British authorities have confirmed that they detained five Islamic men, all in their early 20s, Sunday after three vans were spotted near Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford, a U.K.-owned base that has been used by the American Air Force during decades of conflicts in the Middle East.
President Donald Trump said the suspects, who were detained on suspicion of offenses under the U.K.'s Explosives Act following cooperation between the U.S. and Britain, had been "under view" for some time.
British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting declined to give details of the operation but said "it was a proud moment" that President Trump had recognized "the work that our police and intelligence services do every day."
British police are investigating whether the arrests foiled an Iran-linked attack, but Iran was quick to put out a press release saying that they had nothing to do with it and that they would seek legal action against anyone who claimed otherwise.
"These actors were getting ready to do something horrific, and it got thwarted by an aware citizen," summarizes Derek Jones, a retired Air Force fighter pilot who now serves as executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.
He is "very thankful that we've got a lot of decent people out there that will fight against terrorism even if it just means having watchful eyes."
However, the suspects were released on bond a day later.
Former FBI special agent and former Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam, who operated as security specialist for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told the "Washington Watch" program he noticed that shortly after the arrests, it was no longer being reported that the vans were filled with explosives or had explosives in them.
"Obviously, they were trying to transition onto the base," he observed. "But if there weren't explosives in those three vans, then perhaps they were just trying to make their way onto the base. There's always a possibility these were a group of people that were trying to burglarize the local community."
"Something here is not adding up," he insisted.
Because President Trump alluded to the fact that these individuals were already on the radar and were being tracked, Gilliam said the only other alternative is that the U.K. is so liberal that their bail policies will even let potential terrorists with truckloads of explosives loose.
Historically, he could not think of any time the U.S. has released foiled terrorists on bail. Meanwhile, other high-profile British Islamist extremists have successfully skipped bail or court mandates to flee the country.
For example, Siddhartha Dhar (Abu Rumaysah) and Abu Rahin Aziz, both members of the banned group al-Muhajiroun who were arrested in 2014, managed to evade police bail and travel to Syria to join ISIS. In 2013, terror suspect Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed cut off his electronic tracking tag at a London mosque and escaped while under a strict Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures order.
These five individuals were released with very stringent parameters, but Gilliam reasoned, "If they're a terrorist … the chances are they're going to violate those rules and carry out an attack."
Though the releases in this case could give police an opportunity to surveil, Jones is also surprised that British authorities decided to release the suspects on bond.
"This was very quick for a terrorism related offense that they would even let them go when they could hold them for up to 17 days," he submits. "This gives them opportunity to go back and try to delete records, try to hide things."
"I would always want to try to look at the positive side of something, but I see nothing positive out of having released them on bail," Jones tells AFN.
