British counterterrorism police arrested a 41-year-old member of the U.S. Army near Gloucester on Tuesday on suspicion of spying for Russia, according to London’s Metropolitan Police.
The soldier was held under the National Security Act 2023, on suspicion of offences under its first and third sections, and officers were searching two Gloucestershire addresses, the force said. The first of those sections deals with obtaining or disclosing protected information. The third covers assisting a foreign intelligence service. He is being detained in London and has not been named or charged.
“The country to which the allegations relate is Russia,” the statement said.
The BBC said it understands the serviceman had been posted to Imjin Barracks, the Innsworth site where NATO stations its Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. The command is multinational and exists to take over the alliance’s land forces if NATO calls on it. Officers assigned there can run anything from a brigade of a few thousand troops to a corps in the tens of thousands, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Brig. Gen. Sean Stinchon, who leads U.S. Army Counterintelligence Command, pointed to the risk posed by trusted personnel.
“The alleged conduct of a senior soldier, entrusted with sensitive information, is a sobering reminder that insider threats are real and persistent,” he said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing nationally, credited joint work.
“This significant arrest and investigation is a result of close collaboration between UK and US authorities,” she said. “The allegations are serious and our investigation is very much ongoing.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said the allegations were of the utmost concern to the United States and its allies, then put a figure on his bureau’s caseload.
“This includes 167 counterintelligence and espionage arrests from this FBI over the last 21 months – a 53% increase,” the bureau director said.
Officers arrested two Latvian citizens in October under a different section of the act after a fence breach at RAF Molesworth, the Cambridgeshire station housing NATO’s Intelligence Fusion Centre.
Teddy Young, a 24-year-old serving Royal Navy sailor, was charged last month over Russia under the same legislation, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors allege the sailor turned to the dark web in an attempt to contact Russian authorities. The Royal Navy declined to comment further while the case is live.
The Met said no other live counterterrorism investigation is connected to Tuesday’s arrest, which separates it from the suspected September plot against RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire air base used by American bombers. Police re-arrested two men over that case in October on suspicion of assisting Iranian intelligence.
The act lets police hold the American for up to 14 days before any charge. Neither police nor the Army has said what he is alleged to have passed on, or whether it reached Moscow.
