One of the five British citizens who were detained near a Royal Air Force base on Sunday on terror suspicions tied to Iran had called police shortly before the arrests, The Times of London reported on Thursday.
The report, which said counter-terrorism investigators were focusing on evidence tying the RAF Fairford suspects to Iran, did not specify the purpose of the call that one of the suspects had placed to police about an hour before he and four others were detained near the base.
On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the BBC that the United Kingdom had “strong indications that Iran played a part” in the incident.
Burnham said this after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced that the incident “clearly” involved “the hands of a foreign actor,” the Financial Times reported.
The British citizens were detained on Sunday morning after a local farmer told the police that she’d seen three white vans blocking a road in the village of Whelford in the early hours of the morning. She saw a group of masked men, who scattered near the adjacent Fairford air base.
Asked whether Rubio’s assertion about a foreign player was correct, Burnham told the BBC: “We believe so. There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford, but of course it remains an ongoing, complex and serious police investigation.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday told Fox News that Israel had warned the U.K. about an Iranian terror plot shortly before the U.K. announced it would boycott products from Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
“We gave the Brits the intel that there was going to be an attack and that it’s an Iranian-sponsored attack and pretty much the next day they slapped sanctions on us. It’s wild,” Netanyahu said.
