A British citizen based in Sheffield appeared in a TikTok live broadcast laughing along while a notorious fighter from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group boasted about participating in mass killings in the city of El Fasher.

The video, broadcast on 27 October, is just one of hundreds posted to social media in which 44-year-old Abdalmonim Alrabea expresses support for the RSF and the ethnically targeted atrocities it has committed in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

One of the most-high profile online propagandists for the RSF, he has travelled to Darfur at least twice since the war began and has uploaded monologues on an almost daily basis to accounts with tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, YouTube and X.

Members of the Sudanese diaspora in the UK have called for action to be taken against Alrabea for what they perceive to be inciting hate and glorifying violence.

“Freedom of speech should never serve as a shield for hate speech or incitement to violence,” said Abdallah Abu Garda, chair of the UK-based Darfur Diaspora Association. “We urge the authorities to take decisive action, ensure accountability, and prevent him from continuing to spread harmful content.”

Little is known about Alrabea’s life in the UK, though some of his videos appear to show that he has worked as a taxi driver in Sheffield. The Guardian approached him for comment.

On 27 October, Alrabea featured in a live TikTok broadcast hosted by an RSF figure called Zafer. Also in the broadcast was Al-Fateh Abdullah Idris, an active RSF fighter who goes by the name Abu Lulu and who has appeared in numerous videos shot in El Fasher showing fighters killing unarmed people.

“Today I killed 2,000 people and then I lost count. I want to start again from zero,” Abu Lulu says at one point, to which Alrabea responds with laughter. Elsewhere in the video Alrabea tells Abu Lulu he wants him to “fuck these falangayat up and down”, using a word considered a slur towards indigenous ethnic groups in Darfur.

After the Guardian got in touch with TikTok, it said it had taken down Alrabea’s account, which had 240,000 followers, “for violating our policies on violent and criminal behaviour”. YouTube also said last week that it had removed his account, which had material dating back to December 2023, “for violating our violent extremist or criminal organisations policy”.

TikTok said it uses technology and moderation teams to vet content, including on TikTok Live. Videos broadcast on the Live feature do not stay on the platform after broadcast, meaning inflammatory material can go unnoticed by the wider world unless viewers make their own recordings.

X has taken down Alrabea’s accounts in the past only for him to open new accounts that quickly gain followers. The company sent links to its rules on violent and hateful content in response to a request for comment.

The RSF captured El Fasher from the Sudanese army late last month, since when evidence has emerged of ethnically targeted mass killings, sexual violence and abductions. Satellite imagery analysed by Yale researchers has shown visible blood stains on the city’s streets and possible mass graves being dug.

In January the United States formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide during the war.

Mohamed Suliman, a Sudanese researcher and writer based in Boston who lobbies social media companies to take down RSF-linked accounts, described Alrabea as a “dedicated RSF supporter” who “might be the group’s most influential social media activist”.

He added: “RSF social media activists play a key role in strengthening the militia’s followers by spreading the narrative that justifies their war.”

Alrabea is named in an application by British resident Yaslam Altayeb, who was detained by the RSF in the early months of the war, for the British government to apply sanctions against several individuals accused of supporting the RSF. Altayeb was eventually released and made his way back to the UK.

Many of the videos Alrabea has appeared in have subsequently been deleted, though some have been archived by the online platform Sudan in the News.

In June of this year Alrabea posted videos to YouTube and TikTok from El Fasher itself, during a visit to parts of the city that were under the control of the RSF at the time.

Mohaned Elnour, a Sudanese human rights lawyer, said Alrabea’s ability to visit Darfur during an active conflict indicated he has influence within the organisation that went beyond cheerleading from his car.

“His role is to recruit, to encourage,” said Elnour. “There are so many people spreading hate speech and trying to inspire the RSF but none of them were on the ground, meeting RSF officials, standing on top of tanks,” Elnour added, referring to an image shared by Alrabea from an earlier trip to Darfur in 2023. “Look at Rwanda, how it started – those who spread hate speech fuelled the war.”

In a cavernous conference hall at the edge of the Dubai desert, a retired military officer fronting the Australia pavilion will offer “the key credibility of being in uniform” for defence companies spruiking their wares.

“A unique advantage in attracting and engaging with visiting military delegations,” is how briefing notes, shared by the head of Team Defence Australia, describes it.

Starting Monday, the Dubai International airshow is a self-described “showcase [for] cutting-edge military aircraft and air defence technologies”.

And Team Defence Australia holds a prime slice of real estate, a pavilion in the middle row at the weapons fair, where more than 35 Australian companies will be represented.

There may be a reason for this prominent location.

The United Arab Emirates is, by far, Australia’s biggest weapons export market, with nearly $300m in arms and ammunition being shipped there in the past five years.

Amid the slogans and sales tactics, there will probably be things left unsaid at this airshow.

In Australia, parliamentarians, human rights organisations and religious groups are demanding a suspension of defence exports to the UAE, citing consistent reports to UN investigators that it has armed a militia accused of genocide.

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Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary is accused of a campaign of mass killings, rape and torture that has intensified with the capture of the city of El Fasher last month, in the famine-ridden Darfur region.

Thousands are believed to have been killed. Despite a communications blackout, the reported scale of the killings are supported by satellite images that have captured bodies on the ground and widespread discoloration of the ground, reddened by blood.

The RSF – formerly allied to, but now fighting against, the Sudanese government – has sourced “sophisticated weaponry” from the UAE via Chad and Libya, according to recent UN expert reports, using those weapons to slaughter non-Arab Sudanese.

UN investigating supply of arms in Sudan

Over the past five years, Australia exported $288m in arms and ammunition to the UAE, according to government figures, with a massive increase from 2019. But Australian export data has no detail on what weapons have been supplied to the UAE and in what quantity.

What is clear is that the UAE is – by far – the largest export market for Australian defence companies.

Separate figures from the UN Comtrade database show the UAE has received “arms and ammunition, parts and accessories” valued at USD$197m from Australia over the past five years.

The UN figures also suggest Australia has been the UAE’s fourth-largest supplier of weapons over that same five-year period.

