National newspaper the Sunday Express has claimed that the Royal Air Force (RAF) foiled a planned terrorist attack that would have targeted the cities of Bath, London, Ipswich and Brighton last November.
The story, published this morning, explains how the attacks were being planned in the week after the terrorism in Paris, but the two foreign pilots, ‘one of whom was flying for an airline on an intelligence service watchlist’, were intercepted talking about the plot.
The newspaper goes on to say that although the pilots were using coded messages on the radios of their passenger jets, the Arabic transcripts were passed to GCHQ where it was established they were talking about attacks on London, Bath, Brighton and Ipswich.
It is claimed that the uncovering of the attacks was the cause of the raised terror alert in the UK and was one of the factors which led to Operation Templer, involving 10,000 soldiers being deployed to support police on Britain’s streets.
The pilots were using the emergency “Mayday” channel believing they were not being monitored, though RAF operators at the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) Control Centre in Hampshire heard the conversation.
Last night, a senior intelligence source told the Sunday Express: “The areas we believed these attacks might take place were given extra surveillance. Troops were on several hours notice to deploy as part of Operation Templer.”
A senior RAF source added: “Alarm bells rang after several communications in code involving overseas airline pilots were picked up by chance.
“We can only assume that they considered it safer to use this frequency than other modes of communication.
“We immediately passed these to the security services who then asked us to monitor certain airlines entering UK airspace.”
