The international criminal court has convicted a leader of the Janjaweed militia of playing a leading role in a campaign of atrocities committed in the Sudanese region of Darfur more than 20 years ago.

It was the first time the court had convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur. The court ruled that the atrocities, including mass murders and rapes, were part of a government plan to snuff out a rebellion in the western region of Sudan.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–al-Rahman, also known by the nom de guerre Ali Kushayb showed no emotion as the presiding judge, Joanna Korner, read out 27 guilty verdicts.

“The chamber is convinced that the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crimes with which he has been charged,” said Korner. She added that sentencing would take place at a later date.

Korner detailed harrowing accounts of gang rapes, abuse and mass killing. She said that on one occasion, Abd-al-Rahman loaded about 50 civilians on to trucks, beating some with axes, before making them lie on the ground and ordering his troops to shoot them dead.

“The accused was not only giving orders … but was personally involved in the beatings and later was physically present and giving orders for the execution of those detained,” said the ICC judge.

Prosecutors had accused Abd-al-Rahman of being a leading member of Sudan’s infamous Janjaweed militia, which participated “enthusiastically” in war crimes.

But Abd-al-Rahman, who was born around 1949, has denied all the charges, telling the court they had the wrong man.

“I am not Ali Kushayb. I do not know this person … I have nothing to do with the accusations against me,” he told the court at a hearing in December 2024.

But Korner said the court was “satisfied that the accused was the person known … as Ali Kushayb”, dismissing defence witnesses who had denied that.

Abd-al-Rahman fled to Central African Republic in February 2020 when a new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC investigation.

He said he then handed himself in because he was “desperate” and feared authorities would kill him.

Fighting broke out in the Darfur region when non-Arab tribes, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against Khartoum’s Arab-dominated government.

The then Sudanese government responded by unleashing the Janjaweed, a force drawn from among the region’s nomadic tribes.

The United Nations has said that 300,000 people were killed and that 2.5 million others displaced by the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.

During the trial, the ICC chief prosecutor said Abd-al-Rahman and his forces “rampaged across different parts of Darfur”.

He “inflicted severe pain and suffering on women, children and men in the villages that he left in his wake”, said Karim Khan, who has since stepped down as he faces allegations of sexual misconduct.

Abd-al-Rahman is also thought to be an ally of the deposed Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC on genocide charges.

Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for nearly three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 after months of protests in Sudan.

He has not, however, been handed over to the ICC, based in The Hague, where he also faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

ICC prosecutors are hoping to issue fresh arrest warrants related to the current crisis in Sudan.

Since 2023, tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which grew out of the Janjaweed militia.

The conflict, marked by claims of atrocities on all sides, has left the north-east African country on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies.

Eswatini will receive 11 people deported by the US later this month, the government has said, the second group of third-country deportees to be sent to the southern African kingdom by the Trump administration in what lawyers and NGOs have described as violations of the migrants’ human rights.

A statement by the Eswatini government posted on social media said: “The individuals will be kept in a secured area separate from the public, while arrangements are made for their return to their countries of origin.”

It added that it would work with the International Organization for Migration on the returns. The statement did not specify where the deportees were originally from, when they would arrive in Eswatini and the reasons given by the US for deporting them. Eswatini’s acting government spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, said she would respond later to a list of questions.

Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to ramp up deportations from the US. This has included striking deals with third countries including El Salvador, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan to remove dozens of migrants who have no connections to where they are being sent and are not given any opportunity to challenge their removals.

At least eight west African men were deported to their home countries via Ghana in September, despite fearing they would be subject to “torture, persecution or inhumane treatment”.

Five men from Cambodia, Cuba, Jamaica, Vietnam and Yemen were deported in July by the US to Eswatini, a country of 1.2 million people landlocked by South Africa and Mozambique, where they were put in a maximum security prison.

Orville Etoria, who served 24 years for murder in the US before being released there in 2021, was returned to Jamaica on 21 September. The US had claimed that the five men were so “uniquely barbaric” that their home countries would not take them back, something that Jamaica’s government denied in the case of Etoria.

Eswatini’s government, which is appointed by Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, said two of the other five men were expected to be repatriated soon.

A group of Eswatini NGOs has challenged the deportation deal. The case has been delayed twice – once when the attorney general did not come to court and again when the judge failed to turn up. The hearing is due on Tuesday 7 October.

US lawyers for the men have said they have been denied the opportunity to have private calls with their clients. On 3 October, Eswatini’s high court granted a local lawyer access to the men. The judgment was stayed, as the government immediately appealed to the supreme court, arguing that “the respondent failed to establish a legally recognised connection with the foreign nationals”.

“The US government is basically paying ‘third countries’ to be the henchmen in their deliberate cruelty toward immigrants,” Alma David, the US attorney for Roberto Mosquera del Peral from Cuba and Kassim Wasil from Yemen, both of whom are still imprisoned in Eswatini, said in a statement responding to Etoria’s release in September.

Eswatini will receive 11 people deported by the US later this month, the government has said, the second group of third-country deportees to be sent to the southern African kingdom by the Trump administration in what lawyers and NGOs have described as violations of the migrants’ human rights.

A statement by the Eswatini government posted on social media said: “The individuals will be kept in a secured area separate from the public, while arrangements are made for their return to their countries of origin.”

It added that it would work with the International Organization for Migration on the returns. The statement did not specify where the deportees were originally from, when they would arrive in Eswatini and the reasons given by the US for deporting them. Eswatini’s acting government spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, said she would respond later to a list of questions.

Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to ramp up deportations from the US. This has included striking deals with third countries including El Salvador, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan to remove dozens of migrants who have no connections to where they are being sent and are not given any opportunity to challenge their removals.

At least eight west African men were deported to their home countries via Ghana in September, despite fearing they would be subject to “torture, persecution or inhumane treatment”.

Five men from Cambodia, Cuba, Jamaica, Vietnam and Yemen were deported in July by the US to Eswatini, a country of 1.2 million people landlocked by South Africa and Mozambique, where they were put in a maximum security prison.

Orville Etoria, who served 24 years for murder in the US before being released there in 2021, was returned to Jamaica on 21 September. The US had claimed that the five men were so “uniquely barbaric” that their home countries would not take them back, something that Jamaica’s government denied in the case of Etoria.

Eswatini’s government, which is appointed by Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, said two of the other five men were expected to be repatriated soon.

A group of Eswatini NGOs has challenged the deportation deal. The case has been delayed twice – once when the attorney general did not come to court and again when the judge failed to turn up. The hearing is due on Tuesday 7 October.

US lawyers for the men have said they have been denied the opportunity to have private calls with their clients. On 3 October, Eswatini’s high court granted a local lawyer access to the men. The judgment was stayed, as the government immediately appealed to the supreme court, arguing that “the respondent failed to establish a legally recognised connection with the foreign nationals”.

“The US government is basically paying ‘third countries’ to be the henchmen in their deliberate cruelty toward immigrants,” Alma David, the US attorney for Roberto Mosquera del Peral from Cuba and Kassim Wasil from Yemen, both of whom are still imprisoned in Eswatini, said in a statement responding to Etoria’s release in September.

One night in early July, Maryan Abdikadir Geedi decided it was finally time to abandon her small shop in the town of Moqokori in the Hiiraan region of Somalia.

Though she had heard of the rapid recent gains made by al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant movement, the 46-year-old had hoped to stay. Since getting married in 2013, Geedi had seen control over Moqokori change hands repeatedly.

“Just like how the rain comes and goes, so does control over Moqokori, but this time it was different,” Geedi said.

Since launching their offensive in February, al-Shabaab has swept through a swath of Somalia, taking back all the territory it lost to a coalition of government forces and allied tribal militias backed by US and Turkish air support in 2023, and adding more. In July, the fighting had reached within 40km (25 miles) of Mogadishu, the capital. Some observers predicted the capital might fall.

“The fear was immense. Word started spreading that [al-Shabaab] were advancing. When the fear got too much to bear, I decided to leave,” said Geedi, who headed for the town of Buloburde, 90km away, with her husband and nine children.

In recent weeks, frontlines have stabilised, though government security forces are still on the defensive. There is a construction boom in Mogadishu, and few now believe the capital will be seized by the militants.

Though the US has intensified airstrikes against al-Shabaab and other militant groups in Somalia, Washington has signalled it will not send back the hundreds of special forces withdrawn during Donald Trump’s first term.

Instead, countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uganda have committed troops, training or air support over recent years, while the African Union mission continues to field thousands of soldiers. Egypt is now sending a large contingent too.

Without this support, government forces would collapse, analysts say.

“It’s a strategic stalemate,” said Samira Gaid, regional security analyst with Balqiis, a Mogadishu-based thinktank. “Al-Shabaab are not interested in taking Mogadishu. They have a lot of smaller towns under their control and most of the rural areas. We have been stuck here for a while … and we will be stuck with it for as long as the government has the edge provided by foreign troops.”

The success of the recent al-Shabaab offensive has dealt a significant blow to the morale of fragmented security forces and the government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who pledged “total war” against the militants after taking power in 2022.

“I’ve lost 20 friends [fellow soldiers] and have been wounded twice in battle,” said one 42-year-old Somalia National Army veteran in the city of Beledweyne.

“I’ve fought in Beera Yabaal, Aboorey, Yasooman, Mabaax, Ceel Qooxle, Adan Yabaal, Masjid Cali Gaduud and Daaru Nicma. In the time since, all these areas have been recaptured by al-Shabaab,” he said. “[Al-Shabaab fighters] believe if they die, heaven awaits them, while most soldiers … want to collect their meagre salaries and return to their families.”

The veteran said he was concerned by the rapid gains made by al-Shabaab in recent months but fears worse is to come if nothing is done now to stop the militant advance.

“Now [al-Shabaab] are in a position where they can move fighters and supplies [around the country] as result of capturing strategic towns in Hiiraan. This puts many more areas in south and central Somalia at risk of falling. They are moving fast,” he said.

Observers point to the government’s weakness as the main cause of the militants’ recent success.

“The situation with al-Shabaab on the ground is always determined by the overall political and security environment and that is quite bad at the moment,” said Ahmed Soliman, an expert in east Africa at Chatham House in London.

“There are really big divisions in the country and these make it very difficult for federal government, its forces and international forces to coordinate counter terrorist efforts. Al-Shabaab are taking advantage of a very fragmented political landscape at this time.”

