Photograph Source: Chris Gunns – CC BY-SA 2.0

Five men, initially detained on suspicion of committing offences under the Explosives Act, then arrested on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act.  Residents of 85 households in the Cotswolds village of Whelford evacuated to Cirencester leisure centre.  A 400-metre area with three white vans cordoned off.  The same men, released within hours of being seized near the Royal Air Force Fairford base in Gloucestershire after it was found that the chemicals found in their vans were not deemed “viable” as explosives.  All British nationals, aged 23 to 25, and London residents.  Other details on background scrupulously omitted by the police, with Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) claiming that “multiple lines of inquiry” were being pursued.

Looming large was the hypothesis that these individuals had been working at the behest of a foreign state.  Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of CTP, tantalised with the suggestion that “this may be activity committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state.”  The men in question, according to the police, remained under investigation, with their release “subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others”.

The initial report on the movement of the men came from a farmer who had spotted the three white vans in Whelford.  When she arrived home, she found the driveway and road blocked.  A “large group of hooded and masked men”, according to her, were spotted.  “When they saw me,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “they ran ahead of me – some into the field and some towards the neighbouring village of Kempsford. I then realised that something very unusual was taking place.”

She had been........

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