. Upon seeing her, he told the BBC, everyone fled across the countryside.
However, hours after the operation was made public, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, celebrated the capture before the press and assumed that the British and Americans were on the trail. "It was a fantastic job. We had them under investigation, and they intended to cause serious damage to our facilities. Working with the British has been great," he said in Chicago. “We had been following their trail for a long time and we have already caught them.”
The British Minister of Defense, Wes Streeting, indirectly admitted this version early in the morning on the BBC, thanking the citizen who raised the alert for her efforts but clarifying at the same time that his version was only “a partial image” of what happened, thus suggesting that the arrests had not been the result of coincidence.
The five suspects remain detained and under interrogation. They are accused of several crimes connected to the Explosives Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act, and British regulations allow up to 14 days of incommunicado detention in these cases. The Anti-Terrorist Police Unit took over the investigation from the beginning, despite the fact that the first actions were carried out by the Gloucestershire Police, convinced that the detainees were preparing to commit a terrorist attack.
The arrest area has been cordoned off with a wide security perimeter of more than 400 meters, and at least 80 residences have been evacuated. All of these neighbors spent the night from Sunday to Monday in relatives' homes or in a municipal center authorized for this purpose.
Aerial images shown on British television and other media over the weekend showed a robot from the police bomb squad inspecting the vans. Those responsible for the investigation team have expressed their conviction that the seized material was used to manufacture explosives.
The detainees could be seen on the ground, sitting and handcuffed, stripped of their shirts, which indicates that the police wanted to rule out from the first moment that they were carrying any type of explosive vest.
The vans apparently used for the attempted attack bore the logo of an energy company, which regretted in a statement that its name had been used by the detainees.