Further funding for the $160m a year African Union force in Somalia is also uncertain, which “has an impact on operations”, Soliman said.

Three weeks after the fall of Moqokori, al-Shabaab seized the strategic town of Maxaas, which sent shock waves across the country.

“With each day that passed more people started leaving. Homes had been abandoned, stores and markets left empty,” said Nimo Abdi Barre, 37.

With her husband and six children, Nimo trekked to the outskirts of town, where they where able to hitchhike on a lorry heading towards the city of Beledweyne – the capital of Hirshabelle province.

“My kids where vomiting and screaming. This was made worse by fears of IEDs and landmines on the road. My faith in God is what got me through,” she said.

Nimo has remained in Beledweyne, which the government has so far successfully defended.

“I’m here with family but at the same time nothing is worse then feeling like a refugee on your own soil,” she said. “I want to return home but only time will tell if I ever get the chance.”

Two people were killed in the southern Moroccan city of Lqliâa on Wednesday night after security forces opened fire at protesters during demonstrations, local authorities said.

Morocco’s state news agency, Map, cited local authorities as saying two people were killed by police who were acting in self-defence while trying to seize police weapons, as anti-government protests that started as a call for social justice reforms took a deadly turn.

Security forces used firearms after tear gas failed to stop the group from storming into the security force’s facility, local authorities said.

Armed with knives, the group set fire to a part of the facility and to a vehicle, local authorities said.

The deaths were the first fatalities as anger mounts across the north African country over government spending.

The recent wave of youth anger was sparked by earlier protests over poor hospital conditions after eight women died in a public hospital in the city of Agadir, and quickly spread to other cities.

The protests started on Saturday with demands for better education and healthcare and have been organised online by a loosely formed, anonymous youth group calling itself GenZ 212, which has been using used platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and the gaming social chat app Discord to mobilise support.

Membership in GenZ 212’s Discord server has surged from about 3,000 last week to more than 130,000 today.

The protests mirror similar youth-led unrest that has swept countries such as Nepal, Madagascar and Kenya.

Authorities initially responded with attempts to quash the rallies, but the demonstrations escalated into widespread unrest on Tuesday night. The interior ministry said 263 members of the security forces and 23 civilians were injured during clashes.

On Wednesday night, violence spread to the city of Salé, where groups of young men in densely populated neighbourhoods hurled stones at police, looted shops, set banks on fire and torched police vehicles, according to witnesses.

The demonstrations have taken the country by surprise and emerged as some of Morocco’s biggest in years. There have been mass arrests in more than a dozen cities, particularly in places where jobs are scarce and social services lacking.

Protesters are decrying what they see as widespread corruption, contrasting the flow of billions in investment toward preparation for the 2030 World Cup the lacking funding for and poor state of schools and hospitals.

Pointing to stadiums under construction or renovation across the country, protesters have chanted: “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” and alleged rampant corruption at everyday people’s expense.

The link has drawn attention to deep disparities endure in Morocco. Despite rapid development according to some metrics, many Moroccans feel disillusioned by its unevenness.

Officials have denied prioritising World Cup spending over public infrastructure, saying problems facing the health sector were inherited from previous governments.

In Morocco’s parliament, the governing majority said it would meet on Thursday to discuss healthcare and hospital reforms as part of a meeting headed by the prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch.

Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham, said the protests had been triggered by economic issues and were happening “in more urbanised areas that are not as deeply authoritarian”.

“In general, it is where extremely young populations interact with urbanisation and economic downturn, under conditions where it is possible to protest,” he said.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Two Kenyan activists have been abducted in Uganda after attending a presidential campaign event for Bobi Wine, a reggae musician turned politician.

Heavily armed security operatives detained Bob Njagi, the chair of Free Kenya, and Nicholas Oyoo, the movement’s secretary general, at a petrol station near Kampala on Wednesday afternoon.

The activists had reportedly travelled from Kenya to Uganda on Monday to support Wine – real name Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu – at his campaign rallies in the eastern region.

In a video of an event on Tuesday, Njagi could be seen on stage beside Wine, who leads Uganda’s National Unity Platform party.

“They attended the first rally in eastern Uganda and left the campaign trail and came to Kampala, where two of them were picked up by security operatives; some in police uniform and others in plain clothes and up to now their whereabouts is not known,” said Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan lawyer, journalist and critic of the government of President Yoweri Museveni.

“This is another incident in what is seen as transborder repression that has become commonplace in east Africa.”

Atuhaire and the Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi were themselves detained in Tanzania during a visit in support of an opposition politician. Both said they were beaten and tortured before being dumped at their countries’ borders.

Kizza Besigye, a prominent Ugandan opposition leader, and his aide Obeid Lutale were detained in Kenya in November. Besigye was later charged with treason at a military court martial in Kampala.

Atuhaire said: “It points to two possible scenarios: that the three authoritarian [leaders] in east Africa are working together to crack down on critics, activists and journalists, or that they are very afraid of a united east Africa and that’s why they use force on east Africans being seen supporting their fellow east Africans who are victims of their repression – or both.”

Njagi was abducted last year by masked men in Nairobi during a wave of abductions believed to have been targeted at critics of the Kenyan government. He was held incommunicado for 32 days for advocating progressive economic reforms and better governance.

Wine, who is challenging Museveni in Uganda’s presidential elections in January, criticised the abductions.

“We condemn the continuing lawlessness by the rogue regime and demand that these brothers are released unconditionally,” the 43-year-old said on X.

“The criminal regime apparently abducted them simply for associating with me and expressing solidarity with our cause.”

Uganda’s police spokesperson, Rusoke Kituuma, did not respond to repeated calls to comment on the matter. The government has made no statement.

Museveni, 81, has held power in Uganda since 1986 and is one of the world’s longest standing national leaders.

Two people were killed in the southern Moroccan city of Lqliâa on Wednesday night after security forces opened fire at protesters during demonstrations, local authorities said.

Morocco’s state news agency, Map, cited local authorities as saying two people were killed by police who were acting in self-defence while trying to seize police weapons, as anti-government protests that started as a call for social justice reforms took a deadly turn.

Security forces used firearms after tear gas failed to stop the group from storming into the security force’s facility, local authorities said.

Armed with knives, the group set fire to a part of the facility and to a vehicle, local authorities said.

The deaths were the first fatalities as anger mounts across the north African country over government spending.

The recent wave of youth anger was sparked by earlier protests over poor hospital conditions after eight women died in a public hospital in the city of Agadir, and quickly spread to other cities.

The protests started on Saturday with demands for better education and healthcare and have been organised online by a loosely formed, anonymous youth group calling itself GenZ 212, which has been using used platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and the gaming social chat app Discord to mobilise support.

Membership in GenZ 212’s Discord server has surged from about 3,000 last week to more than 130,000 today.

The protests mirror similar youth-led unrest that has swept countries such as Nepal, Madagascar and Kenya.

Authorities initially responded with attempts to quash the rallies, but the demonstrations escalated into widespread unrest on Tuesday night. The interior ministry said 263 members of the security forces and 23 civilians were injured during clashes.

On Wednesday night, violence spread to the city of Salé, where groups of young men in densely populated neighbourhoods hurled stones at police, looted shops, set banks on fire and torched police vehicles, according to witnesses.

The demonstrations have taken the country by surprise and emerged as some of Morocco’s biggest in years. There have been mass arrests in more than a dozen cities, particularly in places where jobs are scarce and social services lacking.

Protesters are decrying what they see as widespread corruption, contrasting the flow of billions in investment toward preparation for the 2030 World Cup the lacking funding for and poor state of schools and hospitals.

Pointing to stadiums under construction or renovation across the country, protesters have chanted: “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” and alleged rampant corruption at everyday people’s expense.

The link has drawn attention to deep disparities endure in Morocco. Despite rapid development according to some metrics, many Moroccans feel disillusioned by its unevenness.

Officials have denied prioritising World Cup spending over public infrastructure, saying problems facing the health sector were inherited from previous governments.

In Morocco’s parliament, the governing majority said it would meet on Thursday to discuss healthcare and hospital reforms as part of a meeting headed by the prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch.

Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham, said the protests had been triggered by economic issues and were happening “in more urbanised areas that are not as deeply authoritarian”.

“In general, it is where extremely young populations interact with urbanisation and economic downturn, under conditions where it is possible to protest,” he said.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Young protesters in Madagascar have said they will continue their fight until the president, Andry Rajoelina, resigns and rejected his dissolution of the government on Monday as insufficient.

Twenty-two people were killed and 100 injured at the demonstrations, according to the UN. The unrest broke out on 25 September when local councillors were arrested for protesting against water and electricity outages in the capital, Antananarivo. The youth-led protests quickly spread to other towns and cities, fuelled by social media and other “Gen Z protests in Indonesia and Nepal, where the government was toppled.

Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest countries, with an average annual income of just $545 last year, according to the World Bank. The Indian Ocean island, which has a population of 32 million, was ranked 140 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Activists, who are part of Gen Z Madagascar, a leaderless group of young people, are demanding the resignation of the president; the dissolution of parliament; the replacement of constitutional court judges and electoral commission members and the rooting out of corruption that they say stems from the president and businessmen close to him.

“When he decided to dissolve the government, we felt like it was a small victory, but we will not stop there … We really want a radical change of the system because it’s the system that maintains the corruption and also maintains the oppression of the poorest people in the country,” said a 26-year-old activist who, like her fellow protesters, asked to remain anonymous for fear of arrest.

She added: “After what happened in Nepal, youth really believe that their voices can be really powerful … and that we can actually change things. We don’t have to accept the status quo and we can define our future. We do not have to be sacrificed by this mediocre government.”

In a speech announcing the dissolution of the government on Monday, Rajoelina, who came to power in a coup in 2009 after street protests against his predecessor, Marc Ravalomanana, said: “We acknowledge and apologise if members of the government have not carried out the tasks assigned to them.

“I understand the anger, the sadness, and the difficulties caused by power cuts and water supply problems. I heard the call, I felt the suffering, I understood the impact on daily life.” He added that that he wanted to create space for dialogue with young people.

The 26-year-old activist said the group would engage in talks only if they were public and fully transparent. Some of her fellow protesters rejected talks entirely, saying the president was insincere and trying to create division in their movement.

“It’s literally a mafia,” said an 18-year-old protester, who finished secondary school this year and helps to run Gen Z Madagascar’s social media accounts. “They are going to try to speak to us, obviously, but it’s never going to be in our interest.”