But there is mounting evidence the UAE is arming the RSF, largely in exchange for gold. An estimated 90% of Sudan’s gold – worth about USD$13.4bn – is smuggled illegally out of the country, dwarfing the legitimate trade: most of it goes to the UAE.

A UN panel of experts detailed in April a heavy rotation of cargo planes flying out of the UAE, reportedly carrying weapons, ammunition and medical equipment to the RSF via Chad.

The UAE has denied any involvement in trafficking weapons, insisting its flights were humanitarian missions, carrying supplies for a field hospital, sewing machines, and Qu’rans.

But British-made target systems and armoured personnel carrier engines have been recovered from combat sites in Sudan. Bulgaria has also said weapons it supplied to the UAE were re-exported without permission.

The UAE military itself has previously been accused of war crimes and violating arms embargos – including in Yemen and Libya. The UAE denies the allegations.

Government supports expanded defence sales

Despite concerns from human rights groups, the Australian government believes the defence relationship with the UAE can be expanded further.

In a note to defence companies last month, Austrade said the “UAE’s extensive and ongoing defence procurement program represents real opportunities for Australian suppliers”.

The government has covered costs for dozens of companies to showcase their products “face-to-face with the UAE ministry of defence” in Dubai.

“At least one retired senior ADF officer will be on hand to lead the delegation,” a government briefing paper says.

“They offer advice and support well as the key credibility of being in uniform.”

The Green senator David Shoebridge told the Guardian the Australian government had been green-lighting weapons sales to the UAE for the past five years “at an astonishing scale”, with almost no transparency.

“When you start selling weapons to regimes like the UAE, what do you think is going to happen? Those weapons are going to end up in some of the bloodiest conflicts in the world.

“We know the UAE has been sending arms to the RSF in Sudan. The public has had zero assurances from the Albanese Government that Australian weapons are not being used and abused in places like Darfur.”

This month, religious group Quakers Australia wrote to the foreign minister, Penny Wong, arguing Australia could not be confident – because of the opacity of its arms export regime – that Australian-made weapons were not being diverted to armed groups elsewhere.

The Medical Association for the Prevention of War, along with other civil society organisations, have also called for an urgent parliamentary review of Australia’s arms exports, arguing the current export regime lacks accountability.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Australia had an obligation under international law to ensure its military trade did not contribute to human rights abuses.

“But Australia doesn’t have laws on the books that require it to monitor where and how these exports are used once exported,” said the HRW’s Australia director, Daniela Gavshon.

‘Impossible’ to prove weapons haven’t been used in Sudan

A spokesperson for the Australian defence department said it had “a rigorous and transparent export controls framework that is consistent with international obligations”.

The spokesperson said Australian law addressed “a range of issues including foreign policy, human rights, national security, regional security and Australia’s international obligations including the Arms Trade Treaty”. Laws also came into effect last year to provide greater oversight over the transfer of “controlled goods” to foreign entities.

Defence did not answer questions on if and how arms were monitored once exported to the UAE.

The Australian government has condemned the atrocities in Sudan and urged a three-month “humanitarian truce”. Wong was a signatory to a joint statement from 27 countries, which said they are “gravely alarmed by the reports of systematic and ongoing violence against civilians”.

The embassy of the United Arab Emirates did not respond to questions.

Philipp Kastner, senior lecturer in international law at the University of Western Australia, told the Guardian that while confirming Australian-made weapons have been re-exported to Sudan was difficult, “I would say that it is impossible to confirm the contrary: that these weapons have definitely not been used in Sudan.”

Kastner argued weapons do not bring peace. “It may be an increasingly lucrative business for Australian companies, but we should ask ourselves, as a society, if it is really through the manufacturing of weapons that we want to increase our wealth.”

Ethiopia has confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the south of the country, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has said.

The Marburg virus is one of the deadliest known pathogens. Like Ebola, it causes severe bleeding, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and has a 21-day incubation period.

Also like Ebola, it is transmitted via contact with body fluids and has a fatality rate of between 25 and 80 per cent.

The head of the World Health Organization, Ethiopia’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed on Friday that at least nine cases had been detected in southern Ethiopia, two days after Africa CDC was alerted to a suspected haemorrhagic virus in the region.

“Marburg virus disease (MVD) has been confirmed by the National Reference Laboratory (in Ethiopia),” Africa CDC said on Saturday.

“Further epidemiological investigations and laboratory analyses are under way and the virus strain detected shows similarities to those previously identified in east Africa.”

It said Ethiopian health authorities had acted swiftly to confirm and contain the outbreak in the Jinka area.

It said it would work with Ethiopia to ensure an effective response and to reduce the risk of the virus spreading to other parts of east Africa.

An epidemic of Marburg virus killed 10 people in Tanzania in January before being terminated in March.

Rwanda said in December 2024 it had managed to stamp out its first known Marburg epidemic, which caused 15 deaths.

There is no approved vaccine or antiviral treatment for the Marburg virus, but oral or intravenous rehydration and treatment of specific symptoms increases patients’ chances of survival.

Last year, Rwanda trialled an experimental vaccine from the US-based Sabin Vaccine Institute.

The UK is undermining its legacy in fighting infectious diseases including Aids and malaria by cutting money pledged to a leading global health fund, campaigners claim.

The 15% reduction in the contribution to the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced this week – in a year when the UK, alongside South Africa, is co-host of the fund’s replenishment drive – risks encouraging other countries to cut back commitments as well, advocates fear.

The government announced a £850m commitment to the fund on Tuesday, down from £1bn in the last round.

Campaigners called on the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to show leadership and attend the replenishment summit in Johannesburg later in November – and to find extra money.

The smaller pledge is part of the UK government’s reduction in aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% to increase funding for defence.

The British development minister Jenny Chapman said this year’s funding was “in dollar terms […] only 5% less than the amount” pledged for 2023-25 and would “save up to 1.3 million lives, avert up to 22m new cases or infections of HIV, TB and malaria, and generate up to £13bn in health gains and economic returns in the countries where the Global Fund works”.

But campaigners said the cut would hit hard. Prof Kenneth Ngure, president-elect of the International Aids Society, said: “The Global Fund saves lives every day through its work on HIV, tuberculosis and malaria and is estimated to have saved deaths from these three diseases by half since 2002.

