The counterterrorism police in Britain on Monday said that five men arrested Sunday near an air base were being released on bail, an unexpected development in what officials originally said was a major incident involving a possible terrorist act.
The five men were taken into custody early Sunday morning near the perimeter of the sprawling R.A.F. Fairford base in southern England. Nearby homes were evacuated as bomb detection robots searched three white vans. Officials initially said the men were suspected of violating the Explosives Act and had been preparing to commit a terrorist act.
Laurence Taylor, who leads Britain’s counterterrorism police, said in a brief statement to reporters Monday afternoon that the men would remain under investigation and would be subject to “stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others.”
But their release raised new questions about what happened near the base, how the men managed to drive three vans so close to an area where American bombers are stationed and whether the British Army’s bomb disposal unit had failed to find any evidence after examining the vehicles for more than 24 hours.
Britain’s national security laws give the authorities widespread latitude to detain terror suspects, so the decision to grant the five men bail suggests the police may not have found enough to link them to a specific act. The British counterterrorism police have not named the men, in line with policing rules that grant anonymity unless a person is charged.
The release of the men, who the police said were all British nationals in their early 20s, came less than 24 hours after President Trump told reporters on Sunday that the suspects had intended to do “big damage” to the British air base. Mr. Trump praised the country’s police, describing their efforts as “fantastic” and “amazing,” and said of the men, “We had them under view for a long time and we got them.”
The police in Britain did not confirm Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the authorities in both countries had the suspects “under view.” Mr. Taylor said he was aware of speculation about what might have been known in advance but told reporters, “I will not always be able to share this type of information.”
Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham had urged people not to speculate. “The investigation remains ongoing,” Mr. Burnham said. He asked British residents to let the police “establish the full facts.” He later convened members of his national security cabinet for a closed-door briefing on the status of the investigation.
Public details about the incident remain murky at best.
Investigators arrested the five men in the early hours of Sunday morning, and a bomb disposal robot spent most of Sunday cautiously examining three white vans while 85 families living nearby were evacuated from their homes.
On Monday, armed police officers staffed roadblocks on the country roads leading to the air base. And more than a day after the police first made the arrests, the tiny village of Whelford, one of three on the outskirts of the base, remained entirely cordoned off.
A farmer told the BBC that she had called the police early on Sunday morning after seeing a large group of hooded and masked men in the fields near the base. The farmer, whom the BBC did not identify, said she was shocked that it was left to her as a member of the public to see and report the men.
Her timeline appeared to conflict with the one given out by the police. She told the BBC that she called the local emergency number at 1:36 a.m. on Sunday. The police have said that they received the first call at 12:45 a.m. and that the men were arrested shortly after.
Wes Streeting, the British defense secretary, praised the farmer in an interview with BBC Radio on Monday morning, while suggesting that she had only a limited picture of what had unfolded.
“I want to pay tribute to that member of the public for her vigilance,” he said. “She’s done exactly what we would hope a member of the public would do in the situation she found herself in.”
But he added, “She will of course only have had a partial view, and I don’t want to go beyond and stray into kind of operational and security detail at this stage.”
The prime minister’s plea to avoid speculation has done little to dampen conjecture that the suspected plot at R.A.F. Fairford might be linked to the war in Iran. American bombers have conducted long-range strikes on the country from the base since the United States and Israel attacked in February.
“If it is Iran-related, it could be hard-liners trying to undermine Iranian government efforts to negotiate a settlement of the war with the U.S., or proxies such as Hezbollah, unhappy that Iran is not paying sufficient attention to their interests,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a security think tank in London.
Another possibility is that Tehran may have “decided negotiations with Trump are going nowhere, despite recent Iranian concessions, and that the pressure has to go up,” Mr. Giustozzi said.
Mr. Taylor, the counterterrorism police chief, acknowledged the widespread speculation about whether the men were connected to a hostile foreign country such as Iran or Russia.
He declined to confirm that but said that the police were “considering this from every possible angle, including that this may be actively committed by proxies or individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state.”
He added: “I have spoken before about the increasing breadth and complexity of the threats we are facing. Often this threat becomes visible to us as criminal activity, often at a small scale and committed by individuals whose primary aim is not terrorism but a quick financial gain.”
Iran’s Embassy in London said in a statement Monday that it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it called “unfounded and malicious speculations” that Iran was involved in the air base incident.
Former Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to allow British bases to be used by the United States to strike Iran, provoking Mr. Trump’s ire. But after Iran conducted drone strikes on British allies across the Middle East, Mr. Starmer changed course and said he would allow what he called “defensive” American strikes on Iran from Fairford. That prompted a furious debate in Britain, including repeated protests near the base by activists who oppose the U.S.-Israeli war.
Mr. Burnham, who replaced Mr. Starmer in July, quietly continued that policy.
On July 23, a few days after Mr. Burnham became prime minister, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran warned Britain that the government’s decision to allow strikes from one of its bases would make it “a legitimate target for our forces.”
Residents of three villages near the base — Whelford, Kempsford and the town of Fairford — have had a front-row seat to the American bombers that have been flying in and out of the base with renewed frequency since the start of the war with Iran earlier this year, swooping low over the town.
On Monday afternoon, a 1,300-foot cordon around the trucks remained in place and many local residents had not yet been allowed to go back. Mr. Taylor said efforts were underway to let the families return as soon as possible.
If Iran was linked to the incident near the British base, it would likely add to the public’s deep skepticism about the war. In public surveys, large majorities of the British public have said they do not support Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran.
In one survey from March, about three-quarters of the respondents expressed concern over the war’s impact on Britain’s security. In the same survey, more than 80 percent expressed concern about the conflict’s consequences for the British economy.
Megan Specia contributed reporting from Fairford, England, and Adam Goldman contributed reporting from London.
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