Gen Z Madagascar members had been learning from fellow young protesters in Asia, he said. They have joined the Nepali movement Discord’s servers and have adapted a flag with the cartoon skull and crossbones from the Japanese anime series One Piece, which has been flown in Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines. In place of the original straw hat, the skull wears a satroka bucket hat from Madagascar’s Betsileo ethnic group.

Similar Gen Z protests have been raging in Morocco since the weekend, with two people killed by security forces near Agadir on Wednesday.

Malagasy officials have accused the protesters of looting. The president’s spokesperson, Lova Hasinirina Ranoromaro, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday: “We lost our jobs. Our property was destroyed. Our houses were raided … We don’t want a coup d’état.” Ranoromaro did not respond to requests for comment.

The Malagasay activists denied young people were responsible for the looting and said they had arranged a cleanup day on 26 September. They added they were determined to remain “constitutional” and avoid a repeat of the 2009 coup.

The young people said they were aware and often afraid of the risks they were taking and some of their compatriots had gone into hiding. But they they were determined to continue until their demands for complete reform of Madagascar’s politics were met, they said.

“I realised if I stop now, who’s gonna stand up again? If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it? If it’s not now, then when?” said a 25-year-old who helps to run Gen Z Madagascar’s social media. “Because it’s been 15 years that this regime has brought people to its knees and right now we’re standing up. So we are the last hope of this generation.”

Anti-government demonstrations gripped Morocco for the fourth night in a row as young people filled the streets of cities and destruction and violence broke out in several places.

With billions in investment flowing toward preparations for the 2030 World Cup, promises to fix Morocco’s strained social services have not quelled anger from internet-savvy youth, who launched some of the country’s biggest street protests in years.

The “Gen Z” demonstrations mirror similar unrest sweeping countries such as Nepal and Madagascar.

Young Moroccans clashed with security forces on Tuesday as they decried the dire state of many schools and hospitals. After dozens of peaceful protesters were arrested over the weekend, violence broke out in several cities, especially in areas where jobs are scarce and social services lacking.

“The right to health, education and a dignified life is not an empty slogan but a serious demand,” the organisers of the Gen Z212 protest movement wrote in a statement published on Discord. They cited King Mohammed VI, implored protesters to remain peaceful and criticised “repressive security approaches”.

Still, the protests have escalated and become more destructive, particularly in cities far from where development efforts have been concentrated in Morocco. Local outlets and footage filmed by witnesses showed protesters hurling rocks and setting vehicles ablaze in cities and towns in the country’s east and south, including in Inzegane and Ait Amira.

In Oujda, eastern Morocco’s largest city, one person was injured when a police vehicle rammed into demonstrators, local human rights groups and the state news agency MAP said.

Morocco’s interior ministry said the anonymously organised protests lacked authorisation and were dealt with according to the law, noting that those found to be breaking the law would be treated “rigorously and firmly”. It said 409 people were taken into police custody.

It said 263 members of law enforcement were injured during the nationwide protests that also damaged 142 of their vehicles. Twenty private cars were also damaged and 23 civilians were injured, the ministry said.

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) said 37 protesters had been arrested in Oujda on Monday, among them six minors, and would appear in court on Wednesday.

They are among the hundreds that AMDH said had been apprehended, including many whose arrests were captured on video by local media and some who were detained by plainclothes officers during interviews.

“With protests scheduled to continue, we urge authorities to engage with the legitimate demands of the youth for their social, economic, and cultural rights and to address their concerns about corruption,” Amnesty International’s regional office said on Tuesday.

In some of Morocco’s largest anti-government protests in years, the leaderless movement has harnessed anger about conditions in hospitals and schools to express outrage over the government’s spending priorities.

Pointing to new stadiums under construction or renovation across the country, protesters have chanted: “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” The recent deaths of eight women at a public hospital in Agadir have also become a rallying cry against the decline of Morocco’s health system.

The movement, which originated on platforms such as TikTok and Discord, which are popular among young people, has won additional backing since authorities began arresting people over the weekend, including from Morocco’s star goalkeeper Yassine Bounou and its most famous rapper ElGrandeToto.

Officials have denied prioritising World Cup spending over public infrastructure, saying problems facing the health sector were inherited from previous governments. In Morocco’s parliament, the governing majority said it would meet on Thursday to discuss healthcare and hospital reform as part of a meeting led by the prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has sentenced the country’s former president Joseph Kabila to death in absentia after convicting him of war crimes, treason and crimes against humanity.

The case stems from his alleged role in backing the advance of M23 rebels supported by Rwanda in DRC’s volatile eastern provinces. Kabila, who led the country from 2001 to 2019, has denied wrongdoing and said the judiciary had been politicised.

Lt Gen Joseph Mutombo Katalayi, presiding over the tribunal in Kinshasa, said Kabila had been found guilty of charges that included murder, sexual assault, torture and insurrection.

Kabila did not attend the trial and was not represented by legal counsel. Neither he nor his representatives were immediately available for comment. His whereabouts were not immediately known.

“In applying article 7 of the military penal code,[the court] imposes a single sentence, namely the most severe one, which is the death penalty,” Katalayi said while delivering the verdict.

Kabila was also ordered to pay about $50bn (£36bn) in damages to the state and victims.

The verdict could fuel further divisions in the vast mineral-rich central African country, which has endured decades of conflict.

Kabila spent almost 20 years in power and stepped down only after deadly protests against him. He has been living mostly in South Africa since 2023, but appeared in the rebel-held city of Goma in eastern DRC in May.

He entered in to an awkward power-sharing deal with his successor, Felix Tshisekedi, but their relationship soon soured.

As M23 rebels marched on eastern DRC’s second-largest city of Bukavu in February, Tshisekedi told the Munich security conference that Kabila had sponsored the insurgency.

M23 now controls much of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. The fighting has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more this year. The two sides signed a US-brokered peace agreement in June, but they are both reinforcing their positions and blaming one another for flouting the accord, sources have said.

Rwanda, which has long denied helping M23, says its forces act in self-defence against DRC’s army and ethnic Hutu militia members linked to the 1994 genocide.

Tshisekedi’s government has moved to suspend Kabila’s political party and seize its leaders’ assets.

Madagascar’s president, Andry Rajoelina, has dissolved the government after youth-led protests over water and power cuts in which the UN says at least 22 people have been killed and more than 100 injured.

Inspired by the “gen Z” protests in Kenya and Nepal, the three days of demonstrations are the largest the Indian Ocean island has seen in years, and the most serious challenge Rajoelina has faced since his re-election in 2023.

“We acknowledge and apologise if members of the government have not carried out the tasks assigned to them,” Rajoelina said in speech on state broadcaster Televiziona Malagasy.

“I understand the anger, the sadness, and the difficulties caused by power cuts and water supply problems. I heard the call, I felt the suffering, I understood the impact on daily life,” he said.

Applications for a new premier will be received over the next three days before a new government is formed, he said.

The president said he wanted to create space for dialogue with young people, and promised measures to support businesses affected by looting.

Thousands of people, many dressed in black and chanting for Rajoelina to resign, have marched in the capital Antananarivo since the demonstrations began last week.

Police have responded with a heavy hand, firing teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. More than 100 people have been injured.

The UN’s human rights office blamed a “violent response” by security forces for some of the deaths, with other fatalities caused by violence and looting by gangs not associated with the protesters.

Madagascar’s ministry of foreign affairs rejected the casualty figures reported by the UN, saying the data did not come from competent national authorities, saying they were “based on rumours or misinformation”.

On Monday, protesters gathered at a university where they waved placards and sang the national anthem before attempting to march towards the city centre, footage from 2424.MG news channel showed.

Police fired teargas to disperse the crowd after authorities declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew last week.

The protesters have adapted a flag used in Nepal where protesters forced the prime minister to resign earlier this month, and they have also used similar online organisation tactics as protests in Kenya last year that culminated in the government scrapping proposed tax legislation.

Rajoelina first came to power in a 2009 coup. He stepped down in 2014 but became president again after winning the 2018 election, and secured a third term in a December 2023 poll that his challengers said was marred by irregularities.

Madagascar is among the world’s poorest nations and has experienced frequent popular uprisings since gaining independence in 1960, including mass protests in 2009 that forced former president Marc Ravalomanana from power.

Wildfires that have raged through one of Africa’s largest national parks were under control, Namibia’s government has said, amid criticisms from citizen firefighters over the lack of a national disaster response mechanism and limited resources.

Fire broke out in Etosha national park, in the arid desert nation’s north, on 22 September. The government said it suspected charcoal production next to the park, which is home to 114 mammal species including the critically endangered black rhino, was to blame.

On Saturday, the government said 49 soldiers were being deployed to fight the fires and a further 500 on Sunday. It said more than 775,000 hectares inside the park, about a third of its area, had been burned and another 171,000 outside it.

“All fires contained / mop-up and monitoring continues,” the prime minister, Tjitunga Elijah Ngurare, posted on his Facebook page on Monday morning, listing 10 separate blazes in the region.

However, Sean Naude, a businessman who leads Namibian Marshall Rangers, a group of rescue service volunteers, said there were at least four “active fires”. He said: “Fires in the park are pretty much contained, but not extinguished and the others running from the park are still out of control. However there is not much in the park left to burn.”

He criticised the government for not coordinating with citizens and private organisations sooner. “Why did they take so long to accept our help? [It took them ] five days… [and] only on the fourth day was the army deployed.”

Frank Stein, who runs Bay Air Aviation, a medical air ambulance company, flew reconnaissance flights in a Cessna airplane and a helicopter on Saturday and Sunday to help farmers battling to stop the fires spreading further south of the national park on to their land.

He said: “I read in the news that the Namibian Defence Force is fighting the fires and this might very well be, but I didn’t see them on the ground. All I saw was a handful of farmers, maybe 50 people in total, different groups, trying to fight the fires with, I wouldn’t even call it limited resources.”

Stein said the government was now asking his company and others to submit proposals to help them fight the fires, adding: “All of a sudden there’s an emergency and … then everybody’s happy to pay, but by that time it’s too late. The economy of scale option has passed you.”

Earlier on Monday, Namibia’s prime minister posted on Facebook: “We appreciate those in the private sector that are assisting in curtailing the fire… Let’s work together: government and private sector. Let’s discourage those engaging in helpless blame game [sic]. Government has deployed resources to ensure the fire is contained.”

The government said that an elephant death had been reported but not confirmed, nine antelopes had been killed by the fire and one pangolin rescued.