“While the final outcome of the replenishment is still to be determined, any reduction in support will have consequences – forcing African countries to make impossible choices as they strive to protect the most vulnerable.”

Ngure, based in Kenya, said he was also concerned that funding cuts could compromise the rollout of new drugs widely considered to be potential gamechangers in preventing HIV.

Joy Phumaphi, executive secretary of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, said the UK’s continued commitment was welcome, but that the drop would “have real consequences across Africa; fewer bed nets, medicines and diagnostics reaching those most in need”.

Research published in October suggested a 20% cut to the overall Global Fund would result in 330,000 additional deaths by 2040 from malaria alone. The fund provides 59% of international financing for malaria.

Phumaphi added: “As co-hosts of this replenishment, the UK has a chance to reaffirm its global leadership by investing in stronger, more resilient health systems that benefit millions.”

John Plastow, executive director at Frontline Aids, a global partnership, said: “We expected a stronger show of leadership, reflecting a proud UK legacy of support to the global goal of ending Aids.

“There is a danger that this drop in its pledge will lead to reductions in other donor commitments, with real risks for people’s lives and for the global response to HIV.”

He added: “We urge the UK to make an explicit commitment to increase its Global Fund pledge later in the course of this three-year replenishment, when it is able to source additional funding.”

Adrian Lovett, UK executive director of the One campaign, suggested the money could come from £74m saved by reducing the cost of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK. He said: “Ministers should use those funds to top up this Global Fund pledge, helping to save more lives and increasing the chances of a successful replenishment in Johannesburg.”

Dr Andriy Klepikov, director of Ukraine’s Alliance for Public Health, said the Global Fund enabled more than half a million Ukrainians to access HIV and TB services during the war. He said: “Each of these people counts on the eighth replenishment outcomes; their lives depend on the pledge from the UK and other countries.”

However, Klepikov said he was “thankful for the UK’s generous contribution in the current challenging context”, adding: “With such a contribution, UK confirms its leadership in global health.”

• The Gates Foundation is a major private contributor to the Global Fund. The foundation also contributes to theguardian.org, which funds independent journalism at the Guardian

South African authorities are facing heavy criticism after they held more than 150 Palestinians, including a woman who was nine months pregnant, on a plane for about 12 hours because of problems with their travel documents.

A pastor who was allowed to meet the passengers while they were stuck on the plane said it was extremely hot and that children were screaming and crying.

The Palestinians landed on a charter plane at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport on Thursday morning after a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, South Africa’s border management authority said in a statement.

The Palestinian passengers’ documents did not have exit stamps from Israeli authorities, did not indicate how long they would be staying in South Africa and did not provide local addresses, leading immigration authorities to deny them entry, the statement said.

The 153 passengers, including families and children, were allowed to leave the plane on Thursday night after South Africa’s home affairs ministry intervened and a local nongovernmental organisation, Gift of the Givers, offered to accommodate them. Border officials said 23 passengers had since travelled on to other countries, leaving 130 in South Africa.

The founder of Gift of the Givers, Imtiaz Sooliman, said it was the second plane carrying Palestinians to land in South Africa in the past two weeks and that the passengers themselves said they did not know where they were going. He said both planes were believed to be carrying people from war-torn Gaza.

It was not immediately clear how the charter plane was organised, where exactly it came from and why the passengers were able to leave Israel without the proper documentation, as South African authorities said.

The pastor, Nigel Branken, who was let on to the plane while it was on the tarmac told the South African broadcaster SABC that many of the Palestinians now intended to claim asylum in South Africa.

South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and the treatment of the passengers has sparked anger.

“It’s dire,” Branken told SABC in an interview from the aircraft on Thursday as he described the conditions. “When I came on to the plane it was excruciatingly hot. There were lots of children just sweating and screaming and crying.

“I do not believe this is what South Africa is about. South Africa should be letting these people into the airport at the very least and letting them apply for asylum. This is their basic fundamental right guaranteed in our constitution.”

South African authorities are facing heavy criticism after they held more than 150 Palestinians, including a woman who was nine months pregnant, on a plane for about 12 hours because of problems with their travel documents.

A pastor who was allowed to meet the passengers while they were stuck on the plane said it was extremely hot and that children were screaming and crying.

The Palestinians landed on a charter plane at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport on Thursday morning after a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, South Africa’s border management authority said in a statement.

The Palestinian passengers’ documents did not have exit stamps from Israeli authorities, did not indicate how long they would be staying in South Africa and did not provide local addresses, leading immigration authorities to deny them entry, the statement said.

The 153 passengers, including families and children, were allowed to leave the plane on Thursday night after South Africa’s home affairs ministry intervened and a local nongovernmental organisation, Gift of the Givers, offered to accommodate them. Border officials said 23 passengers had since travelled on to other countries, leaving 130 in South Africa.

The founder of Gift of the Givers, Imtiaz Sooliman, said it was the second plane carrying Palestinians to land in South Africa in the past two weeks and that the passengers themselves said they did not know where they were going. He said both planes were believed to be carrying people from war-torn Gaza.

It was not immediately clear how the charter plane was organised, where exactly it came from and why the passengers were able to leave Israel without the proper documentation, as South African authorities said.

The pastor, Nigel Branken, who was let on to the plane while it was on the tarmac told the South African broadcaster SABC that many of the Palestinians now intended to claim asylum in South Africa.

South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and the treatment of the passengers has sparked anger.

“It’s dire,” Branken told SABC in an interview from the aircraft on Thursday as he described the conditions. “When I came on to the plane it was excruciatingly hot. There were lots of children just sweating and screaming and crying.

“I do not believe this is what South Africa is about. South Africa should be letting these people into the airport at the very least and letting them apply for asylum. This is their basic fundamental right guaranteed in our constitution.”

Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian writer and human rights campaigner who was freed from jail in September, was stopped from flying to the UK by Egyptian passport control, his family has said.

Abd el-Fattah was pardoned after more than 10 years in jail but his status, including his right to travel back and forth between Britain and Egypt, was left unclear and subject to discussion between the family and authorities.

