RAF base terror suspects in Britain released on bail
[UPDATE: See See this.]
Aren’t they a flight risk? Supposedly they’re being monitored closely, but I really don’t trust that process. And note that this entire article manages to keep any description of the men out of the story:
Five men arrested over a suspected bomb plot targeting RAF Fairford have been released on bail.
The men, who are all British nationals aged 23 to 25, were arrested on Sunday on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences, after three vans were discovered 400m from the Gloucestershire air base.
The suspects are from the London areas of Camden, Westminster and Willesden, police confirmed on Monday. …
“To be very clear, this does not mean that the investigation is over. 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.”
Just a bunch of British chaps? I doubt it. Iran may be involved:
Police are understood to be investigating a possible Iranian link to the alleged plot. However, the Iranian embassy “categorically rejected” it had any involvement.
Well then, that settles it.
Speaking of Iran involvement, attacks on Jewish site in Europe have been linked to Iran:
Pro-Iranian terror cells were involved in a blast outside a historic synagogue in the city of Liege in March and a subsequent arson attack in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, Belgium’s intelligence agency Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) found.
“Belgium has confirmed that Iran was behind the attacks in the country six months ago,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Saturday.
Tehran is suspected of directing a series of attacks targeting Jewish sites across several European cities since the beginning of 2026, including Liège, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and London. “An Iran-affiliated jihadist group called the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, also known as IMCR or Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, previously claimed responsibility for similar attacks, including an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an attack against a Jewish school in Amsterdam,” the news website added.
Note that these are not necessarily Israeli targets, but Jewish ones.
What a great idea to import a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists into Europe and the US.
What could conceivably happen?
Military aged men imported/ immigrated from Moslem areas of the Middle East or South Asia not being pacific to the indigenous culture of Europe?
Inconceivable.
Mark Steyn: “Britain – where everything is policed except crime.”
If I were the US military I woudl ignore any and all “guarantees” from the British government as to the safety of our men/women as well as our aircraft on nay base im the UK. We should have our own guards – lots of them on duty 24/7. The problem is that I am not sure the Eloi low testosterone Brits wold allow it in which case we shouldn’t be there.
The ruling class never even gave that a thought. All they saw was the Coke Christmas tree commercial and all they heard was John Lennon’s Imagine in their heads.
I think the transnational Western elite class does increasingly know they’ve messed up now, but they have absolutely no idea what to do about it. Their procedures and routines, their ingrained habits, all point away from effective action, and they are terrified by rising ‘populist’ movements of various stripes, so a lot of their attention is just on political and social self-preservation.
Witness the current PM of Spain, who is more or less flailing, caught between elite left ideology, a political trap in which all options are bad, and seeing no option but to lash out.
Iran has been murdering Jews all over the world for decades, at least as far back as the Argentina bombings in the 1990s. It’s an absolute disgrace to the so-called “world community” they haven’t been made pariahs yet because of it.
John Galt: Where else would you find the one-mile long runways our B-1 bombers require? Not in Belgium!
How hard can it be to get away? Doesn’t seem that hard to get there.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they disappear, or if show up in court to get wrists slapped and don’t do it again.
England is gone, spent two years there so have a affection for the country.
It is unpossible that Iran could be targeting non-Israeli Jews. I have it on the best authority that Iran only hates Israel, not Jews.
Road Warrior
I believe you are writing tongue-in-cheek, so you would be interested in the following, from Iran’s farm team in Lebanon: Hassan Nasrallah: In His Own Words
Mo H8ed the Jews for not dropping their religion and following him. Iran follows what Mo said
*sigh* I served — and lived overseas at various US air bases when terrorism aimed at those bases and the American personnel was a real and serious consideration. I was so paranoid about it all for years that whenever anyone asked — out of polite social courtesy, mostly — “Are you an American?” my first reaction was to wonder why they wanted to know and would it be safe to reply in the affirmative. I spent those years overseas working to blend in, when I was on my time off, or doing those touristy things in Greece, or Spain — or really, anywhere across Europe. Locally-purchased clothing, never speaking English in public, having AAFES plastic bags visible, or any bits of luggage, or clothing labeled with military logos … avoiding known off-duty hangouts catering to military personnel… been there, done that.
Now all that must apply to our bases in Britain.
