Call to the police from one of the five arrested near the Fairford base raises new doubts

All the doubts and questions that arose around the arrest and subsequent release on bail of the five hooded men who were loitering near the Fairford military base have multiplied when it was learned this Tuesday that it was one of them who called the police to alert them of their presence.

Following this call to number 999, police officers immediately arrived in the area, arrested the suspects and proceeded to search the three vans that had been driven there. Bomb teams equipped with robots inspected the interior of the vehicles. The Police Anti-Terrorist Unit, leading the investigation from the beginning, ruled out the presence of explosives. Inside the vans were barrels, some empty and others full of fuel.

The five men, aged between 23 and 25, all of them British nationals and living in different neighborhoods of London, were released on bail on Monday afternoon, with “strict precautionary measures” and still under police investigation.

Investigators still do not rule out the hypothesis that the five men were acting, consciously or unconsciously, under orders from Iran. The call from one of them to the police could be interpreted for several reasons: perhaps the suspect had a last-minute regret, or perhaps his plan was to get as close as possible to the military base as a warning to the British authorities.

The 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.”

Although at first the British Government of the previous Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, denied the Donald Trump Administration authorization for the use of its bases, in a subsequent decision it gave the green light to this use, as long as it was for 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."

The United States discrepancy

Throughout this Tuesday, the US Administration has once again expressed its disagreement with the decision to release the suspects on bail. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has insisted that the incident had the hand of “a foreign actor” behind it, without specifying further details. And President Trump has again criticized the behavior of the British police: "I am disappointed. How can a terrorist be released on bail? They are very bad people. They should not have done that yet. It was an operation that had been going on for a while and in which we were involved," Trump said this Tuesday.

After “extensive interrogations and investigations,” the police released them on bail on Monday, despite the fact that the law allowed them to hold them for up to 14 days.