A 31-year-old man from Swindon has been charged with offences under the National Security Act following an investigation led by Counter Terrorism Policing London.
Joshua Cammidge is charged with materially assisting a foreign intelligence service and with conduct said to be preparatory to an act of sabotage. He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday, 10 September.
The allegations have not been proved. Proceedings are active, Cammidge is entitled to a fair trial and this report deliberately avoids speculation about evidence that has not been presented in court.
According to the Metropolitan Police and reports by the Associated Press and The Guardian, Cammidge was arrested at an address in Swindon on Friday, 4 September by counter-terrorism officers supported by Wiltshire Police. Officers also searched another address in the town.
Police allege that the case relates to contact with a suspected representative of the GRU Volunteer Corps, which UK authorities say is controlled by Russian military intelligence. The precise act of sabotage allegedly being prepared had not been publicly disclosed when this article was prepared.
What the charges mean
The National Security Act 2023 modernised the UK's offences covering espionage, foreign interference and sabotage. The assisting-a-foreign-intelligence-service offence focuses on conduct that materially assists a foreign intelligence service where the required legal conditions are met.
A charge of preparatory conduct concerns alleged steps towards a relevant act rather than requiring the alleged final act to have been completed. In this case, the prosecution will still have to prove every element of the offences to the criminal standard.
The Crown Prosecution Service said prosecutors had decided there was sufficient evidence to bring the case and that a prosecution was in the public interest. That is the threshold for starting proceedings, not a judicial finding of guilt.
What happens next
The first hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court is expected to deal with preliminary matters. Serious national-security charges are ordinarily sent onward to a higher court, but the court will determine the next procedural steps.
Reporting restrictions and contempt-of-court rules are especially important once proceedings are active. Material shared online can create the same risks as material published by a newsroom. Claims about a defendant's character, alleged motives or supposed undisclosed evidence should not be treated as harmless social-media discussion.
For readers, the safest summary is narrow but significant: a named defendant has been charged; the prosecution has identified the statutory offences; police have described the alleged foreign-intelligence connection; and the facts will now be tested through the courts.
Why this is a major local and national story
For Swindon and the wider Oxfordshire-Wiltshire area, a counter-terrorism operation and searches at two local addresses make this an immediate regional story. Nationally, the charges show how the 2023 legislation is being used against alleged activity linked to a foreign state.
The wider security context explains the public interest, but it must not be used to fill gaps in this individual case. Previous hostile-state incidents and general warnings about Russian intelligence activity do not prove anything about the defendant before the court.
That restraint is not timidity. It is how accurate reporting protects both the integrity of the trial and the public's ability to understand what authorities are alleging.
The OutOut view
There is no roast section for an active national-security prosecution. The responsible job is to report the charge, identify what is alleged, state what remains unknown and allow the court process to do the work.
OutOut will update the story when proceedings produce verified new information rather than attempting to win a race against facts that do not yet exist.
More verified regional and national reporting is available in OutOut's UK section.