The park’s main attraction for tourists is the ancient Etosha salt pan. It is 80 miles long and 30 wide and draws huge flocks of flamingoes during the rainy season, which usually starts in October or November.

West Africans deported by the US to Ghana are now fending for themselves in Togo after being dumped in the country without documents, according to lawyers and deportees.

The latest chapter in Donald Trump’s deportation programme, their saga became public earlier this month when the Ghanaian president, John Mahama, disclosed that his country had struck a deal to accept deportees from the region.

Eight to 10 west African nationals have since been forcibly sent by Ghana to Togo, bypassing a formal border crossing, and then left on the street without passports.

“The situation is terrible,” said Benjamin, a Nigerian national, who said over the weekend he was staying in a hotel room with three other deportees and only one bed, living on money sent from their families in the US.

Benjamin – who is using a pseudonym to protect his identity, as he fears persecution from the Nigerian government – said an immigration judge had ruled in June that he couldn’t be deported to Nigeria, citing risks to his life because of his past involvement in politics. He had expected to be released to his wife and children, who are US citizens.

He said he was beaten by immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) agents when he refused to board a US military plane headed to an unspecified location, which turned out to be Ghana.

Ice did not respond to a request for comment.

Up to 28 people have arrived in the west African nation from the US so far in the deportation programme.

Accra disclosed an initial batch of 14, and Meredyth Yoon, a US-based lawyer, said a second plane that could carry the same amount had since landed, though it was unclear how many people were on it.

The initial 14 deportees had won protections in US immigration courts preventing their removal to their home countries for fear of persecution, their lawyers said.

But Washington was sending them to Ghana as a loophole, Yoon said – with Accra making it clear people would be forwarded on to their home countries.

One deportee, a bisexual man from the Gambia, was immediately sent home by Ghanaian authorities and is living in hiding because same-sex relations are criminalised in the socially conservative country, according to court filings.

Two Togolese nationals were deported to the Togo border with Benjamin. They were crying and repeating “It’s over, it’s over”, he said, adding that they had since gone into hiding.

Benjamin and another deportee, Emmanuel – also a pseudonym – said they had spent more than two weeks under military guard in Ghana’s Dema camp, a detention facility in Bundase, 70km (43 miles) outside Accra, with nine other deportees who suffered from exposure to heat, mosquitoes and unsanitary water.

The Ghanaian military eventually told them they were taking them to a hotel. Instead, they were driven to the Aflao border crossing on the outskirts of the Togolese capital, Lomé. With the cooperation of Togolese border officials, they were taken “through the back door” of the facility and left on the other side.

“We are in hiding right now because we have no type of documents, ID, whatsoever,” said Emmanuel, a Liberian national who arrived in the US in the 1990s during the first Liberian civil war and was granted asylum.

Emmanuel and Benjamin had been green card holders, and are married to US citizens. Both were sent to Ice detention after serving prison sentences for separate fraud charges.

Emmanuel was fighting his removal in court when he was deported, Yoon said.

The UN human rights office has called on Ghana to stop deporting those sent by the US “to Nigeria, the Gambia, Togo, Mali, Liberia or any other third country where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture”.

The US state department said: “We will pursue all appropriate options to remove aliens who should not be in the United States.”

Namibia has begun deploying hundreds of soldiers to fight a fire that has burned through a third of the vast Etosha national park, one of Africa’s largest game reserves, officials said.

The park in the north of the largely desert country is home to 114 species of mammals, notably the critically endangered black rhinoceros, and is a major tourist attraction.

The fire had been burning since 22 September and has caused extensive ecological damage, already burning through about 34% of the park, the environment ministry said.

After an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday, the government said 500 extra soldiers would be deployed from Sunday to assist troops, police, locals and other firefighters at the scene, the office of the prime minister, Elijah Ngurare, said in a post on Facebook.

“The order was given that the troops must be deployed, and if all are not on the ground yet, they will be there soon,” the defence minister, Frans Kapofi, said on Sunday.

“They are deployed from various regions and will be deployed to all affected areas,” he said.

At least nine antelope have been killed in the blaze, which is believed to have started from charcoal production activities on bordering commercial farms, the ministry said.

The main feature of the 8,600 sq mile (22,270 sq kilometre) park is the ancient Etosha salt pan, which is 80 miles long and 30 wide and draws huge flocks of flamingoes during the rainy season.

Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo has won the Best of Caine award, an honorary prize celebrating a story from past winners of the Caine Prize for African Writing, to mark its 25th anniversary. The prize was given for a short story praised by judges for its “powerful language, distinctive tone of voice, and bold, compelling storytelling”.

Hitting Budapest, which won the 2011 Caine prize, follows a group of six children who sneak from their shantytown, Paradise, into an affluent neighbourhood, Budapest, to steal guavas. First published in the Boston Review, it examines poverty, social and economic inequalities, and the dreams of children.

“Budapest is like a different country. A country where people who are not like us live,” says the narrator, a nine-year-old girl called Darling. “Budapest is big, big houses with the graveled yards and tall fences and durawalls and flowers and green trees, heavy with fruit that’s waiting for us since nobody around here seems to know what fruit is for. It’s the fruit that gives us courage, otherwise we wouldn’t dare be here.”

Speaking after receiving the award at the inaugural Words Across Waters: Afro Lit Fest at the British Library in London today, Bulawayo said winning the Best of Caine award 14 years after her Caine prize success “feels like a moment to reflect on the journey”.

“Winning the Caine prize as an unpublished writer back in 2011 was truly the kind of defining highlight to jumpstart a career,” she said. “It brought my work to a global audience, affirmed my literary path, and strengthened my confidence and commitment to writing, so that finishing a first novel worthy of the recognition bestowed on me by Africa’s most prestigious literary award – my first ever recognition – was non-negotiable.”

Bulawayo was announced as the winner by Ellah Wakatama, the chair of the Caine prize.

The judging panel for the Best of Caine award was headed by author and Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, and featured novelist and short story writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and film producer Tony Tagoe.

Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe and moved to the US when she was 18.

Hitting Budapest came about as she was working on a book, and it served as the first chapter of her critically acclaimed debut novel, We Need New Names, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2013 – a first for a Black African woman – and the Guardian First Book award.

Her second novel, Glory, a satire about the fall of an oppressive regime inspired by the coup against Robert Mugabe, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker prize.

Bulawayo currently teaches at Cornell University.

The Caine prize is a £10,000 award that celebrates English-language short stories by African writers. It is named after Sir Michael Caine, a longtime chairperson of the Booker prize management committee.

Since it was founded in 2000, the annual prize has recognised 25 winners from 10 different countries. Other past recipients include Kenyan Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Nigerian Helon Habila and South African Nadia Davids.

For 17 months, since May 2024, El Fasher, North Darfur’s capital, has been trapped in one of the longest urban sieges of modern warfare, a slow war of attrition that recalls the destruction of Stalingrad and the starvation of Leningrad, combining both cruelties in a single city.

The siege, progressively tightened by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has transformed the city. Trenches cut through neighbourhoods. Civilians move block by block in search of safety, while self-defence groups fight alongside entrenched garrisons.

Over these months, El Fasher has become Sudan’s war in miniature, a microcosm where the old tactics of siege and starvation collide with new arsenals, with drones and recently introduced weapons turning the city into a testing ground for modern warfare. El Fasher shows Sudan’s war in its starkest form: a laboratory, and a purgatory.

Since early October 2024, as the fighting shifted and the RSF advanced into the city, civilians have dug trenches in the neighbourhoods to where they were forced to move. Trenches cut through streets, beside houses and around the gathering sites where families now shelter.

Shoulder-deep, these trenches flood after rains, becoming what is now the city’s architecture of survival.

Since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) retook Khartoum in April 2025, the RSF has intensified its shelling of El Fasher. “From three or four in the morning, often until late,” one resident says. “We know the schedule now. Each dawn we prepare for it.” Families descend into dark pre-dawn trenches as routine, sometimes sleeping there until the bombardment begins again. Mobile, long-range shelling has become the RSF’s hallmark, more intense every month.

The deadliest moments often come in the short sprint between homes and trenches. Ibrahim recalls how two neighbours were killed when they paused to greet each other on their way to their shelters – mere hollows in the ground. Amal describes dragging her grandfather’s body after he was struck by artillery. Pinned down, she sheltered beside his corpse for hours until the shelling eased long enough to leave and bury him.

Mohamed speaks of a young man who lay wounded in a flooded trench for two weeks, his leg rotting, before he eventually died.

Numerous accounts echo these scenes: frantic descents, long hours underground, tentative returns above; predictably scheduled terror. “The fear never changes,” says Hela, a young woman who fled the city. “If you step outside, something will happen to you.”

Sometimes, she says, “when I walked between intervals of shelling and saw someone in the street, I wanted to say: ‘I’m glad we made it, let’s walk together.’”

Since last October, drones have brought a new fear. People say they now patrol the skies over El Fasher – erratic and unpredictable – marking one of the first uses of drone warfare in Darfur. For those on the ground, every hum carries the same dread: surveillance or a kamikaze strike.

For 17 months, El Fasher has been strangled by the oldest tactics of war: attrition and starvation. As the RSF tightened its grip, it built earthworks to the north, east and south, fortifications that also serve as choke points, blocking nearly every road in and out. The city has been cut off. Only one route remains for civilians to leave, leading west to Tawila, about 60km away.

Those who make the journey face checkpoints, ambushes and the risk of disappearing. For men and boys of fighting age, escape is nearly impossible. They either stay and fight, or risk extortion or death on the road. The trek to Tawila – two days on foot or a day by donkey – passes through a series of RSF and allied checkpoints, each demanding payment. “A donkey cart out of El Fasher costs more than a new car, now,” says Leila, who recently escaped the city.

An elderly man reached Tawila’s buffer zone after walking from El Fasher, arriving there in the first week of September. More than 400,000 newly displaced had crammed into the area before him. A volunteer recalls seeing him: “He asked for water, drank, and then collapsed and died in front of us.”

If leaving is impossible, life inside is unbearable. After 500 days of siege, the markets are gutted and the city is on the brink of famine. What little food remains is beyond the reach of most. Two kilos of millet sell for $100 (£74), a kilo of sugar or flour for $80, while the average monthly salary, when salaries were still paid, was $70.

