Two charged with UK security offences over airbase plot: police

UK anti-terrorism police said Tuesday two men have been charged with national security offences after an incident last month at a British airbase used by the United States, linking the scare to Iran. The head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, Laurence Taylor, said two British men aged 24 had been charged: one with assisting a foreign intelligence service, believed to be in Iran, and another with entering a prohibited place for a purpose "prejudicial" to the UK.

This is the first time that anyone has been charged over the incident at RAF Fairford, after police arrested seven suspects in the days afterwards, before releasing them on bail. Police were called to the Royal Air Force's Fairford base in southwest England in the early hours of September 27 after a local farmer reported a group of men with several white vans engaged in "suspicious" activity. "While some of the circumstances remain unclear, we are confident that this activity was conducted on behalf of a foreign intelligence service," Taylor told reporters on Tuesday outside Metropolitan Police headquarters in London.

Days after the incident the United States withdrew all its B-1 bombers from the base. - Suspects charged - A week ago police said they had re-arrested two of the suspects, one of whom has now been charged. Police charged 24-year-old Nouman Essghir with entering or approaching a "prohibited place" for a purpose "prejudicial" to the interests of the United Kingdom. Essghir was arrested at the scene in Gloucestershire and then released on bail, before police re-arrested him a week ago.

The police chief said the charge against Essghir related to "suspected activity" more than a month earlier, on Saturday 22 August, without giving any details. The second man who has been charged, 24-year-old Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim, was arrested after being interviewed under caution over the last week, police said. He has been charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service. "In this case, we believe that country to be Iran," the police said.

Taylor said Counter Terrorism Policing had seen "a range of incidents in recent months that we believe have been directed by the Iranian state". "This is not a theoretical threat. This is something we are responding to every day," he added. Both of the charged men live in Westminster, a district in central London. Six other men remain on bail, one of them a dual UK-Iranian national who had been re-arrested last week. Taylor acknowledged that some of the police's "decisions made during our investigations can sometimes appear illogical".

"But I want to make it very clear that there will always be a good reason or rationale behind them," he said. am-jkb/rlp