US President Donald Trump criticized the United Kingdom's handling of a suspected "terrorist" plot that was targeting the British Fairford air base used by the US military, expressing his "surprise" that the five suspects were released on bail on Monday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said that he would not have released the suspects, indicating that their actions “may be” linked to Iran, but he refused to go into details, saying only: “I know the answer. I can be very specific, but I prefer not to reveal it.”
British counter-terrorism police said on Monday that the release of the men “does not mean the end of the investigation,” and that they “will be subject to strict restrictions on their movements.”
There was no immediate response from the British government to Trump's statements, while CNN contacted the British Ministry of Defense to obtain a comment.
For its part, Iran denied any involvement in the incident.
The men, whose identities were not revealed, were arrested on Sunday near the base in western England, which is the base from which American B-1 bombers are launched to carry out missions against Iran.
According to counter-terrorism police, all five are British citizens from the London area, aged between 23 and 25 years.
Lawrence Taylor, a senior counter-terrorism police official, said police were examining the incident from all possible angles, “including the possibility that the action was actually carried out by agents or individuals working - whether knowingly or unknowingly - on behalf of a foreign state.”
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a meeting of the Cobra Committee, the committee responsible for dealing with emergencies, on Monday.
Interior Minister Shabana Mahmoud stated that by Monday afternoon (local time), “the site was now safe,” with a security cordon still in place around three vehicles found at the scene.
On Monday, the police informed about 85 families who were evacuated from the area on Sunday that they could return to their homes.
The British authorities did not disclose where the men were being held, nor what was found inside three white pickup trucks they are believed to have used.
Aerial footage taken on Sunday showed a robot designated for dealing with bombs moving between small trucks in an area near the base. The back doors of two of those trucks were open, and large black objects were seen scattered on the ground nearby.
Later, CNN teams in the area heard what appeared to be the sound of two controlled explosions coming from the direction of the village where the trucks were found.
Following the emergency committee meeting, Defense Minister Wes Streeting stated that investigations are still ongoing, adding that “the five individuals are subject to strict conditions for their release on bail.”
The Iranian "threat".
Iran had previously denied any involvement in the incident. Its embassy in London issued a statement, on Monday, in which it expressed its “strong condemnation of the recent baseless and tendentious speculation, which was published by some British figures and media in an attempt to link Iran to the arrest of 5 suspects in the vicinity of the British Royal Air Force’s Fairford base.”
The Iranian embassy has not yet commented on Trump's statements.
In response to a question about whether a hostile foreign country was behind the incident, the British Defense Minister said on Monday that he did not want to “engage in speculation at this stage of the investigation.”
In July, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard specifically referred to the use of the Fairford base by US bombers, warning the UK that “any base used to launch aggression on Iranian territory is a legitimate target for our forces.”
On Sunday, Trump described the arrests as “wonderful,” noting that the United States and the United Kingdom had been placing these men under investigation for a “long time.”
“It was an amazing job in cooperation with Britain,” Trump told reporters in Chicago. They were planning to cause serious damage to our base, and cooperation with the British has yielded excellent results.” He added, “We had been monitoring them for a long time, and we succeeded in arresting them.”
The British authorities did not comment on this allegation, and it is not clear whether the five men were under surveillance before arriving in the Fairford area in the early hours of Sunday.