Good to have been an ally in past years, Britain, as well has having been a safe posting for US personnel.
“Been” being the operative world.
Diversity is their strength, Islam not being a race, a political insurgency.
And the same types that loved the USSR now love the Islamists. What is it with the suicidal self loathing in Britain?
— om
It’s not just Britain. It’s the exact same impulse we see in the Blue States and cities in the USA, in Canada, in Europe. Merkel was reacting to the same impulse when she invited in waves of immigrants in 2015. The elite class in the West hates teir own society and their own heritage. They want to escape from it, but retain the structures and power base and social status that came with it.
It’s no different in Britain, it’s just that the way the British system is structured makes it easy for them to express it.
It’s not new, either. Peter Hitchens wrote a book called The Abolition of Britain all the way back in 1999, talking about this same elite cultural impulse.
All that’s happened is that time has passed and the people who were in their thirties back then are in elderhood now and are running the British uniparty and trying to figure out how to make their old dreams happen.
And the indigenous British didn’t want to shuffle off quickly enough for the ruling twits so the imported the third world. And felt less guilty about their own culture; their best and brightest got culled in 1914-1945.
I have been reading about this story all day on various outlets, and the details keep changing, but one thing that remained constant is the release of the suspects on bail: what in the world are the Brits doing!?!?!
My tin-foil-hat thoughts, based on some things in the linked Telegraph story, and some things that were not: (1) The police did not evacuate the villagers for 4 hours (2) although they searched for (possibly found*) explosives in the van — seems a little complacent to me (3) police took 25 minutes to get there and they were still able to round up the suspects — plenty of time to get clear away IMO; (4) the whistleblower called the base emergency number FIRST and got no response, (5) despite there having been another incident very recently — where was security if not at the phone or on the perimeter?; (6) the authorities have not questioned her yet* — but see #8; (7) she was the SECOND person to call the base, and get no answer — a detail easily confused but important; and (8) excuse me???
Conspiracy theories de jure: Perhaps the men were released on bail because the authorities knew who they were and knew what they were doing. Perhaps it was some kind of “training exercise” in terrorism defense that went awry because of the vigilant female farmer (well-intentioned but incompetent, as streiff suggests in his post)?
OR (even more foil in the hat) was it an actual “terrorist” operation with complicit UK personnel at the base, perhaps seeking to end the American presence for “safety reasons”?
Some or all of the “news” could be garbled and subject to correction, except the timing of (1) and (3), which seem to be consistent, and confirmable. The others we may never know for sure.
Seventy-two hours may not be long enough to get the truth (or a better approximation of it) out to the public.
All entries are quotations from the indicated posts and have been arranged in order of my questions rather than as they appear in the articles.
*I couldn’t find my source for (2) “finding” explosives & (6) “no questioning” again, so may have to take those out.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2026/09/28/the-attempted-attack-on-us-base-in-uk-couldve-been-a-very-big-deal-n2207458
(1) Around 7 AM, police began evacuating residents. (she called the police about 2am)
(2) Bomb squad personnel were reported on the scene, and this is when the counterterrorism police took over the case.
(3) She called the local police, then she alerted her neighbors via WhatsApp and told them to shelter in place. About 25 minutes later, police arrived, seized the vans, and corralled and arrested the men.
(5) RAF Fairford appears to have operated at a heightened level of security for over a week, even compared with other U.S. bases in the UK.; (the farmer) “We knew the air base had a credible threat of a terrorist attack before last night.”
https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/09/28/uk-local-who-exposed-terror-plot-near-us-operations-speaks-out-n4957720
(4) Unable to contact the base, (3) she called 999, which caused police to arrive fairly quickly. (if you call 25 minutes quick)
(5) “We realised this was something pretty serious. We knew the air base had a credible threat of a terrorist attack before last night. So as soon as I saw them I was worried,” she stated. “I mean, you don’t see masked men running around at half one in the morning in the countryside near a secure air base and not have concerns.”
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/09/28/raf-fairford-plot-day-2-public-demanding-answers-officials-media-channel-norm-mcdonald-n3819389
BONUS memes in this post.
(1) On Monday morning, evacuated villagers said they were “dumbfounded“ that police took more than four hours to evacuate them, leaving the residents as “sitting ducks”.