He had been due to travel to the UK on Tuesday in part to attend two conferences, including the Magnitsky human rights awards in London.

Sanaa Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, confirmed in a speech to the awards ceremony that her brother was stopped from flying to the UK by Egyptian passport control earlier in the week.

He attempted to fly to London with Seif on Tuesday morning but was told at Cairo international airport that he was not allowed to travel.

Abd el-Fattah was pardoned by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi on 22 September and released from Wadi el-Natrun prison later that day, but it has not been clear whether he is able to travel to the UK to be reunited with his son, Khaled, in Brighton.

Abd el-Fattah and his mother, Laila Soueif, were on Thursday awarded the Courage Under Fire award at the Magnitsky awards. Seif collected the award on behalf of her brother and mother.

Speaking at the event, Seif said: “I wish my brother could be here tonight to accept this award. I wish he could be reunited with his son, Khaled, in Brighton.

“But on Tuesday morning we went to Cairo airport together to come to London, and he was stopped by Egyptian authorities at passport control and they refused to allow him to travel with me.”

Abd el-Fattah has conducted interviews about his experience of freedom in the British press, including the Guardian as well in the Egyptian dissident press. He had indicated he needed time to think about his future.

His son, Khaled, is 13 and lives with his mother in Brighton where he attends a special educational needs school. When Abd el-Fattah was released, Khaled visited him in Egypt, but he has returned to Brighton.

Soueif conducted a 287-day hunger strike to press for the release of her son, which she started on 29 September 2024 after Egyptian authorities failed to release him at the end of his latest five-year sentence. Abd el-Fattah had been imprisoned for “spreading fake news” after sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egypt.

Soueif ended her hunger strike on Monday 14 July 2025 after 287 days without food. During this time she was in St Thomas’ hospital in London and came close to death on two occasions, in late February and June 2025.

A surge in state-sanctioned fuel smuggling between 2022 and 2024 cost the Libyan people about $20bn (£15bn) in lost revenue – an alarming sum that demands decisive international sanctions against those responsible, according to the most comprehensive report published on how Libya’s primary revenue source has been systematically pillaged.

The report by the investigative and policy body the Sentry states that “politicians and security leaders who claim to serve the public and fight organised crime have, in fact, acted as the chief architects of Libya’s fuel-smuggling industry, often with backing from foreign states”. Some of the imported fuel has also been smuggled into Sudan, where it has prolonged that country’s civil war.

Sentry calls for a western-backed investigation into the Libyan oil officials known to be at the heart of the fuel-smuggling enterprise and for international help to ensure Libya’s own investigative bodies identify those who have stolen funds from the Libyan people.

Fuel smuggling has been a long-standing problem in Libya, but the report claims the sums involved rose sharply after 2022 after a change to the leadership of Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), one of the few state bodies that spans the east-west divisions that have effectively created two governments since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The NOC introduced a system whereby plentiful Libyan crude oil was swapped for imported refined fuel, which instead of being consumed in the Libyan market at subsidised prices was resold abroad at vast profit.

By late 2024, the NOC’s fuel imports had surged from about 20.4m litres per day in early 2021 to a peak of more than 41m litres per day by late 2024. No genuine surge in domestic demand for refined petrol could justify such a large increase, and Sentry claims more than half the imported refined petrol has been sold on by criminal networks at a private profit.

Libya still has little domestic oil refining capacity.

Sentry calculates more than $6.7bn-worth of fuel was smuggled out of the country in 2024 alone, sufficient for Libya to more than triple its spending on healthcare and education.

The report claims: “Given its sheer scale, fuel smuggling can no longer be portrayed merely as a byproduct of weak governance. In 2021, Libya’s top rulers effectively embraced it as part of a broader, systematic strategy to siphon massive wealth from the population.

“Kleptocrats and organised crime networks – working alongside corrupt officials who wield influence over state bureaucracy, logistical hubs, distribution points, routes, and border crossings – orchestrated a drastic increase in illegal export of subsidised fuel. Destinations include Sudan, Chad, Niger, Tunisia, Albania, Malta, Italy and Turkey.

“The transportation methods involve various categories of vessels, tanker trucks, and smaller vehicles – even rogue pipelines, depending on the geographical context and specific circumstances of the business model. This illegal fuel exportation causes domestic shortages, forcing citizens to pay much higher prices at unofficial outlets, especially in Libya’s peripheral area.

The report claims the smuggling not only deprived the Central Bank of Libya of crucial dollar revenues, it also undermined the integrity of the NOC, whose hydrocarbon exports account for virtually all of Libya’s income.

The vast increase in fuel imports occurred during the NOC chairmanship of Farhat Bengdara who left his position in January after 30 months in charge, the report said.

The NOC has said it abandoned the swap system in March 2025, and the quality of fuel imported from January to September fell by 8% compared with the previous year. But experts say Libya is still importing far more fuel than it could possibly need.

Bengdara told Sentry that under his tenure, the NOC remained transparent and proactive in its cooperation with national institutions and international organisations. He said he had submitted reforms to the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Council for Energy Affairs to reduce reliance on subsidised diesel in electricity generation.

These proposals, Bengdara added, included increasing natural gas production, promoting gas and renewable energy for electricity generation, and initiating the gradual removal of fuel subsidies.

British American Tobacco has been accused of “utter hypocrisy” for lobbying against tobacco control measures in Africa that are already in place in the UK.

A letter seen by the Guardian, sent from the company’s subsidiary in Zambia to the country’s government ministers, asks for plans to ban tobacco advertising and sponsorship to be abandoned or delayed.

The tobacco firm seeks changes to a draft bill that include reductions in the proposed size of graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging, the removal of restrictions on flavoured tobacco products, and watered-down penalties for any firms breaking the new laws.

“If I was a politician, I would say that they permit the protection of the British people and perpetuate the death of the Zambian people,” said Master Chimbala, a Zambian anti-tobacco campaigner.

More than 7,000 Zambians a year die from tobacco-related illnesses, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.

Chimbala said the letter was understood to have been copied to several government departments and was in circulation among civil society groups.