An estimated 260,000 civilians remain in El Fasher, most relying on four communal kitchens run by volunteers and sustained through community networks. Under fire, with water restricted and supplies scarce, they offer only one meal a day. Like the rest of El Fasher, the kitchens have also been shelled, killing volunteers. The only alternative is the city’s last market, in the Naivasha area, now reduced to a handful of stalls where prices are extortionate.

“I get by on one meal if I can,” says Omar. “But during shelling or street fighting, we’re trapped.” Hani, who once worked with smugglers, says the city long relied on them to bring food in, but most are gone. “A few still try at night, but most don’t make it back. It’s suicide now, a deadly gamble.”

For many families, the only food available is peanut-shell residue normally used to feed livestock. Civilians with shrapnel wounds are carried into an improvised treatment centre, referred to as the bloc, where volunteers do what they can with little more than salt and torn pieces of cloth.

No formal aid has reached El Fasher since the siege began. At Al Saudi, the city’s last semi-functioning hospital, volunteers are often reduced to crude triage, deciding “who will live and who will be left to die”, says Amira, a volunteer. Because of its proximity to the frontline, the hospital has stopped admitting the wounded. SAF soldiers and allied Darfuri fighters are generally treated in separate facilities, one of which was struck and put out of service in the past two weeks.

In what is left of their city, most people are confined to the north-west corner. They are crammed into three neighbourhoods and part of an IDP camp, co-located with SAF and SAF-aligned Darfuri groups’ positions. By night, the area falls into darkness and silence. Even solar lamps are kept off for fear of drones. “You can’t even light a cigarette,” says Abdallah, a resident.

Alongside SAF soldiers and their Darfuri allies, self-defence groups have multiplied, and armed men fill the streets, as militarisation pervades every part of life. The unspoken reality is that every able man and boy is seen as a potential fighter. And while the blurring of the line between civilian and combatant is not unique to El Fasher, nowhere is it likely to be felt so starkly.

El Fasher’s battle has transformed from rudimentary urban combat into sophisticated warfare with weapons Darfur has never known. The siege is no longer just military; it has become political, even existential.

The siege endures largely because of external support. Public and private accounts point to UAE military supplies and logistical support that have carried the RSF beyond its capacity. Yet El Fasher is Sudan’s toughest front and, paradoxically, one of the last places where resolution still feels possible.

• Sarra Majdoub is a Sudanese political scientist and analyst.

The international community has a legal and moral duty to deny Israel “the tools of genocide”, the Malaysian foreign minister, Mohamad Hasan, said at a meeting in New York of the Hague Group, the growing alliance of countries dedicated to coordinating practical economic and legal steps to isolate Israel over the war in Gaza.

The group, co-chaired by South Africa and Columbia, has become a central exchange for practical steps to try to pressure Israel, including stepping up collective action at ports and airports to prevent the transfer of weapons and goods to Israel, including dual-use heavy machinery.

Hasan said states also needed to identify the multinational companies found to be enabling Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

The group, meeting as world leaders were in New York for the UN general assembly, heard calls to support the aid flotilla trying to break the Israeli siege of Palestine and for Israel to be blocked from international cultural events.

The Brazilian foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, said: “We must turn indignation into action, law into justice and justice into peace.”

Brazil last week joined the South African action in the international court of justice accusing Israel of a genocide and said Israel’s claim of self-defence had no application in the context of an occupation. Chile, another group member, has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel.

Vieira said: “International law requires a state not only to refrain from genocide but also to prevent it. Failure to do so may give rise to state responsibility including complicity with genocide. The time has come for states to fulfil their obligations under the genocide convention, by adopting effective measures to ensure that they do not, directly or indirectly, collaborate with its perpetrators.”

Brazil has called for an international mission on the model of the UN special committee against apartheid, a body established in 1962 to coordinate action to end South Africa’s apartheid government.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestine envoy to the UN, said “the Hague Group represented an inflection point in the struggle to secure accountability and to prevent Israel receiving arms and services. Much more needs to be done, and fast.”

Zane Dangor from the South African foreign ministry said proving a genocide is hard due to the issue of intent, but a consensus had grown that a genocide is taking place. He said stopping a genocide is not discretionary but an obligation.

A report from UN experts this month concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the general assembly on Friday denied Israel was committing genocide, saying it had frequently dropped leaflets in Gaza and sent text messages telling the civilian population to leave areas under attack.

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a trial in which he and aides were accused of making an alleged corruption pact with the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to receive funding for the 2007 French presidential election campaign.

But Sarkozy was was acquitted of three other charges, including passive corruption and illegal campaign financing.

As the head judge, Nathalie Gavarino, continued to read the verdict on Thursday, Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding. Sentencing has not yet been announced.

Sarkozy, who had denied all wrongdoing in court, is expected to immediately appeal.

Prosecutors had told the court that Sarkozy and his aides devised a “corruption pact” with Gaddafi and the Libyan regime in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious presidential election bid two years later.

The court had heard that in return for the money, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours and it was understood that Sarkozy would rehabilitate Gaddafi’s international image. The autocratic Libyan leader, whose brutal 41-year rule was marked by human rights abuses, had been isolated internationally over his regime’s connection to terrorism, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988.

Members of Sarkozy’s entourage were accused by prosecutors of meeting members of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2005, when Sarkozy was interior minister. Soon after becoming French president in 2007, Sarkozy then invited the Libyan leader for a lengthy state visit to Paris, setting up his Bedouin tent in gardens near the Élysée Palace. Sarkozy was the first western leader to welcome Gaddafi on a full state visit since the freeze in relations in the 1980s over his pariah status as a sponsor of state terrorism.

But in 2011, Sarkozy put France at the forefront of Nato-led airstrikes against Gaddafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime. Gaddafi was captured by rebels in October 2011 and killed.

The allegations of a secret campaign funding pact with the Libyan regime had been the biggest corruption trial faced by Sarkozy, 70, who was rightwing president from 2007 to 2012. He has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honour.

In the first case, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and influence peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. He was given a one-year jail term, which he served this year with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release. It was the first time a former French head of state had been forced to wear an electronic tag. Sarkozy had to wear the tag into the Paris criminal court during part of the trial over Libya campaign funding.

In a second case, Sarkozy was convicted of hiding illegal overspending in the 2012 presidential election that he lost to the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. He has appealed against both convictions.

Despite his convictions, Sarkozy continues to meet and be consulted by key figures on the right and centre. He recently met his former protege, the new prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, who has yet to form a new government after the last government collapsed in a no-confidence vote earlier this month.

On Thursday Claude Guéant, who was director of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign before being made Sarkozy’s chief-of-staff and then interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and corruption.

Brice Hortefeux, another Sarkozy ally, who also served as interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of illegal campaign funding. Both he and Guéant are likely to appeal against their convictions.

Éric Woerth, another former minister who was Sarkozy’s head of campaign financing in 2007 and has since moved to Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, was acquitted.

In a sudden turn of events this week, the Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who told the investigative website Mediapart in a filmed interview in 2016 that he had helped deliver suitcases of cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy’s entourage, died of a heart attack in Beirut two days before the verdict.

In 2020, Takieddine had suddenly retracted his incriminating statement about transporting suitcases of cash in the Libya case, prompting accusations that Sarkozy and close allies paid him off, something they have always denied. Shortly afterwards, Takieddine contradicted his own retraction. A separate legal case has been opened into Takieddine’s retraction. Sarkozy and his wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and several others have been placed under formal investigation on suspicion of putting pressure on a witness over Takieddine retracting his allegations. They all deny any wrongdoing.

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a trial in which he and aides were accused of making an alleged corruption pact with the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to receive funding for the 2007 French presidential election campaign.

But Sarkozy was was acquitted of three other charges, including passive corruption and illegal campaign financing.

As the head judge, Nathalie Gavarino, continued to read the verdict on Thursday, Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding. Sentencing has not yet been announced.

Sarkozy, who had denied all wrongdoing in court, is expected to immediately appeal.

Prosecutors had told the court that Sarkozy and his aides devised a “corruption pact” with Gaddafi and the Libyan regime in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious presidential election bid two years later.

The court had heard that in return for the money, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours and it was understood that Sarkozy would rehabilitate Gaddafi’s international image. The autocratic Libyan leader, whose brutal 41-year rule was marked by human rights abuses, had been isolated internationally over his regime’s connection to terrorism, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988.

Members of Sarkozy’s entourage were accused by prosecutors of meeting members of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2005, when Sarkozy was interior minister. Soon after becoming French president in 2007, Sarkozy then invited the Libyan leader for a lengthy state visit to Paris, setting up his Bedouin tent in gardens near the Élysée Palace. Sarkozy was the first western leader to welcome Gaddafi on a full state visit since the freeze in relations in the 1980s over his pariah status as a sponsor of state terrorism.

But in 2011, Sarkozy put France at the forefront of Nato-led airstrikes against Gaddafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime. Gaddafi was captured by rebels in October 2011 and killed.

The allegations of a secret campaign funding pact with the Libyan regime had been the biggest corruption trial faced by Sarkozy, 70, who was rightwing president from 2007 to 2012. He has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honour.

In the first case, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and influence peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. He was given a one-year jail term, which he served this year with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release. It was the first time a former French head of state had been forced to wear an electronic tag. Sarkozy had to wear the tag into the Paris criminal court during part of the trial over Libya campaign funding.

In a second case, Sarkozy was convicted of hiding illegal overspending in the 2012 presidential election that he lost to the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. He has appealed against both convictions.

Despite his convictions, Sarkozy continues to meet and be consulted by key figures on the right and centre. He recently met his former protege, the new prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, who has yet to form a new government after the last government collapsed in a no-confidence vote earlier this month.

On Thursday Claude Guéant, who was director of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign before being made Sarkozy’s chief-of-staff and then interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and corruption.

Brice Hortefeux, another Sarkozy ally, who also served as interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of illegal campaign funding. Both he and Guéant are likely to appeal against their convictions.

Éric Woerth, another former minister who was Sarkozy’s head of campaign financing in 2007 and has since moved to Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, was acquitted.

In a sudden turn of events this week, the Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who told the investigative website Mediapart in a filmed interview in 2016 that he had helped deliver suitcases of cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy’s entourage, died of a heart attack in Beirut two days before the verdict.

In 2020, Takieddine had suddenly retracted his incriminating statement about transporting suitcases of cash in the Libya case, prompting accusations that Sarkozy and close allies paid him off, something they have always denied. Shortly afterwards, Takieddine contradicted his own retraction. A separate legal case has been opened into Takieddine’s retraction. Sarkozy and his wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and several others have been placed under formal investigation on suspicion of putting pressure on a witness over Takieddine retracting his allegations. They all deny any wrongdoing.