(4) She said she’d called the base hotline number all the Whelford residents had, gotten no response, then another line – still no answer. And finally the British version of our 911, which is 999, and that’s when the Gloucestershire police responded.
(5) Everyone in that village, where many of them work on base or know someone locally who does, knew the base security threat level had been raised in the days immediately preceding the foiled attack.
AND
In fact, whatever they had was so concerning that non-essential base employees were excused from coming to work, and locals saw extraordinary measures at perimeter access points.
(7) There’s another mystery, and this one has yet to be teased apart. Initial reports all said that a call came in to the Gloucestershire police at 12:45 AM about the suspicious vans, and when this intrepid farmer’s interview broke late yesterday afternoon in the Telegraph telling her hair-raising story, everyone assumed they were one and the same. I know I did.
But, hello.
The farmer’s encounter didn’t happen until almost an hour later – nearly 1:45 am.
AND
The farmer said she found it “strange” that the police said at a press conference they had responded to calls about suspicious vehicles at 12.45am, adding: “If this is the case, why did they not know they were in Whelford when I called almost an hour later?”
(8) Defence Secretary Wes Streeting told #BBCBreakfast a farmer who called 999 when she saw “a large group of hooded and masked men” near the base, has only ”a partial picture” of events (I bet that’s true!)
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/09/28/tale-of-two-terrorism-plots-n3819378
Repeats most of the above details but adds some context about UK handling of terrorists in the past that is quite amazing.
LATE BREAKING report that may derail all my conspiracy theories, but I have invested too much time in the plotting to erase it all now!
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/09/28/rubio-reveals-stunning-news-about-people-who-may-be-behind-fairford-incident-n2207498
Rubio said it was one that “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor.” He said he wouldn’t “get into great detail yet.” He said, beyond the release of the men, the U.K. authorities had been very helpful. … There’s a lot more news that will come out in the days to come, Rubio said, noting there was only so much he could say right now on the matter.
Found my explosives in another report. Maybe they were something else but they looked suspicious enough to get out the bomb squad.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-stealth-bomber-base-uk-delta-alert-nearby-counter-terror-police-make-arrests-deploy
(2) The bomb squad found large black barrels inside the vans.
(5) Last night, before the incident, reports said that the base was at its highest alert with tractors blocking all gates. A local in the village said they had been stopped at gunpoint at a roadblock by a group of American soldiers, who ordered them to put their hands out of the car and identify themselves
The “no questions” was in Neo’s link (Yahoo copied a Telegraph story).
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/raf-terror-suspects-british-nationals-113535954.html
(1) She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m just really keen to highlight that it appears someone really dropped the ball on this. Following my call at 1.36am, the police were aware of the presence of the three vans, but didn’t evacuate the village until 6am.
(6) “No one from the police has been in touch to ask me anything about it. I think they were hyper-focused and vigilant about the base itself, and had absolutely no regard for our village.
An example of the confusion is this conflicting reporting from Zerohedge, which is just copying other sources AFAICT – one of which left out the calls to the base itself:
President Trump told reporters earlier this afternoon that British and US authorities had been monitoring the suspects and alleged they intended to cause “big damage.”
BUT
According to the agency, counter-terror police had no advance knowledge of a potential plot.
Maybe Rubio will clear that up later, after he takes on his next role as a bomb squad expert.
And about those memes — from various sources.
https://media.townhall.com/cdn/hodl/ha/images/2026/271/dc54f872-0c8d-40dd-b97e-117e254a7d40-650×0.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HTO_Be2XYAMDAQU?format=jpg&name=medium
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/2104593462373077465
In re #8:
https://media.townhall.com/cdn/hodl/ha/images/2026/271/b288a1f9-6425-431f-8b40-b29e5b969678-650×0.jpg
John Hinderaker voiced what I was trying to say about a faux-terrorist attack from agents sympathetic to Iran, working within the base to foil security.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/09/terror-attack-on-uk-air-force-base-foiled.php
“I am frequently struck by the thought that we are fortunate that Islamic terrorists are usually so incompetent. But there is another way of looking at it: Iran’s regime may think that what is important is not that attempts like this one succeed–the impact would probably be minimal in any event–but rather that they impress on the British public the idea that their American alliance comes at a cost.”
