The Radical Reading Room

British prosecutors said on 2026-10-27 that two men were charged under the National Security Act in the RAF Fairford investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service identified the men as Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim, 24, and Nouman Essghir, 24, both from London, and said Abdulkarim is charged with assisting Iran’s intelligence service while Essghir is charged with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the United Kingdom. They were due to appear in court later that day, according to the AP report summarizing the CPS announcement.

The charges grew out of events that began on 2026-09-27, when Gloucestershire police responded to reports of suspicious vehicles in the Whelford area near RAF Fairford. Police said they established a cordon and evacuated about 85 households while specialist officers examined the scene and the vehicles involved. Gloucestershire Constabulary later said Counter Terrorism Policing took over the investigation after the initial arrests, and that the case remained under official review. The police FAQs also made clear that officers were still working to establish motive and could not publicly comment on whether RAF Fairford had been the intended target.

Counter Terrorism Policing’s public updates show a sequence of arrests before the charging decision. On 2026-10-01, officers arrested a 25-year-old dual UK/Iranian national in Westminster on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts under the Terrorism Act 2006. On 2026-10-20, police said two men were re-arrested on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act 2023, and the force said the country the investigation relates to is Iran. Those statements describe the investigation’s focus; they do not amount to a court finding that a foreign state directed the incident.

That distinction matters. The public record supports a serious national-security inquiry and a later charging decision, but not a judicial determination of the full motive, command structure, or broader operational purpose behind the September incident. For now, officials have described a live investigation with multiple lines of inquiry, while the CPS has moved only to formal charges against two men under the National Security Act.