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a trial in which he and aides were accused of making an alleged corruption pact with the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to receive funding for the 2007 French presidential election campaign.

But Sarkozy was was acquitted of three other charges, including passive corruption and illegal campaign financing.

As the head judge, Nathalie Gavarino, continued to read the verdict on Thursday, Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding. Sentencing has not yet been announced.

Sarkozy, who had denied all wrongdoing in court, is expected to immediately appeal.

Prosecutors had told the court that Sarkozy and his aides devised a “corruption pact” with Gaddafi and the Libyan regime in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious presidential election bid two years later.

The court had heard that in return for the money, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours and it was understood that Sarkozy would rehabilitate Gaddafi’s international image. The autocratic Libyan leader, whose brutal 41-year rule was marked by human rights abuses, had been isolated internationally over his regime’s connection to terrorism, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988.

Members of Sarkozy’s entourage were accused by prosecutors of meeting members of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2005, when Sarkozy was interior minister. Soon after becoming French president in 2007, Sarkozy then invited the Libyan leader for a lengthy state visit to Paris, setting up his Bedouin tent in gardens near the Élysée Palace. Sarkozy was the first western leader to welcome Gaddafi on a full state visit since the freeze in relations in the 1980s over his pariah status as a sponsor of state terrorism.

But in 2011, Sarkozy put France at the forefront of Nato-led airstrikes against Gaddafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime. Gaddafi was captured by rebels in October 2011 and killed.

The allegations of a secret campaign funding pact with the Libyan regime had been the biggest corruption trial faced by Sarkozy, 70, who was rightwing president from 2007 to 2012. He has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honour.

In the first case, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and influence peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. He was given a one-year jail term, which he served this year with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release. It was the first time a former French head of state had been forced to wear an electronic tag. Sarkozy had to wear the tag into the Paris criminal court during part of the trial over Libya campaign funding.

In a second case, Sarkozy was convicted of hiding illegal overspending in the 2012 presidential election that he lost to the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. He has appealed against both convictions.

Despite his convictions, Sarkozy continues to meet and be consulted by key figures on the right and centre. He recently met his former protege, the new prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, who has yet to form a new government after the last government collapsed in a no-confidence vote earlier this month.

On Thursday Claude Guéant, who was director of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign before being made Sarkozy’s chief-of-staff and then interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and corruption.

Brice Hortefeux, another Sarkozy ally, who also served as interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of illegal campaign funding. Both he and Guéant are likely to appeal against their convictions.

Éric Woerth, another former minister who was Sarkozy’s head of campaign financing in 2007 and has since moved to Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, was acquitted.

In a sudden turn of events this week, the Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who told the investigative website Mediapart in a filmed interview in 2016 that he had helped deliver suitcases of cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy’s entourage, died of a heart attack in Beirut two days before the verdict.

In 2020, Takieddine had suddenly retracted his incriminating statement about transporting suitcases of cash in the Libya case, prompting accusations that Sarkozy and close allies paid him off, something they have always denied. Shortly afterwards, Takieddine contradicted his own retraction. A separate legal case has been opened into Takieddine’s retraction. Sarkozy and his wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and several others have been placed under formal investigation on suspicion of putting pressure on a witness over Takieddine retracting his allegations. They all deny any wrongdoing.

Malawians have voted in an 85-year-old former leader over an incumbent who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, with the country battered by high inflation, essential goods shortages, climate disasters and international aid cuts.

Peter Mutharika got 56.8% of the vote compared with 33% for Lazarus Chakwera, according to official results of the 16 September presidential election announced on Wednesday.

Chakwera said earlier in the day that he had called Mutharika to concede. About two-thirds of nearly 11 million eligible voters registered to vote and, of those, 76% voted.

Mutharika’s resounding victory marks the third election in a row that power has changed hands in Malawi. Chakwera had defeated Mutharika in the last ballot, known as the “Tipp-Ex election”, which was re-run in 2020 after judges ruled that outcomes had been changed using correctional fluid.

Mutharika, a former law professor, was accused by the country’s anti-corruption agency in 2018 of receiving a $200,000 kickback from a multimillion-dollar contract to supply food to the police. He was cleared of charges, which had prompted protests, and said he thought the money was an “honest donation” to his party.

“When Peter Mutharika was governing in the first term, things did not go so well. For him to come back with such an emphatic win … it shows you how badly Chakwera has done,” said Victor Chipofya, a political science lecturer at Blantyre International University.

Malawi’s economy never really recovered from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. For the past three years, inflation has been above 20% and the economy has grown more slowly than the population. Meanwhile, a scarcity of foreign exchange has led to regular shortages of fuel, fertiliser and medicine.

Some of this has been due to climate disasters. Since the last election, the country of 21 million has been hit with multiple cyclones, including Cyclone Freddy, which killed more than 1,000 people in 2023. Last year, there was a devastating drought.

The southern African country, which had an average annual income of just $508 in 2024 according to the World Bank, has also been badly affected by aid cuts. An IFPRI study in April estimated that US aid will fall 59% this year, slashing 1% from Malawi’s GDP.

Malawi, whose major export is tobacco, has also long imported more than it exports. However, many researchers and economists have argued that the central bank made foreign exchange shortages worse by fixing the exchange rate against the US dollar. The official exchange rate is 1734 kwacha to $1, but it is as high as 5,000 on the hidden market. The government contributed by pulling out of an IMF programme that was providing a 0% interest US dollar loan.

Chipofya said: “Not that I agree personally with all the terms and conditions the IMF would bring, but as a country we need the IMF because without it then … other donors or development partners are not going to come in.”

Malawi’s economic issues are so deep-rooted that Mutharika may be unable to improve on his longtime rival’s record, said Boniface Dulani, an associate professor of political science at the University of Malawi.

“If there was an election that one would want to lose, then maybe this was one election to lose for Chakwera, because I don’t really think they are going to be able to turn things around,” he said.

Malawians have voted in an 85-year-old former leader over an incumbent who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, with the country battered by high inflation, essential goods shortages, climate disasters and international aid cuts.

Peter Mutharika got 56.8% of the vote compared with 33% for Lazarus Chakwera, according to official results of the 16 September presidential election announced on Wednesday.

Chakwera said earlier in the day that he had called Mutharika to concede. About two-thirds of nearly 11 million eligible voters registered to vote and, of those, 76% voted.

Mutharika’s resounding victory marks the third election in a row that power has changed hands in Malawi. Chakwera had defeated Mutharika in the last ballot, known as the “Tipp-Ex election”, which was re-run in 2020 after judges ruled that outcomes had been changed using correctional fluid.

Mutharika, a former law professor, was accused by the country’s anti-corruption agency in 2018 of receiving a $200,000 kickback from a multimillion-dollar contract to supply food to the police. He was cleared of charges, which had prompted protests, and said he thought the money was an “honest donation” to his party.

“When Peter Mutharika was governing in the first term, things did not go so well. For him to come back with such an emphatic win … it shows you how badly Chakwera has done,” said Victor Chipofya, a political science lecturer at Blantyre International University.

Malawi’s economy never really recovered from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. For the past three years, inflation has been above 20% and the economy has grown more slowly than the population. Meanwhile, a scarcity of foreign exchange has led to regular shortages of fuel, fertiliser and medicine.

Some of this has been due to climate disasters. Since the last election, the country of 21 million has been hit with multiple cyclones, including Cyclone Freddy, which killed more than 1,000 people in 2023. Last year, there was a devastating drought.

The southern African country, which had an average annual income of just $508 in 2024 according to the World Bank, has also been badly affected by aid cuts. An IFPRI study in April estimated that US aid will fall 59% this year, slashing 1% from Malawi’s GDP.

Malawi, whose major export is tobacco, has also long imported more than it exports. However, many researchers and economists have argued that the central bank made foreign exchange shortages worse by fixing the exchange rate against the US dollar. The official exchange rate is 1734 kwacha to $1, but it is as high as 5,000 on the hidden market. The government contributed by pulling out of an IMF programme that was providing a 0% interest US dollar loan.

Chipofya said: “Not that I agree personally with all the terms and conditions the IMF would bring, but as a country we need the IMF because without it then … other donors or development partners are not going to come in.”

Malawi’s economic issues are so deep-rooted that Mutharika may be unable to improve on his longtime rival’s record, said Boniface Dulani, an associate professor of political science at the University of Malawi.

“If there was an election that one would want to lose, then maybe this was one election to lose for Chakwera, because I don’t really think they are going to be able to turn things around,” he said.

A lawyer for 11 west Africans deported by the US to Ghana said they had been returned to their home countries despite many fearing for their safety.

Under Donald Trump’s drive to ramp up expulsions, the US has sent migrants to third countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and El Salvador, prompting accusations that deportee rights have been violated.

Ghana’s president, John Mahama, said last week that his country had accepted 14 west African nationals deported by the US and was ready to accept 40 more. Officials initially said all 14 had been sent on to their home countries but lawyers for 11 said they were then held in dire conditions in a military camp.

The 11 men filed a legal case seeking to be released. However, their lawyer Oliver Barker-Vormawor told a hearing on Tuesday that most had already been deported, despite eight claiming they could not legally be sent to their home countries “due to the risk of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment”.

“This is precisely the injury we were trying to prevent,” Barker-Vormawor said, adding that the onward deportations meant their lawsuit had become irrelevant.

Of the 11 men, six were sent to Togo and another released to a relative in Ghana, he said.

On 12 September, lawyers in the US filed a case on behalf of five migrants sent to Ghana, who they said should have been protected from being sent on to Nigeria and the Gambia. The lawsuit said the men had been shackled on a plane from a Louisiana detention centre without being told their destination and several were put in straitjackets for 16 hours.

A bisexual man had already been sent from Ghana back to the Gambia, where he had to go into hiding, the US lawyers said. The other four were being held in the military camp.

In another development, Orville Etoria, who is Jamaican, was repatriated on Sunday to his home country from Eswatini, formerly Swaziland. Etoria, who was released from prison in the US in 2021 after serving 24 years for murder, had been deported to Eswatini without notice in July alongside former prisoners from Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen.

