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UK prosecutors have now charged two men under the National Security Act over last month’s incident at RAF Fairford, the English airbase the US used to launch bombing runs on Iran, with police saying they believe one of them was working for Iranian intelligence.
Getting into it: Mohmed Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both 24 and from London, appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday. Abdulkarim is charged with conduct likely to help a foreign intelligence service, which counterterrorism police said they believe is Iran’s. Prosecutors said that, on orders from a man known only as “Ali,” he got five men to pile into three vans and head to the base in late September, and that the group bought roughly $400 worth of gasoline and stored it in drums.
Essghir is charged with entering a prohibited place for purposes harmful to the UK, and prosecutors said he scouted the base for “Ali” in August and was in one of the vans in September. After the men were told one of the vans supposedly had a bomb in it, Essghir texted “Ali” asking what was going on and got no answer.
“One of them was told there was a bomb in the van … (and) one of them called 999,” prosecutor Louise Gray told the court.
The incident on Sept. 27 brought armed police and military bomb squads into the area and forced dozens of nearby residents out of their homes, but searches turned up only gasoline and no explosives. The US pulled its B-1 bombers off the base shortly after.
Six other men tied to the case, all in their 20s, remain out on bail, a decision Trump has criticized, but police said it helped them build the case. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the plot was almost certainly coordinated by Iran, and Iran’s embassy in London has rejected any link.
This all comes as British security officials warn Iran has shifted toward targeting military sites in the UK, after years of being blamed for plots against dissidents, Persian-language media and Jewish communities in the country.