It comes amid wider concerns about industry interference with health policies. Last month, WHO officials issued a warning that the tobacco industry was intensifying efforts to weaken global control measures.

Jorge Alday, director of the tobacco industry watchdog STOP at health organisation Vital Strategies, said: “We see evidence of industry lobbying everywhere. Tobacco company fingerprints are on delayed tax increases in Indonesia, stalled legislation in Zambia and even a weakened declaration at the UN high-level meeting on NCDs.

“If a tobacco control measure isn’t passed because of this letter, the price could be paid in lives of people who might otherwise quit smoking.”

The tobacco control bill going through Zambia’s parliament includes proposals to go further than UK legislation by also applying to e-cigarettes, and mandating that graphic health warnings cover 75% of product packaging.

In the letter, BAT suggests this be reduced to 30% or 50% “within the WHO-FCTC [Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] recommended threshold”, delayed for at least 12 months after the bill passes.

The WHO in fact recommends a warning should cover at least 50% of the front of a pack “and aim to cover as much of the principal display areas as possible”. In the UK, warnings must cover 65% of a packet’s front and back.

BAT asks for the removal of broad restrictions on flavoured tobacco products, suggesting that it would push consumers toward “illegally traded” products. It suggests prohibiting a smaller list of “flavours based on desserts, candy, energy drinks, soft drinks and alcohol drinks”. All flavoured cigarettes have been banned in the UK since 2020.

The draft bill suggests penalties for various offences “ranging from a percentage of annual turnover to 10 years’ imprisonment”.

In the letter, Mukubesa Maliande, managing director of British American Tobacco (Zambia) plc, says the firm is “committed to good corporate behaviour” and “supports the objectives of governments to reduce smoking incidence and the associated health impact” but claims that “some regulations can have unwelcome and unexpected consequences.”

Chimbala said BAT’s proposed changes would “weaken this legislation so much that the impact needed for it to cause long-term change in society will not be achieved”.

The fact that many such provisions existed in the UK, where BAT is headquartered, was “utter hypocrisy itself”, he said.

“We live in a global village. If I plant tobacco in my back yard and harvest that and sell it out – and my children do not consume tobacco, but my neighbour’s children do … to enrich myself and all the generations of my children while my neighbour’s children are dying … is in itself total emotional, moral and spiritual bankruptcy.”

Tobacco control legislation in the UK or elsewhere had not caused companies to close, Chimbala said. “Legislation never shuts down the industry. It only protects the people.”

A BAT Zambia spokesperson said: “BAT Zambia conducts its business in compliance with applicable local laws. Further, the company participates in the country’s legislative process in line with the relevant frameworks which provide for stakeholder participation in policymaking.”

The company was “not opposed to regulation”, they said, adding that underage people should be protected from access to tobacco and nicotine.

“We advocate for progressive regulation to achieve intended public health goals, while acknowledging the spectrum of rights and obligations on industry, consumers and related stakeholders,” they said, adding that BAT’s proposals “reflect the realities of the Zambian market and tobacco industry, which includes rising levels of illicit trade”.

Zambia’s department of trade, commerce and industry was approached for comment.

The French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has been pardoned and is to be released from prison, the Algerian presidential office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The move, which will mean Sansal can be transferred to Germany for medical treatment, comes after the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged Algeria to free Sansal.

“The president of the republic decided to respond positively to the request of the esteemed president of the friendly Federal Republic of Germany,” said the Algerian statement, issued on Wednesday.

The Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, had previously rejected French requests for Sansal to be pardoned due to his old age and health condition. Sansal, 81, suffers from prostate cancer.

A vocal critic of the Algerian regime, Sansal was arrested at Algiers airport in November last year and sentenced to five years in prison in March, on charges of undermining national unity. His arrest came shortly after commenting in an interview that France had unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.

Relations between Paris and Algiers have deteriorated sharply since Macron backed Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara in 2024, and there have been suggestions that the writer was being held a political hostage due to deteriorating relations between the two countries.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, went as far as saying that Algeria was “dishonouring” itself in imprisoning the writer.

By releasing Sansal to Germany, the Algerian government has found a way out of the diplomatic standoff with its former coloniser without losing political face. Tebboune himself was treated at a hospital in Germany after falling ill with Covid-19 in 2020.

On Monday, Steinmeier said that pardoning Sansal would be “an expression of humanitarian sentiment and political foresight”, that would reflect his “years-long personal relationship to president Tebboune and the good relations between our countries”.

Over the past few months several international authors, including Salman Rushdie, Annie Ernaux and Wole Soyinka, had appealed for the Algeria-born author’s release.

There are grave fears for civilians who survived the capture of El Fasher by a Sudanese paramilitary group last month, as the UN warned relief operations were on the brink of collapse and an aid group said malnutrition in displacement camps had reached “staggering” levels.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured El Fasher – the capital of North Darfur state and the last urban centre outside of its grasp in the wider Darfur region – on 26 October. Survivor accounts and video and satellite evidence suggest more than 1,500 people were killed in ethnically targeted massacres in the immediate aftermath.

The International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, said the humanitarian situation in North Darfur had deteriorated in recent weeks. “Despite the rising need, humanitarian operations are now on the brink of collapse,” the IOM said in a statement.

“Warehouses are nearly empty, aid convoys face significant insecurity, and access restrictions continue to prevent the delivery of sufficient aid.”

Amy Pope, the IOM director general, said: “Our teams are responding, but insecurity and depleted supplies mean we are only reaching a fraction of those in need. Without safe access and urgent funding, humanitarian operations risk grinding to a halt at the very moment communities need support the most.”

The IOM said nearly 90,000 people had left El Fasher and surrounding villages in recent weeks, undertaking a perilous journey through unsafe routes where they have no access to food, water or medical assistance.

Tens of thousands have arrived at overcrowded displacement camps in Tawila, about 70km (43 miles) from El Fasher. In the camps, the displaced find themselves in barren areas with few tents and insufficient food and medical supplies.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders warned that malnutrition in displacement camps had reached “staggering” rates. More than 70% of children under the age of five who reached Tawila between the fall of El Fasher at the end of October and 3 November were acutely malnourished, and more than a third experienced severe acute malnutrition, the group said. “The true scale of the crisis is likely far worse than reported,” it added.

