UK Releases Airbase Suspects Amid Probe Into Foreign State Link

UK police said they had released five men held over an alleged terror plot against an airbase on bail, adding that they remained under investigation, including over possible links to a foreign state.

“This does not mean the investigation is over,” Counter Terrorism Policing chief Laurence Taylor told reporters on Monday afternoon. “They are subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others. They absolutely remain under investigation as we explore multiple lines of inquiry.”

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Monday he would convene an emergency security meeting on Monday to discuss the case. News of the incident broke while Burnham and other top cabinet officials were in Liverpool for the governing Labour Party’s annual conference.

“It is a reminder that at a time of heightened threat we must all remain vigilant,” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who is responsible for domestic security, told the conference. “And to all those who mean us harm and plot violence on our soil. Let this be a reminder: You will never defeat us.”

The five men were arrested on Sunday in an incident near the RAF Fairford airbase in Gloucestershire, England, that is used by the US as a launching point for strikes on Iran. Investigators considered it a serious attempted attack. All five suspects were UK nationals and aged between 23 and 25, police said.

“We are considering this from every possible angle,” Taylor said in a briefing, “including that this may be activity committed by proxies or individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state.”

Bloomberg reported earlier Monday that UK authorities had been closely monitoring increased threats to the base and had tightened security at the site before the alleged attempted attack.

The Iranian Embassy in London said it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it dismissed as “unfounded and malicious” attempts to link the case to Iran. Such speculation would “serve no purpose other than to fuel Iranophobia propaganda in the UK,” the embassy said in a statement posted on the social media platform X.

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that the suspects were “looking to do big damage,” praising the UK for stopping the attack. “We had them under view for a long time,” he said.

However, a local farmer told British media that she had seen a group of men wearing balaclavas near the base just after midnight on Sunday and called the police, raising questions about whether the alleged plot was on the radar of the security services.

The reality may be somewhere in between. While British authorities were watching for threats to the base, according to the people familiar with the matter, they still credited the member of the public with alerting police to the suspects’ presence near the sensitive facility on Sunday morning.

RAF Fairford serves as the preferred bomber forward operating location in Europe for the US Air Force Global Strike Command. Burnham in July approved the use of the base by the US for “defensive strikes” against Iran, continuing the policy of his predecessor, Keir Starmer.

The UK is currently contending with a range of security threats, leaving police with no shortage of possible motivations to investigate. The government has publicly linked a number of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months to Iranian-backed groups, while the country is also combating rising threats from more traditional Islamist-inspired actors. Separately, left-wing activists opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza have broken into British bases several times in recent years.

Britain, like the rest of Europe, is also dealing with an increase in incidences of Russian so-called “hybrid” warfare such as attacks on warehouses containing goods bound for Ukraine.