Police continue to question Iranian men over alleged UK terror plot

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

The men, including four Iranian nationals, are being held over an alleged plan to "target a specific premises", the Metropolitan Police said.

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

Three other Iranian men were arrested in London on Saturday as part of a separate counter terrorism investigation.

As part of an investigation into an alleged terror plot police arrested the men - two aged 29, a 40-year-old and another aged 46 - in the early hours of Saturday morning. The fifth person's nationality and age has not been confirmed.

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.

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".

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

Separately, the Met said three Iranian men - aged 39, 44 and 55 - were arrested under section 27 the National Security Act at addresses in north-west and west London, while searches continued.

When the man left, they followed him out and "jumped on" him in the street "just near a Costa coffee", they 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 Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, 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".

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".

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".

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 the BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.

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