The World Health Organization warned this week that thousands of people remained trapped in the city with almost no access to food, clean water or medical care.

One witness to the fall of El Fasher told Reuters by phone from Tawila that RSF trucks had sprayed civilians with machine-gun fire and crushed them with their vehicles. “Young people, elderly, children, they ran them over,” said the man, who did not want to give his name. Another said he saw militiamen raiding residential areas and killing as many as 50 to 60 people in a street.

The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023, when tensions erupted between the two former allies that were meant to oversee a democratic transition after a 2019 uprising.

The RSF’s principal backer, the United Arab Emirates, has faced criticism for allegedly supplying weapons and mercenaries used in the capture of El Fasher. The UAE denies the claims despite evidence being presented in UN reports and elsewhere.

The full scale of the atrocities that have taken place in El Fasher are yet to emerge, but satellite imagery has picked up large pools of blood on streets and footage shot by RSF fighters themselves shows multiple instances of people wearing civilian clothes being shot dead. Fleeing medical workers have recounted killings, abductions, rapes and looting.

“There is mounting evidence that rape is being deliberately and systematically used as a weapon of war,” said Anna Mutavati, the UN Women regional director for east and southern Africa. “Women’s bodies become a crime scene in Sudan.”

As in previous mass killings perpetrated by the RSF, fighters in El Fasher appeared to be targeting darker skinned non-Arabs.

“These attacks have made starkly clear the cost of inaction by the international community,” the UN commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, told Agence France-Presse on Monday.

The international criminal court has launched an investigation to determine the scale of abuses and potential war crimes in El Fasher, examining satellite imagery, witness testimonies, and on the ground reports.

Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

On a recent afternoon, 67-year-old Saif Islam made his way into the courtyard of a library in Chinguetti, a tiny desert settlement nestled in the Sahara in Mauritania.

Decked in a flowing boubou gown striped in two shades of blue, his steps unsteady but his presence still commanding, he sat on a handwoven mat stroking his grey beard, with his black croc sandals neatly placed to the side.

“It’s these books that gave it this history, this importance,” he said, pointing to a 10th-century Qur’an, its pages brown with age. “Without these old dusty books, Chinguetti would have been forgotten like any other abandoned town.”

Chinguetti rose to prominence in the 13th century as a type of fortified settlement called a ksar that served as a stopping-off point for caravans plying trans-Saharan trade routes. It then became a gathering place for Maghreb pilgrims on the way to Mecca, and, over time, a centre for Islamic and scientific scholarship, referred to variously as the city of libraries, the Sorbonne of the desert, and the seventh holy city of Islam. Its manuscript libraries played host to scientific and Quranic texts dating from the later middle ages.

For decades, encroaching desert sands have threatened to bury this centuries-old well of knowledge. Residents have left, and tourist numbers have fallen. Most of the current population live in buildings outside the original ksar boundaries.

Islam, the custodian of Al Ahmed Mahmoud Library Foundation, one of only two libraries still open to the public, is fighting to save the manuscripts and drive up interest among his compatriots in the ksar, which was one of the Mauritanian settlements designated a world heritage site by Unesco in 1996.

“Chinguetti is Africa’s spiritual capital,” said Islam, who was born and bred in the town and returned in 2015 when he retired from a job in the civil service in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.

Islam brought out some manuscripts and other artefacts and laid them on the floor. An air cooler stood in one corner, to help against the intense Saharan sun. For weeks or sometimes months, he said, no visitors had come.

“The tourist season is from September or sometimes December to March,” Islam said. “Before, hundreds of tourists came daily. Now, it’s barely 200 per season. After Covid, tourism dropped drastically. The insecurity in Mali affects Mauritania too.”

In total there are 12 family-run red brick libraries still in operation in the town. Together they hold more than 2,000 volumes, including Quranic manuscripts and books on astronomy, mathematics, medicine, poetry, and legal jurisprudence across the Maghreb and west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.

Many were among the valuables brought by traders from across the region. Others reportedly came from Abweir, a nearby settlement that according to oral tradition was founded in AD777 and later fully submerged under sand dunes.

As much as 90% of Mauritania is considered desert or semidesert. Across the Sahel, desertification keeps accelerating. The dunes in Chinguetti are already at the height of the windows of some of the town’s buildings.

Residents say that within living memory there were as many as 30 family-run libraries in the town, but the number has dwindled as people left, particularly during the droughts of the 1960s and 70s. A lack of tourists means little by way of funding for the few that remain. Unesco recognition did not translate into sustained financial support, they said, and promises of funding from public and private entities have gone unfulfilled.

In recent years, the Madrid-based nonprofit Terrachidia, working with Mauritania’s cultural authorities and the Spanish government’s development agency has helped restore several libraries.

The work was done with local builders and materials using traditional building techniques to ensure faithfulness to the town’s centuries-old aesthetic while preserving the treasured manuscripts. A 2024 cultural heritage project brought schoolchildren into ksar for games, classes, and scavenger hunts.

“It was fantastic,” said Mamen Moreno, a Spanish landscape architect who has visited the site and is Terrachidia’s co-founder. “Some children had never been there before although they have always lived in Chinguetti.”

The end goal, she said, was not merely preservation but to attract more resources to generate activity and perhaps even bring people back. “The precariousness of the buildings … has led to overcrowding in the new neighbourhoods, and the ksar is lifeless,” she said. “Cities, like houses, are preserved when they are inhabited.”

Islam agreed. He said he also wanted his compatriots to participate in the race to save the ancient legacies from going under. “Sadly, I see that Europeans are more interested in Chinguetti than Arabs or even Mauritanian officials [but] Chinguetti is in distress,” he said. “It needs everyone.”

The dotted lines illustrating the border between Western Sahara and Morocco, indicating the former’s disputed territory status, have never been visible to people using Google Maps in the latter.

After media reports last week highlighted the discrepancy, tying it to the UN security council endorsing the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the tech company released a statement acknowledging it has always displayed the border differently depending on the search region.

