A ‘dry run’ or fuel thieves? The RAF Fairford plot scenarios, according to experts

Fears over security have been raised after the release on police bail of five men arrested on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences near an RAF base used by US forces. Donald Trump said he was surprised to hear the men, all in their 20s and from London, had been released, while his secretary of state Marco Rubio repeated the President’s claims that the US had helped foil an alleged plot involving a foreign state. Laurence Taylor, head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP), said police were keeping an open mind, and one possibility could be proxies “either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state”. Here is what is known so far about the scenarios that could have unfolded near the air base in Gloucestershire. Iran-linked terror plot? Rubio claimed that incident “clearly involves the hand of a foreign actor”. On Monday, Taylor acknowledged speculation over whether Iran was behind it, and said the force was considering “every possible angle”, including whether individuals might have been working unknowingly on behalf of a foreign state. Shorts Tehran has denied any link with the incident, but Iran, and Russia, have been known to use proxies to carry out crimes on their behalf on UK soil. In 2024, the Director General of MI5 said Iranian state actors were making “extensive use of criminals”, such as drug-traffickers and “crooks”, to conduct activity in Britain, including reconnaissance. Chris Phillips, former head of the UK National Counter Terrorism Security Office, said that while it was a “possibility” that the arrested men had been used as unwitting proxies, or were carrying out hostile reconnaissance, “it doesn’t sound likely”. He said that following the arrest of suspected terrorists “you almost always keep them for a few days while you’re doing your background” – suggesting the release of the men on police bail, after little more than 24 hours, pointed to an alternative scenario. Sir Peter Fahy, former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said that if the suspects had been unwittingly involved in a plot with foreign agents, “they’d [the police] have kept them in, and they’d arrest some other people”. The i Paper understands the men had been under surveillance for some time, but the arrests were opportunistic rather than a planned operation. Some experts have suggested, given the apparent lack of explosives at the scene, that at the time of their arrest the suspects may have been engaging in a dry run ahead of a planned attack. One former counter-terrorism officer told The Telegraph: “One possibility is that this was a hostile reconnaissance operation and they were carrying out a dry run before the actual operation. That might explain why the police do not appear to have found anything such as explosives in the vehicles.” There was also the possibility that a local farmer who raised the alarm, after spotting masked men near the base, had inadvertently stumbled onto a surveillance operation, Fahy added. He said it was possible that “they were under surveillance, and the security services were carrying out some sort of operation, probably in its earliest stages, and this farmer rang up, and the local bobbies then reacted to that, not knowing that there was a surveillance operation, and then basically compromised it.” However, he is doubtful of claims that the men would have been released so that further surveillance could be conducted, adding: “You wouldn’t have thought they would take that risk”. Fuel theft? If a bomb plot is ruled out, the question remains as to what the five men were doing, allegedly wearing balaclavas in three vans so close to an RAF base in the middle of the night. The vans contained barrels and bore a logo and name for a fake fuel transit company, “Fuel 2You”, and a phone number, sparking speculation they could be thieves stealing diesel. A USAF B-1 bomber on the tarmac at RAF Fairford. (Photo: Alastair Grant/AP) Phillips said the men could have been in the “wrong place at the wrong time” next to a military site where there is a credible threat of a terror attack. “There’s lots of reasons they could have been in the woods down there driving around in dodgy vans that don’t involve terrorism,” said Phillips. “They wouldn’t have been released if they’d if there’d been anything on them, [and] certainly wouldn’t have been released if there were explosives in the van.” If explosives were involved, the men’s London addresses would have been raided and local homes evacuated, said Fahy. Why have the men been released on bail? The men were arrested under the Terrorism Act and the Explosives Act, but were then held under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Fahy said this indicated that as soon as counter-terror officers became involved “they don’t seem to have found a great deal. They clearly can’t have gathered enough to in any way justify keeping them in”. Taylor said the men were released on bail under “stringent conditions” but “absolutely remain under investigation” while multiple lines of inquiry are explored. The decision has been questioned in some quarters, with Nigel Farage asking whether it was an example of “two-tier Britain”. But Dennis Kavanagh, a criminal barrister, said the decision showed that, rather than doing something wrong, the police were “acting properly and lawfully now and avoiding a judicial review later”. In a post on social media, he said the CTP briefing outlined that “even persons allegedly involved in active serious matters may have little or no knowledge of an overarching conspiracy and that the challenge the police face is hybrid in that respect”. He added: “We saw precisely this with Telegram-messenger-recruited defendants committing arson at the former PM’s [Keir Starmer] address, and it is not unreasonable to take the officer’s comments as connoting similar circumstances here.” In June, Roman Lavrynovych, 22, was convicted of conspiring with others to commit arson attacks on two homes and a car linked to Starmer. Lavrynovych told the Old Bailey he carried out the attacks after being recruited online by a Russian-speaking Telegram user called “El Money”, and claimed he had never heard of Starmer Bail in criminal proceedings does not indicate innocence or guilt, Kavanagh added. “A person may be arrested, yet entitled to bail under the Bail Act 1976, which provides the general framework for police decisions pre charge,” he wrote. “The police may properly conclude a person has engaged in an enterprise knowingly or unknowingly and reach a bail decision. “None of that various proves ‘two tier justice’, ‘something doesn’t add up’, ‘the police are corrupt’ or “we should know everything now’.”