Police continue to question Iranian men over alleged terror plot

Four men are continuing to be questioned by police over an alleged terror plot in the UK.

The men, who are Iranian nationals, are being held over an alleged plan to target “a specific premises”, the Metropolitan Police said.

A fifth Iranian man who was also detained has been released on bail, the Met added.

The men were arrested in Swindon, west London, Stockport, Rochdale and Manchester.

Police arrested the five men – two aged 29, a 40-year-old, a 24-year-old and another aged 46 – in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The Met said it obtained warrants to further detain four of the men until Saturday. They were originally detained under the Terrorism Act.

The fifth man, who was detained under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), was released on bail with conditions until a date in May.

The Met said the “affected site” allegedly targeted in the plot had been made aware and was being supported by police.

Officers are carrying out searches at a number of addresses in Greater Manchester, London and Swindon.

Footage showed armed officers taking a man from a house in Rochdale, while another man was dragged through the street in Swindon with plastic bags over his arms. It is understood military personnel were involved in the Rochdale raid.

In Swindon, one eyewitness told the BBC that six men entered a cafe the suspect was in and ordered coffee and donuts before they followed him out and “jumped on him”.

Cdr Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said officers “are progressing what is a significant and highly complex investigation”.

“The investigation is still in its early stages and we are exploring various lines of enquiry to establish any potential motivation as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public linked to this matter,” he added.

Three other Iranian men – aged 39, 44 and 55 – were arrested in London on Saturday in relation to a separate counter terrorism investigation, under section 27 of the National Security Act, the Met said.

The act covers offences deemed a threat to national security. Section 27 grants police the power to arrest someone without a warrant if they are reasonably suspected of being involved in “foreign power threat activity”.

Cdr Murphy stressed that they were not linking the two investigations.

He said the operations were “certainly significant and it is unusual for us to conduct this scale of activity”.

On Sunday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the two operations “reflect some of the biggest counter state threat and counter terrorism operations that we have seen in recent years”.

Last year MI5 said it had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots since January 2022.

Director general Sir Ken McCallum, said these presented “potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents”.

There have previously been calls to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – a major military and political force with close ties to Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – as a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.

This would allow tighter control of UK borders and “severe penalties” for those who might be supporting the group”, Nick Aldworth, a former national co-ordinator for counter terrorism policing, said.

“It becomes quite challenging when organisations that are proscribed are effectively part of the state,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He added it was “unclear” how much support the group had in the UK.

Jonathan Hall KC, an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the public was not aware of “how aggressive Iran is willing to be”, adding UK authorities “undoubtedly” need more tools to deal with this particular case.

The use of the internet to organise attacks should be examined “remorselessly,” and people made aware of the full extent of the law, he told the BBC.