A farmer driving home from a party in the early hours of Sunday says she stumbled onto the group UK police allege was preparing an attack on RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire air base the US has used for Iran-war bomber strikes since March. She came upon three white vans closing off a lane in Whelford around 1:30 a.m. and watched several men in balaclavas take off toward the trees and farmland leading to the base fence when her headlights hit them, she told The Telegraph.
“I just thought, what the hell are they doing… I saw a group of Middle Eastern-looking young guys running off through the trees,” she said. She drove clear of the scene, called 999, and texted a village WhatsApp group warning neighbors to lock their doors. “They would have seen the bright headlights. They probably thought we were the police (and) panicked. It would appear that by doing so I just derailed whatever they were planning,” she said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, Counter Terrorism Policing’s senior national coordinator, said that they are “in the early stages of an investigation, and five men remain in custody.” Police arrested them first on suspicion of Explosives Act offenses, then rearrested them on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act under Section 5 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2006.
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Officers evacuated roughly 85 households to a local leisure centre and set a 400-meter cordon around the vans while the British Army’s bomb disposal unit examined them; police haven’t disclosed what, if anything, they found inside, and haven’t released the suspects’ identities or nationalities.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham called the incident “deeply concerning for local residents and for many people following developments across the country,” thanking Gloucestershire Police, Counter Terrorism Policing and the armed forces for their response.
US President Donald Trump, in his version of the events, told reporters the suspects “were looking to do big damage to our fort,” adding, “We had them under view for a long time, and we got them.”
RAF Fairford has anchored the US bomber campaign against Iran since March, when B-52s first arrived. The Pentagon withdrew those aircraft in July, in what analysts read as a diplomatic gesture toward Tehran, but roughly a dozen B-1B Lancers have kept flying strike missions from the base since.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps declared Fairford “a legitimate target” on July 23, after a B-1 mission struck Iranian territory. Tristan Wilkinson, a Cotswold district councillor, told ABC News a “specific threat” against the base had come from Iran roughly six weeks before the arrests. Investigators are treating an Iran link as one possibility, though nothing has been confirmed.
UK terrorism law lets police hold the five without charge for up to 14 days while the investigation continues.