“Mr Orville Isaac Etoria, at his own volition, without any compulsion whatsoever, was voluntarily repatriated back to his home country, Jamaica. Mr Etoria has safely returned to Jamaica, where he was warmly welcomed by members of his family,” Eswatini’s government said.

It said the International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, had supported Etoria’s return and that it was working to have the other four migrants repatriated as well.

“We are pleased to welcome home Mr Etoria and we trust the Jamaican public understands and joins the government in respecting his desire for a quiet return,” said Jamaica’s foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith.

Lawyers for the five men said earlier this month they had not been granted access to their clients in a maximum security prison in Eswatini.

A Mexican who the US said had been serving a life sentence for murder was returned to Mexico earlier this month from South Sudan, having been one of eight men deported there in July.

Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

A disabled Nigerian man who has lived in the UK for almost 40 years has won an appeal to stay in the country despite the Home Office wanting to deport him.

Anthony Olubunmi George, 63, came to the UK at the age of 24 in 1986. He has not left the UK since and has no criminal convictions. He had two strokes in 2019 that left him with speech and mobility issues.

George has endured periods of homelessness and says he has lost count of the number of friends who have given him shelter over the years. He says he no longer has any close family in Nigeria.

“I don’t know how many different sofas I’ve slept on, too many to count,” he said.

George had made various applications for leave to remain in the UK, which the Home Office rejected. He said he was overjoyed to finally have the fear of deportation lifted after the judge’s ruling.

“I’m so happy I don’t know what to say,” he said. “My life has just begun again. Before I didn’t have hope, but now by God’s grace I can move forward with my life.”

His previous solicitors submitted a forged entry stamp in his passport in 2005, and have subsequently been reported to the police and legal regulatory bodies.

George said he knew nothing about the passport stamp until many years later. His current lawyer, Naga Kandiah of MTC Solicitors, cited his poor previous legal representation as the reason for George’s problems resolving his immigration status.

A Home Office rejection of his case before his successful appeal states: “It’s open to your family and friends to visit you in Nigeria.”

The immigration tribunal judge who granted George the right to remain in the UK referred in his ruling to the fact that the solicitor who submitted the fake passport stamp had been struck off. He said George had stopped going to see his GP because of fears about his immigration status.

“It is unfortunate that the appellant went on to suffer two cardiovascular attacks having refrained from going for health checks,” the judge said, adding that George has been destitute while in the UK.

Kandiah said: “My client has been living in limbo for almost 40 years, has suffered two strokes and has no family left in Nigeria. His situation is not just because of Home Office policies, but also because of poor representation by previous solicitors who failed to uphold professional integrity and ethical standards.

“Despite our several applications to the Home Office to review the matter rather than proceeding to an oral hearing, our attempts were refused again and again by the Home Office and the case went to a full court hearing.

“I am overjoyed with the decision. He has waited for it for almost four decades.”

Hundreds of bodies could have been buried at a mass grave discovered in Egypt’s Sinai province by human rights campaigners.

Bodies lying on the surface and others buried barely 30cm below were found at a burial site near a military outpost by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.

The group discovered the mass graves while conducting research into disappearances and extrajudicial killings of civilians during a decade of conflict in the Sinai region between Egyptian security forces and Islamic State-aligned militants.

The findings, exclusively shared with the Guardian, provide “rare, documented evidence of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions in North Sinai”, said Ahmed Salem, the executive director of SFHR.

“This discovery not only sheds light on the scale of violations committed by the Egyptian army during the conflict, but also demonstrates a systematic pattern of unlawful killings and the secret burial of victims, carried out with total impunity.”

The Egyptian state denies having carried out forced displacement in Sinai but is accused of having displaced more than 150,000 indigenous residents and has never acknowledged any civilian casualties in Sinai during its war against IS.

In a new report, SFHR identified the site of a mass grave south of the city of al-Arish, in an area with visible signs of a heavy military presence, including several bases and large sand trenches.

The grave was only 350 metres from a road but was concealed by the military presence in an area that was heavily locked down during the peak periods of conflict between 2013 and 2022.

SFHR said two members of pro-military militias had given basic information about the mass graves sites but their own researchers had then had to search for the sites themselves.

When they visited, on two occasions in December 2023 and January 2024, they discovered two pits, one of which they could not access because of its proximity to military forces but which they said had the remains of bodies visible from the surface.

Videos shared by SFHR show that when they arrived at the site the remains of bodies were apparent without having to dig, having possibly been dislodged from their graves by flooding in the past. Other bodies were found when they dug further, to a depth of 30cm.

Research conducted by Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, using satellite analysis and images shared by SFHR from the site, confirmed that a minimum of 36 skulls could be identified. SFHR’s researchers believe there are more than 300 bodies at the site based on their own counts but said they could not take pictures of all of them because of time constraints.

Forensic Architecture confirmed that the site was probably used as a mass grave by identifying the clearing of the land and the emergence of track marks over a period of time.

“There were so many bodies visible, I couldn’t imagine I would see something like that. These were people who might have once walked beside me on the streets and now here were there skeletons,” said a member of SFHR’s team, whose identity has been concealed for fear of reprisals. “The scene was horrific. We all froze from that first moment we stepped into the pit and saw so many corpses superficially buried there.”

They said the bodies were buried in an undignified manner, without respect for local customs. They found many bodies were probably in the clothing they were wearing when they were killed. Some were blindfolded. They said there were no signs of military uniforms or equipment in the graves.

SFHR’s first informant told them that the bodies buried in the mass graves belonged both to people killed shortly after detention and those who had been detained for several years. They were not necessarily militants but were suspected of collaborating with them; however, they had been executed without any legal process or substantial evidence.

Another source confirmed the site south of al-Arish city and said he had witnessed an execution of 15 people there, after which soldiers had placed weapons next to their bodies and the next day claimed in a statement that they had killed 15 terrorists in a clash.

The wife of a man who was arrested during a mass raid in 2016 alongside his father and brothers said that nine years later the family are still trying to find information about their relatives but are constantly told by security forces to give up.

“We have lived in fear. Nine years is a long time and we have lived without any news. I was scared to ever look through the statements of the military spokesperson, to see their names and pictures among those ‘liquidated’,” she said.

The woman said the family were ordinary civilians. Her mother-in-law would go to meet recently released prisoners and ask about their family, but found no information.

She said the family has struggled since most of the men in the family were arrested and others fled Sinai for fear of the same happening to them. The women fend for themselves by baking bread and selling it locally.

She also has a young son, who she was pregnant with at the time of her husband’s arrest, and has been looking after the daughter of one of the brothers whose wife had died prior to his arrest.

“It’s hard to see my son grow up knowing nothing of his his father other than a picture,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. Not a single night of these past nine years have I slept without tears running down my cheeks.”

In the spring of 2012, David Cameron was prime minister and British troops were still fighting in Afghanistan under the stewardship of the then defence secretary, Philip Hammond.

Before deploying, soldiers from the UK would be flown 3,000 miles south-west of Helmand province, to Kenya, for hot weather training. They would train at Batuk, the British army base that still operates today, close to Nanyuki, a poor market town in the east of the country.

In a town that struggles with poverty, unemployment and limited economic opportunities, many women in Nanyuki would turn to selling sex for money – British soldiers being a lucrative source of trade.

Agnes Wanjiru, a 21-year-old hairdresser and mother to a five-month-old baby, was among them. On the night she disappeared, in late March 2012, she was last seen in the bar of the Lion’s Court hotel, a popular haunt with British soldiers, where she had been drinking with two friends, Florence Nyaguthii and Susan Nyambura.

The next morning, when Agnes failed to return home, her family and friends began looking for her. They spent weeks searching, until, about two months later, Agnes’s body was found in a septic tank in the grounds of the hotel.

In the years since then, her disappearance has been the subject of a number of criminal investigations and inquests, Agnes’s family campaigning to get answers while caring for Stacey, the daughter she left behind.

Over the course of 13 and a half years, the campaign was spearheaded by her niece Esther Njoki and sister Rose Wanyua Wanjiku, who saw power pass between six prime ministers and seven defence secretaries in the UK, and three presidents in Kenya, before they saw any progress.

Their campaign was cast into the international spotlight, and was given added momentum, when the Sunday Times, almost four years ago to the day, began reporting on Agnes’s case.

Serving and former soldiers who were in Kenya at the time Agnes disappeared spoke out, with several coming forward to name a suspect in the case.

It put renewed pressure on the governments of both countries, amid anger and protests in Kenya over Britain’s continued military presence in the region. Separately, the renewed interest in the case also resulted in a fresh police investigation, led by Kenyan detectives, with the support of the UK’s royal military police.

With jurisdiction in the case resting with Kenya, detectives flew out from Nairobi to the UK to question suspects and witnesses, many of them British soldiers.

After almost a decade and a half with no arrests, no court appearances, and no convictions, it seemed unlikely that there would ever be a breakthrough in the case.

Yet on Tuesday, the high court in Nairobi issued an arrest warrant for Robert James Purkiss, a former British soldier, originally from Greater Manchester.

It is only an arrest warrant, with the charges set before the Kenyan court not proven. Purkiss would need to be extradited in order to face those charges.

It means the Kenyan government will first need to submit an extradition request to the UK Home Office, which will need to be certified by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and sent to the courts, with extradition cases normally heard at Westminster magistrates court.

For a suspect to be extradited, the court must be satisfied there are reasonable grounds for believing the conduct described is an extradition offence, and only then will a warrant be issued in the UK and a suspect arrested.

A date would then be set for an extradition hearing in front of British judge, which Purkiss would have the opportunity to contest, before the separate criminal proceedings could take place in Kenya. The case is next due to be mentioned at court in Nairobi on 21 October.

If Purkiss is successfully extradited to face trial in Kenya, the criminal proceedings would look different to those in the UK; the jury system was abolished in Kenya at the end of colonial rule.

Similar to in a UK criminal case, a defendant has the opportunity to plead guilty or not guilty, and if a case goes to trial, the prosecution and defence will set out their respective cases, with the opportunity to cross-examine each other’s witnesses.

However, it is the presiding judge who makes a decision in a case, rather than a citizen jury, with legal expert assessors, who assist the judge in determining facts, used in some cases, particularly more serious trials.

Neither the Home Office nor the Ministry of Defence has disclosed whether a request for extradition has yet been submitted by the Kenyan government.

“Our thoughts remain with the family of Agnes Wanjiru and we remain absolutely committed to helping them secure justice,” a UK government spokesperson said.

