Police in Britain say they foiled a suspected attack plot targeting RAF Fairford, an air base in Gloucestershire, after one of the suspects rang the 999 emergency line himself. News of the call emerged on Tuesday. American bombers had flown from the base to strike Iran.
The five people arrested are British nationals from London, aged between 23 and 25. Police picked them up early on Sunday, 320 metres from the base, and found three vans with them. All five were released on bail on Monday but remain suspects in a terrorism investigation.
Armed police arrived at the scene and detained the five men. Officers stripped off their clothes over fears they might be wearing suicide vests, but found none. Bomb disposal experts sent a robot to check the vans. Counter-terrorism police say there was no explosive inside, just fuel, and material first thought to be explosives turned out to be unusable.
Officials declared a "major incident" in the nearby village of Welford, and hours later it emerged that five people had been arrested. A local resident filmed them lying on the pavement without shirts, hands cuffed behind their backs, as security forces searched them.
Prime minister Andy Burnham called a COBRA emergency meeting on Monday afternoon and asked people not to speculate while officials work out the facts.
Counter-terrorism policing chief Laurence Taylor said police acted on Sunday morning on a combination of intelligence, and investigators are keeping an "open mind" on whether the motive was "geopolitical". One line of inquiry is that this was not a foiled terror attack at all, but an attempt to gather information, a rehearsal, or a message aimed at the British and American authorities. Police are also checking whether Iran sent the five men to attack the base.
Tehran denies any involvement. Iran's embassy in London said it "completely rejects and strongly condemns the malicious and baseless speculation", adding that such claims fuel Iranophobia in Britain.
In July, Tehran warned it could strike bases like Fairford if American planes kept flying from there. During the last war, Britain initially refused to let the US use British bases for strikes on Iran, but then-prime minister Keir Starmer later allowed it. The targets were missile sites Iran mainly used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The first reports said a farmer returning from a party had spotted suspicious cars near the base and called 999. It later emerged that the masked men matching his description were in fact armed police officers. The investigation continues, and police are checking whether the suspect wanted to back out of the plan, or whether his call to the emergency line was part of it.