According to information reported by The Guardian and the South China Morning Post, the arrests took place in the early hours of the morning, at around 2 a.m. The exact location of the operation remains unclear, however: some accounts place it inside the perimeter, while others say it occurred in an area near the facility.
The alleged offences reported by the sources are not identical. The Guardian reports suspicions of trespassing, criminal damage and entering a prohibited place, while Bloomberg also refers to offences connected with national security. The available material does not make it possible to establish a definitive list of charges.
According to The Guardian’s account, the investigation began several hours before the arrests, when military police allegedly found an abandoned vehicle outside RAF Molesworth. This detail is reported by only one of the available sources.
RAF Molesworth is described by the sources as a facility used or operated by the US military establishment and linked to intelligence activities by the United States and NATO. The base is located in Cambridgeshire, north of London.
The South China Morning Post reports in particular that the facility is associated with the United States Africa Command and the NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre. In the material provided, these organisational details appear only in that source.
The two men arrested are identified in the accounts only as Latvian citizens. Their identities and any possible motives were not provided in the available material; the ages reported also differ: one passage gives them as 32 and 35, while another says 32 and 36.
According to Al Jazeera, police said there had so far been no indication of a link between the incident at RAF Molesworth and events that took place the previous month at RAF Fairford. The full circumstances of the alleged incident remain under investigation.