Counter terrorism policing officers are investigating after two Latvian citizens were found to have allegedly broken through the perimeter fence of a major military intelligence station in Cambridgeshire, England overnight.
Two men in their 30s, both Latvian citizens with UK addresses in Peterborough Cambridgeshire, England were arrested at RAF Molesworth in the early hours of Thursday morning, Counter Terror Policing in London have said in a statement.
The men were initially arrested on suspicion of “trespass on a prohibited site and criminal damage”. Later on Thursday, they were again further arrested on suspicion of having committed an offence under section 4 of the National Security Act 2023 by “entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the UK”.
Honor guard members present the colors for the Joint Intelligence Analysis Complex groundbreaking ceremony at RAF Molesworth, England, April 12, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jason W. Cochran)
A terrorism police spokesman said while there is as of yet no indication the trespassing on the sensitive military site is connected to last month’s alleged Iranian attack plot against another American airbase on British soil, the investigation is in its “very early stages” and in terms of determining motives, “we are keeping an open mind”.
Latvia is a NATO member state, one of the handful of smaller Baltic states that directly border the Russian Federation in north-eastern Europe.
According to police, the alarm was first raised at RAF Molesworth late on Wednesday evening, when a security patrol spotted an abandoned car near the perimeter fence. This sparked an intensive search of the vicinity of the vehicle, which turned up a fence breach nearby. Hours later, at around 2am, the two trespassers were found on the base itself and arrested.
RAF Molesworth is, like the headline-grabbing RAF Fairford, legally a British Royal Air Force military base but which works as a de facto U.S. Air Force base on British soil. Unlike Fairford, however, its purpose is not the basing of aircraft — its runway was demolished decades ago — but is rather as an intelligence station.
As well as the United States’ European Command Joint Intelligence Analytics Center and the Africa Command’s Joint Intelligence Command, the base also hosts NATO’s Intelligence Fusion Center (NIFC). Part of the NATO project to integrate intelligence networks between all alliance member states, the NIFC states of their mission:
The NIFC produces full-spectrum, multi-domain operational and strategic intelligence. We are enabled by a wide range of intelligence disciplines, national collection capabilities, and subject matter expertise from personnel who have extensive military and civilian intelligence experience.
In the United Kingdom, in the cases where the British government has base agreements with Washington at facilities like RAF Fairford, Molesworth, and the fighter base at Lakenheath and the tanker base at Mildenhall, British Ministry of Defence police are responsible for security outside of the wire, and U.S. force protection units for on the grounds of the bases themselves. This distinction has been particularly visible at Fairford in recent weeks surrounding the alleged Iranian plot against the facility, with U.S. military armoured cars seen patrolling the base, and military earth movers parked at perimeter gates to prevent a vehicle ram-raid attack.
There have now been seven arrests over the Fairford plot, which allegedly may have involved a planned Ukraine-style mass drone raid against the U.S. bombers previously stationed there, in an Iran state-backed attack on American forces. Yet despite the United Kingdom having extensive and powerful counter terrorism laws allowing investigators to hold terror suspects for extended periods, all seven have been released on bail. The latest, a 22-year-old British national, was arrested on Tuesday in Westminster.