A U.S. Army officer arrested in Britain on suspicion of trying to spy for Russia is a decorated veteran of the Afghanistan war who was caught in a sting operation, according to two American officials familiar with the case.
The suspect, Lt. Col. Brandon Tyner, 41, was arrested this week. British officials are expected to charge him on Sunday or Monday, and after that, the U.S. Army will seek to charge him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and transfer him to the United States, the two officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry.
Beyond the sting, it was not clear what actions prompted Colonel Tyner’s arrest. He was based at the headquarters of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps in Gloucestershire, about 100 miles west of London. The base is NATO’s largest in Britain and hosts troops from 20 allied nations responsible for rapid response to crises.
In a statement announcing the arrest, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, said the case involved “allegations of espionage.” Though officials said in a statement that “the country to which the allegations relate is Russia,” it is unclear whether Colonel Tyner actually handed over sensitive information to Moscow.
Cellphone numbers for Colonel Tyner and his wife were disconnected. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that he had been caught in a sting.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement. “This arrest has nothing to do with us, and we don’t know what it is connected to,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Colonel Tyner has been enlisted as a senior human resources officer in the Army since January 2008 and was deployed to Afghanistan for a year starting in December 2013. He also served in Iraq in 2019 and 2020 and Qatar before that. He is the recipient of a Bronze Star Medal and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, among other awards.
His LinkedIn page indicates that he received a bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
In Britain, counterterrorism police have investigated several high-profile terrorism cases related to the United States in the past months, including two cases of arrests near air bases in England where the American military operates.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in the United States said that the commander of a powerful Iranian-backed militia helped direct a plot while sitting in a Brooklyn prison against R.A.F. Fairford, a military airfield used by American bombers in the war against Iran. In September, five men were arrested and then later released on bail near the base in connection with the plot.
Separately, two Latvian men were arrested in October on suspicion of a national security offense after breaching the perimeter of R.A.F. Molesworth, about 70 miles north of London, in Cambridgeshire, England.
British police said the arrest of Colonel Tyner was not related to those cases.