“We have not made changes to Morocco or Western Sahara on Google Maps,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.

“These labels follow our longstanding policies for disputed regions. People using Maps outside of Morocco see Western Sahara and a dotted line to represent its disputed border; people using Maps in Morocco do not see Western Sahara.”

Western Sahara is a vast mineral-rich former Spanish colony that is largely controlled by Morocco but has been claimed for decades by the pro-independence Polisario Front, which is supported by Algeria.

The UN security council had previously urged Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania to resume talks to reach a broad agreement.

But, at the initiative of US president Donald Trump’s administration, the council’s resolution supported a plan, initially presented by Rabat in 2007, in which Western Sahara would enjoy autonomy under Morocco’s sole sovereignty.

A TikTok influencer has been publicly executed by suspected jihadists in Mali, underlining how state control has been eroded in the west African nation.

Mariam Cissé often wore combat attire to post videos in support of the country’s military to more than 100,000 followers on TikTok. According to Yehia Tandina, the mayor of Timbuktu region, she was abducted in a market on Friday by unknown gunmen.

At dusk the next day, the “the same men brought her back to Independence Square in Tonka and executed her in front of a crowd”, Tandina told the Associated Press. The mayor said Cissé, who is believed to have been in her 20s, received death threats before her death.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killing but Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a group linked to al-Qaida, is known to patrol Tonka, which is about 90 miles from Timbuktu.

“This young woman simply wanted to promote her community through her TikTok posts and encourage the Malian army in its missions to protect people and their property,” said a report on state TV.

The conflict in Mali began in 2012 when an uprising by Tuareg rebels was hijacked by jihadist groups linked to al-Qaida and later Islamic State. Despite French-led interventions and a UN peace mission, violence spread southward as insurgents exploited local grievances, corruption and weak governance.

The military took control of the country in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, after which tensions with western allies deepened. The junta expelled French and UN forces, accusing them of interfering over human rights issues, and turned to Russia for support, including from Wagner mercenaries.

The army has failed to end the insurgency, despite its promises to improve security, and tensions have developed within its ranks.

“The power grab only deepened its divisions, splitting the army between privileged loyalists of the regime and those sent to the frontlines,” said Rama Yade, senior director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council thinktank. “Coupled with the departure of international forces from Mali, this fragmentation led to abandoned positions, weapons falling into the hands of separatists, and jihadists expanding their hold over the rural north.”

The jihadists have tightened control over key supply routes from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Senegal. Fighters from JNIM have imposed a fuel blockade since September, crippling transport and leaving hospitals struggling, and the government has been forced to shut down schools indefinitely. In Bamako, the capital, and other cities, queues stretch for miles for increasingly costly fuel and food.

France, the US, Germany and Italy have issued warnings to their citizens to leave Mali urgently on commercial flights, saying the roads around the capital were unsafe.

Although the junta is holding on for now, analysts and observers say the fall of the regime is likely within weeks or months.

In a statement on Sunday, the African Union “expressed deep concern over the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Mali”, calling for urgent international coordination and intelligence-sharing to help the junta restore stability.

The worsening insecurity has led to a spike in kidnappings: five Indian workers were abducted last Thursday near Kobri in western Mali. On Sunday, JNIM claimed responsibility for the abduction of three Egyptian nationals and demanded $5m to release them.

The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.

The money sent to Equatorial Guinea is the first taken from a fund apportioned by Congress to address international refugee crises – and sometimes to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the US – that has instead been repurposed under the Trump administration to hasten their deportation.

According to government data, the sum from the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) emergency fund was sent directly to the government of Equatorial Guinea, whose president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in power for the last 46 years, and who is accused along with his son, Nguema Obiang, the vice-president, of embezzling millions of dollars from the impoverished nation to fuel their lavish lifestyles.

In a letter sent to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, Jeanne Shaheen, the top-ranking Democratic senator on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the payment “highly unusual” and noted the country’s “history of corruption” and government officials’ “complicity in human trafficking” that raised “serious concerns over the responsible, transparent use of American taxpayer dollars”.

She also asked what protections if any would ensure that the deportees would not be “vulnerable to human trafficking, human smuggling or human rights abuses”.

A copy of the letter was obtained by the Guardian. The letter was first reported by the Associated Press.

The deal fits the administration’s contentious third-country deportation push, which has alarmed human rights monitors. UN experts warned in July the policy could see people removed to foreign countries within a single day, without adequate legal safeguards or chance to raise torture or persecution concerns.

Washington has approached at least 58 governments about accepting deportees, often securing agreements through cash payments or diplomatic pressure including travel ban threats. Nearly all the countries involved – including Eswatini, South Sudan and El Salvador – feature in state department reports for serious human rights abuses.

“Implementing the Trump Administration’s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State,” said a state department spokesperson in response to an inquiry from the Guardian. “As Secretary Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.

“We have no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments,” the response added.

Christopher Landau, the US deputy secretary of state, met in September with Obiang, the vice-president, who was convicted by a Parisian court in 2017 of embezzling tens of millions of euros and laundering the proceeds in France. The US Department of Justice in 2012 determined he had spent $315m around the world on properties, supercars and other luxury goods. The US ultimately seized more than $27m from the official, including properties, luxury cars and a white jewel-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson during his Bad tour.

During the meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Landau and Obiang “reaffirmed joint commitments to deepen commercial and economic ties, combat illegal immigration, and advance security cooperation”, the state department said. Obiang in late October confirmed he would cooperate with the Trump administration on the “orderly reception of undocumented immigrants, under strict joint protocols designed to guarantee a safe and coordinated process”.

Observers noted that the deal was conducted in relative secrecy for an administration that has been proud of its efforts to hammer out agreements for the deportation of third-country nationals (TCNs) who could not be sent back to their home countries.

“Knowing that this was a direct transfer of money to a government that is highly corrupt ... was a red flag,” said a congressional aide, who called the deal a “notable, egregious agreement”.

Funds for Migration and Refugee Assistance are traditionally used for “responding to refugee and humanitarian crises overseas”, said the aide, such as those in Gaza or Sudan, rather than the removal of non-citizens from the US.