“We understand that the Kenyan director of public prosecutions has determined that a British national should face trial in relation to the murder of Ms Wanjiru in 2012.

“This is subject to ongoing legal proceedings and we will not comment further at this stage.”

A drone strike by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has killed 75 people worshipping in a mosque, first responders have said, as the group continued its push to capture the last foothold of Sudan’s army in the Darfur region.

The attack, one of the deadliest this year in the city, hit the city’s al-Daraja neighbourhood, where civilians from the famine-hit Abu Shouk displacement camp had fled after it was overrun by fighters .

“The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the mosque,” said the Emergency Response Room volunteer group. Social media videos show bodies trapped under rubble and debris.

RSF has not commented on the incident. The paramilitary group has been engaged in a raging civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023 but since the army’s capture of the capital, Khartoum, in March, the RSF has been fighting to maintain territorial dominance of Darfur, its stronghold.

El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, is the last remaining capital in the region controlled by the Sudanese army and has been under siege for more than a year.

Research from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab shows RSF is building an earthen wall around it to trap people inside.

Satellite imagery released by the lab on Thursday showed RSF forces advancing in many areas, including around the Abu Shouk camp and the former peacekeeping base for United Nations-African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur (Unamid), now used by anti-RSF joint forces.

The city and the camp have been under an intensifying assault in recent months, experiencing artillery shelling and drone strikes.

Brutal attacks there killed at least 89 civilians over a 10-day period last month, with the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) saying some appeared to have been summary executions.

Last week, at least 13 people were killed in shelling of the city by RSF.

A new report by the OHCHR said at least 3,384 civilians were killed between January and June, mostly in Darfur – a figure representing nearly 80% of civilian casualties in Sudan last year.

Most of the killings were caused by artillery shelling and air and drone strikes in densely populated areas, and many deaths happened during the RSF’s offensive on El Fasher as well as the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps in April, the report said.

The UN and rights groups have in the past reported that some killings have been ethnically targeted.

El Fasher is under a communications blackout, making it difficult to verify casualties or coordinate aid. At a briefing on Tuesday on the situation on the city organised by Avaaz, an advocacy group, participants talked of dire and deteriorating conditions in the city due to the assaults.

Fatima, an artist and lecturer who works with displaced communities in North Darfur, said civilians in El Fasher were enduring deliberate shelling, rapid deaths, slow deaths, injuries, starvation, disease, intimidation, and other inhumane practices daily. “This is a real catastrophe,” she said.

Mohammad Duda, spokesperson of Zamzam camp in North Darfur, said people in El Fasher were “being forced to hide in buried shipping containers as makeshift shelters”. He appealed to the international community “to intervene immediately and save the people of El Fasher from this catastrophic humanitarian crisis”.

Avaaz expressed concern that if El Fasher fell, RSF could carry out ethnically targeted attacks, as reported following the capture of Zamzam earlier this year and in Geneina in 2023.

The fighting in Sudan has created what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. More than 150,000 people have been killed, more than 14 million have been displaced from their homes, and a larger number are in need of humanitarian aid.

A drone strike by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has killed 75 people worshipping in a mosque, first responders have said, as the group continued its push to capture the last foothold of Sudan’s army in the Darfur region.

The attack, one of the deadliest this year in the city, hit the city’s al-Daraja neighbourhood, where civilians from the famine-hit Abu Shouk displacement camp had fled after it was overrun by fighters .

“The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the mosque,” said the Emergency Response Room volunteer group. Social media videos show bodies trapped under rubble and debris.

RSF has not commented on the incident. The paramilitary group has been engaged in a raging civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023 but since the army’s capture of the capital, Khartoum, in March, the RSF has been fighting to maintain territorial dominance of Darfur, its stronghold.

El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, is the last remaining capital in the region controlled by the Sudanese army and has been under siege for more than a year.

Research from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab shows RSF is building an earthen wall around it to trap people inside.

Satellite imagery released by the lab on Thursday showed RSF forces advancing in many areas, including around the Abu Shouk camp and the former peacekeeping base for United Nations-African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur (Unamid), now used by anti-RSF joint forces.

The city and the camp have been under an intensifying assault in recent months, experiencing artillery shelling and drone strikes.

Brutal attacks there killed at least 89 civilians over a 10-day period last month, with the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) saying some appeared to have been summary executions.

Last week, at least 13 people were killed in shelling of the city by RSF.

A new report by the OHCHR said at least 3,384 civilians were killed between January and June, mostly in Darfur – a figure representing nearly 80% of civilian casualties in Sudan last year.

Most of the killings were caused by artillery shelling and air and drone strikes in densely populated areas, and many deaths happened during the RSF’s offensive on El Fasher as well as the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps in April, the report said.

The UN and rights groups have in the past reported that some killings have been ethnically targeted.

El Fasher is under a communications blackout, making it difficult to verify casualties or coordinate aid. At a briefing on Tuesday on the situation on the city organised by Avaaz, an advocacy group, participants talked of dire and deteriorating conditions in the city due to the assaults.

Fatima, an artist and lecturer who works with displaced communities in North Darfur, said civilians in El Fasher were enduring deliberate shelling, rapid deaths, slow deaths, injuries, starvation, disease, intimidation, and other inhumane practices daily. “This is a real catastrophe,” she said.

Mohammad Duda, spokesperson of Zamzam camp in North Darfur, said people in El Fasher were “being forced to hide in buried shipping containers as makeshift shelters”. He appealed to the international community “to intervene immediately and save the people of El Fasher from this catastrophic humanitarian crisis”.

Avaaz expressed concern that if El Fasher fell, RSF could carry out ethnically targeted attacks, as reported following the capture of Zamzam earlier this year and in Geneina in 2023.

The fighting in Sudan has created what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. More than 150,000 people have been killed, more than 14 million have been displaced from their homes, and a larger number are in need of humanitarian aid.

A collaboration between African and American researchers and a community living in one of the most hostile landscapes of northern Kenya has uncovered key genetic adaptations that explain how pastoralist people have been able to thrive in the region.

Underlying the population’s abilities to live in Turkana, a place defined by extreme heat, water scarcity and limited vegetation, has been hundreds of years of natural selection, according to a study published in Science.

It shows how the activity of key human genes has changed over millennia and the findings place “Turkana and sub-Saharan Africa at the forefront of genomic research, a field where Indigenous populations have historically been underrepresented”, according to Charles Miano, one of the study’s co-authors and a postgraduate student at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri).

The research sequenced 367 whole genomes and analysed more than 7m genetic variants, identifying several regions of the genome under natural selection. It was conducted through the Turkana Health and Genomics Project (THGP), an initiative bringing together researchers from Kenya and the US, including Kemri, the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and the University of California, Berkeley.

The genomic analysis found eight regions of DNA that had undergone natural selection but one gene, STC1, expressed in the kidneys, showed exceptionally strong evidence of humans adapting to extreme environments. Evidence included the body’s response to dehydration and processing purine-rich foods such as meat and blood, staples of the Turkana people’s diet.

Turkana stretches across a large swathe of northern Kenya, one of the most arid regions in the world, where shade is scarce and water even more rare. Rainfall arrives in short, unpredictable bursts, and securing enough water for themselves and their herds of cattle, goats and camels is a daily chore. Fetching water can involve journeys of many hours each day across hot terrain devoid of vegetation.

About 70% to 80% of the community’s diet comes from animal sources, mostly milk, blood and meat, reflecting resourcefulness and adaptation to scarcity, which is common among pastoralist societies around the world living in environments where crops cannot grow and where markets are too far away to be accessed on foot.

Yet, after years of documenting the Turkana people’s lifestyle and studying blood and urine samples to assess their health, researchers found that, although the community consumes too much purine, which should lead to gout, the condition rarely appears among the Turkana.

“About 90% of the people assessed were dehydrated but generally healthy,” said Prof Julien Ayroles, from the University of California, Berkeley, one of the project’s co-principal investigators. “The Turkana have maintained their traditional way of life for thousands of years, providing us with an extraordinary window into human adaptation.”

Genetic adaptations are believed to have emerged about 5,000 years ago, coinciding with the aridification of northern Africa, the study suggesting that as the region became drier, natural selection favoured variants that enhanced survival under arid conditions.

“This research demonstrates how our ancestors adapted to dramatic climate shifts through genetic evolution,” said Dr Epem Esekon, responsible for Turkana county’s health and sanitation sector.

However, as more members of the Turkana community move to towns and cities, the same adaptations that once protected them may now increase risks of chronic lifestyle diseases, a phenomenon known as “evolutionary mismatch”. This occurs when adaptations shaped by one environment become liabilities in another, highlighting how rapid lifestyle changes interact with deep evolutionary history.

When the researchers compared biomarkers and gene expression – the process by which information encoded in a gene is turned into a function – in the genomes of city-dwelling Turkana people with their kin still living in the villages, they found an imbalance of gene expression that may predispose them to chronic diseases such as hypertension or obesity, which are more common in urban settings where diets, water availability and activity patterns are radically different.

“Understanding these adaptations will guide health programmes for the Turkana, especially as some shift from traditional pastoralism to city life,” said Miano.

As the world faces rapid environmental change, the Turkana people’s story offers inspiration and practical insights. For generations, the researchers said, this community has developed and maintained sophisticated strategies for surviving in a challenging and variable environment, knowledge that becomes increasingly valuable as the climate crisis creates new survival challenges.

For close to a decade, the project centred on co-production of knowledge, combining genomic science with ecological and anthropological expertise. The agenda emerged from dialogue with Turkana elders, scientists, chiefs and community members, conversations about health, diet and change, often in the evening around a campfire.

“Working with the Turkana has been transformative for this study,” said Dr Sospeter Ngoci Njeru, a co-principal investigator and deputy director at Kemri’s Centre for Community Driven Research. “Their insights into their environment, lifestyle and health have been essential to connecting our genetic findings to real-world biology and survival strategies.”

Dr Dino Martins, director of the TBI, says the deep ecological connection and the adaptation to one of the Earth’s hottest and most arid environments provides lessons for how climate continues to shape human biology and health. “The discovery adds another important piece of knowledge to our wider understanding of human evolution,” he said.

Researchers say other pastoralist communities in similar environments in east Africa, including the Rendille, Samburu, Borana, Merille, Karamojong and Toposa, are likely to share this adaptation.

The research team will create a podcast in the Turkana language to share the study’s findings and also plan to offer the community practical health considerations that arise from rapidly changing lifestyles.