A farmer who claims to have alerted police to a suspected terror attack at RAF Fairford says she has had “no follow up at all” from the authorities.
The Whelford local told reporters on Monday that she did not see herself as a hero for reporting vans blocking a road near the base while on her way back from a party.
Details of the incident
The woman, in her 50s, said she was travelling home with her husband and a “young lad” who works for them when she spotted the vehicles parked in a “really strange formation”. She said: “You couldn’t drive between them on the road, and you also couldn’t drive up the farm drive, and I think this has been one of the funny things that people are saying: ‘How could you notice?’ But when you live in Whelford, you notice everything. We all know what cars each other drive, we know who we are, we know the people that cycle through regularly.”
She said one of the vans had “strange sign writing on it” and initially believed it was a vehicle belonging to undercover police. She added: “We had a bit of a look at the vans, established there was no one in there, tried to phone the number on the side, just in case we could get it moved, so we could drive down to the farmyard, and the number didn’t work.”
Arrests and aftermath
After dropping off their employee, the farmers turned around and drove back. “We suddenly saw a large group of men,” she said. “They were panicking… I suppose they were panicking because anyone saw them, but our vehicle is quite similar to the patrol vehicles that they use, and we had our lights on main beam. I think we sort of dazzled them, and they started to run, and some of them ran straight ahead across the road into the field, and some turned and started going down towards Kempsford, which is our next village.”
Despite five men having been arrested on suspicion of explosive and terrorism offences, the farmer said there were “definitely more than five”, and estimated she saw between eight and 10 people with their faces covered and wearing “slim-fitting clothes”. She tried to call the MoD police, but the phone “just rang and rang and rang, and no one answered”, before phoning 101, but was put on hold. She then phoned 999 and messaged the village WhatsApp group.
“Literally within five minutes of that, everything sort of kicked off, and armed police arrived, the guys were arrested,” she said. “The helicopter was up searching, probably for a couple of hours and there was a lot of shouting.”
Official response
She continued: “The strange thing is, there was no kind of follow up. The police didn’t ring me, they had all my details, they didn’t phone me back, and nobody told anyone in the village what was going on apart from me. It wasn’t until probably half six in the morning when they suddenly decide to evacuate people. Meanwhile, those vans were right in the middle of the village, next to everyone’s houses and no one did anything.”
Responding to her account, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said earlier on Monday that she only had “a partial picture” of the situation. She told reporters: “I know it’s been said by some of the higher ups today that I didn’t have the full picture, but the picture I had was three extremely unusual vehicles parked in the middle of our village and a group of unknown men running around. So, that’s my picture, I don’t know whether that’s the full picture or not.”
She added: “I don’t know how he knows what picture I’ve got, I’ve never met him. Literally nobody in any sort of official capacity has been in touch with me or anyone else in the village, no follow up at all, even now, from the police who had my number when I reported it to 999, so it’s just very odd.”
