Farmer who alerted police says security services ‘dropped the ball’

Britain’s defence secretary indicated on Monday that UK security services were aware in advance of a suspected bomb plot near RAF Fairford, a Gloucestershire base that hosts US air force missions against Iran. Wes Streeting’s comments followed the arrest of five men on terrorism charges near the base and came in response to a local farmer who alerted police and publicly criticised the security response.

Streeting’s remarks to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme followed comments by US President Donald Trump, who said the suspects “were looking to do big damage” and described British-US cooperation on the case as “an amazing job.” Asked whether he was affirming Trump’s account, Streeting did not reject it, instead praising UK police and intelligence services and saying it was “a proud moment” to see those efforts recognised by the US president.

Armed officers arrested the five men after explosives were found in three white vans parked near RAF Fairford in the early hours of Sunday. A local farmer driving home late at night found her driveway and the road blocked by the vans, saw a group of men wearing hoods and masks who ran away when she appeared, and called 999. “I think it was pure luck that I arrived in the village at a similar time to the vans,” the woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous, told the BBC. “I am absolutely staggered that it was left to me, as a member of the public, to see and report this.”

The woman said she had assumed “someone would be monitoring the roads around the base perimeter and taking regular patrols in the village” and accused security services of having “really dropped the ball on this.” Streeting thanked her for alerting police but said she “had a partial picture” without elaborating.

Police evacuated 85 households in the Cotswolds village of Whelford, near Fairford, to a leisure centre in Cirencester and established a 400-metre cordon around the vehicles. Army bomb-disposal robots were used to examine the vans. Photographs from the scene showed shirtless men being handcuffed in a dark country lane.

Streeting declined to confirm or deny Trump’s claim that the suspects had been under surveillance for some time, citing a live police investigation and operational security concerns. “There’s a live police investigation, and as a matter of course we don’t comment in detail on operational security matters,” he said, “because often the more that we might say, the more insight we give to those who would wish us harm and do us harm, given the opportunity.”

RAF Fairford serves as a staging base for US Air Force missions against Iran. According to the farmer’s account, the base was operating a roadblock close to its main entrance but not on the surrounding roads, and residents had assumed patrols covered the perimeter.

No further details about the identities of those arrested or the nature of the explosives recovered had been released as of Monday morning.