However, regarding the mixed signals on surveillance, maybe the UK team did have this group on their radar and had “laid low” to give them a chance to get caught actually attacking the base, but the alert female farmer (the “us” in her comments is never explained) blew the ambush op.
Releasing them on bail might be a ploy to gather in more conspirators.
Or maybe it’s just UK Islamophilia on steroids.
Highly comical reading these. UK media now reporting that the “terrorists” were British citizens stealing diesel.
Another lesson in not dragging out your in built assumptions before you see what the world is really like?
Trump “ we’ve been tracking them for ages”
Reality .. common crims nicking diesel and farm machinery.
Refreshing to note that there are still those who believe the British media….
Meanwhile, the cutting edge of enlightened nations, such as they are, has for some time now appeared to be the moral imperative of waging war both on their own citizenry and on the Jewish state.
(Funny how that happens…)
“UK targets IDF: Blocks over 80 export licences”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/433831
Related:
Say what you want about the Brit media. At least Minitru is in fine fettle!
“British Schoolkids Told To List Only The Positives Of Mass Migration”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/british-schoolkids-told-list-only-positives-mass-migration
Highly comical reading these. UK media now reporting that the “terrorists” were British citizens stealing diesel.
==
And you’ll take that at face value. Including what is meant by the term ‘British citizens’.
Judges keep reminding us that they’re the enemies of the man in the street.
David Clayton:
What the world is really like? What the world is really like is that terrorist plots and terrorists acts in Britain usually involve citizens or non-citizens of Middle Eastern origin. What the world is really like is that this particular story was initially widely reported as suspicion of terrorist acts. And that’s how I reported it, as well.
Half of the post was about other things, too – terrorist acts in Europe originating in Iran.
— David Clayton
And you take that seriously why?
‘British citizen’ or ‘British national’ just means they have British passports. Those have been handed out like candy to foreigners.
“Stealing diesel?’ I suppose it could be. Not very likely, all things considered, but possible. But Occam’s Razor points away.
Right Clayton, whoever head of a Muslim committing a terrorist act? Good to know though that for you the only good Jew is a dead Jew.
More high comedy from Brits with a bit of inspiring initiative…
“Workplace accident?”
…as “Grooming scandal town Rotherham to become the UK’s first ever Children’s Capital of Culture…”
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2026/09/29/workplace-accident/
Doesn’t get much better than this!
Yessir! British humour at its very best!
(Or maybe it’s just another “dry run”?…or could it be an attempt to cook up some fish ‘n chips with—a bit too much—diesel? The ingenuity of it all is infinite!)
Re: Fairford incident
_____________________________________________
…another call came from a farmer on her way home from a party who’d had her trip blocked by three vans in the middle of a lane. She reported young ‘Middle Eastern-looking men,’ some with faces swathed in balaclavas, scampering off into the woods. In the dead of night.
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/09/29/the-raf-fairford-follies-day-three-n3819426
_____________________________________________
The above article is a decent round-up of our story thus far. I can’t make it make sense yet so I’m keeping my powder dry. However, I sure don’t discount the possibility of an Iranian or Iran-adjacent plot.
For one thing Trump says of the Fairford suspects, “We know everything about them. We would have not released them.”
If these were just a gang of larcenous British guys stealing fuel, why would the US know about them? Perhaps the Brits briefed us or maybe we’ve been watching them too.
__________________________________
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the weekend incident at RAF Fairford “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c65y7nl29k0et
__________________________________
I sure would like to know their names and backgrounds beyond early 20s, male, British citizens, London.
Lately Victor Davis Hanson has been emphasizing his expectation that we are going to see Iranian attacks in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
Iran is on the ropes. Their best shot is to make enough trouble that Republicans do poorly in the midterms and Trump is handicapped in waging the Iran War.
Just reading that the vans are said to have had IBC tote tanks in the back, empty. These are large plastic tanks on a pallet base, with a protective metal cage around them, typically holding more than 300 gallons. With a large filling port on top, and usually 2″ valved outlets on the bottom. Easily moved around with a forklift.
So if this is true, I think the fuel theft angle is reasonable one. Fuel theft is a major problem at any industrial / military location.
But it still doesn’t make any sense why they released them though, before working through all of the followups required to ensure there is no more nefarious angle at work.