There are “plenty of places where these funds should be used to support refugees overseas in the midst of conflict or humanitarian crises. There’s certainly need. So again, why are we sending this to Equatorial Guinea?”

Another congressional Democratic aide said it’s possible the state department only shared the agreement with Republican lawmakers, who have been “grossly partisan recently – even more than usual”.

The office of James Risch, a Republican senator, who chairs the foreign relations committee, did not immediately return a request for comment on how long the agreement has been on the table.

A TikTok influencer has been publicly executed by suspected jihadists in Mali, underlining how state control has been eroded in the west African nation.

Mariam Cissé often wore combat attire to post videos in support of the country’s military to more than 100,000 followers on TikTok. According to Yehia Tandina, the mayor of Timbuktu region, she was abducted in a market on Friday by unknown gunmen.

At dusk the next day, the “the same men brought her back to Independence Square in Tonka and executed her in front of a crowd”, Tandina told the Associated Press. The mayor said Cissé, who is believed to have been in her 20s, received death threats before her death.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killing but Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a group linked to al-Qaida, is known to patrol Tonka, which is about 90 miles from Timbuktu.

“This young woman simply wanted to promote her community through her TikTok posts and encourage the Malian army in its missions to protect people and their property,” said a report on state TV.

The conflict in Mali began in 2012 when an uprising by Tuareg rebels was hijacked by jihadist groups linked to al-Qaida and later Islamic State. Despite French-led interventions and a UN peace mission, violence spread southward as insurgents exploited local grievances, corruption and weak governance.

The military took control of the country in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, after which tensions with western allies deepened. The junta expelled French and UN forces, accusing them of interfering over human rights issues, and turned to Russia for support, including from Wagner mercenaries.

The army has failed to end the insurgency, despite its promises to improve security, and tensions have developed within its ranks.

“The power grab only deepened its divisions, splitting the army between privileged loyalists of the regime and those sent to the frontlines,” said Rama Yade, senior director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council thinktank. “Coupled with the departure of international forces from Mali, this fragmentation led to abandoned positions, weapons falling into the hands of separatists, and jihadists expanding their hold over the rural north.”

The jihadists have tightened control over key supply routes from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Senegal. Fighters from JNIM have imposed a fuel blockade since September, crippling transport and leaving hospitals struggling, and the government has been forced to shut down schools indefinitely. In Bamako, the capital, and other cities, queues stretch for miles for increasingly costly fuel and food.

France, the US, Germany and Italy have issued warnings to their citizens to leave Mali urgently on commercial flights, saying the roads around the capital were unsafe.

Although the junta is holding on for now, analysts and observers say the fall of the regime is likely within weeks or months.

In a statement on Sunday, the African Union “expressed deep concern over the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Mali”, calling for urgent international coordination and intelligence-sharing to help the junta restore stability.

The worsening insecurity has led to a spike in kidnappings: five Indian workers were abducted last Thursday near Kobri in western Mali. On Sunday, JNIM claimed responsibility for the abduction of three Egyptian nationals and demanded $5m to release them.

People who have tried to expose unlawful ownership and profit-making from protected land in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have faced threats, violence and rape, an investigation has found.

The DRC government hired the conservation worker Kim Rebholz in 2022 to safeguard the Mangrove Marine park, an internationally recognised nature reserve on the country’s tiny coastline. The Congo basin rainforest, to the east, is the largest rainforest after the Amazon.

Rebholz hoped to extend the protected area across the region. “I was very hopeful that we could do a good job,” he told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa.

The Mangrove Marine park is home to manatees and endangered sea turtles, and is where the River Congo finishes its 3,000-mile journey from the highlands of Zambia to the Atlantic Ocean. It was designated protected in 1992 and subsequently recognised under the Ramsar convention of conservation. It is subject to strict regulations, although those restrictions can be lifted for certain people in certain circumstances, “provided that these remain compatible with conservation objectives”. The inland area allows for some fishing but nothing that would “disturb the natural environment”.

So Rebholz was shocked when, patrolling the park a few months into the job, he came across what appeared to be an industrial-sized palm oil plantation, and an expanse of tens of thousands of palm trees. Rebholz says he asked his deputies: “What exactly is this?” and they told him that it belonged to the company of the former president Joseph Kabila, who had spent almost two decades in power before stepping down in 2019 after a series of deadly protests.

The plantation that Rebholz had stumbled across is large enough to be seen from space. Clearly within the boundaries of the park, in what should be a wilderness, are neat rows of the tell-tale star shapes of palm trees covering more than 400 hectares (988 acres). As of summer 2025, it was still thriving. A mapped document dated 2023 states that it was created by the department of forestry management, marking out the plantation: “Land appropriated by a private plantation of palm trees belonging to the former head of state within the Marine Mangroves park, which considerably reduces the park’s surface area,” and local people confirmed the land grabbing: “It still belongs to Kabila … His base is here”. Rebholz says that as well as violating the park’s protected status, the plantation robs large mammals of a vital habitat and that buffaloes have almost disappeared from the area.

Rebholz had also spotted on satellite images an illegal logging port owned by Congo Dihao, a Chinese group closely linked to a logging company called Maniema Union, as identified by a recent study commissioned by international and Congolese conservation agencies which has been linked to one of Kabila’s most brutal enforcers, General Amisi. Farther west he found another illegal port, this one for oil. An oil industry executive told him the traffic accounted for nearly a third of fuel sold in Kinshasa.

But after Rebholz demanded that a commission of inquiry be set up, he says “the reprisals came thick and fast”. On 2 February 2023, he says seven hooded men armed with machetes and guns broke into his house in the middle of the night. They dragged out Rebholz, his wife and his young son. Then they put the gun to Rebholz’s head and faked his execution. “All this happened in front of our little boy,” he says.

Two of the men led his wife away to the couple’s bedroom. They raped her while her husband and son were under gun point in the other room and threatened to kill her if she resisted. Looking back, Rebholz says: “I didn’t know she had been raped until they left because she was sure that if she had yelled and cried, I would have got mad and got shot, cut into pieces.”

At some point the men left. The bandits said they had come for Rebholz – a “white bastard” – and knew about his role at the Mangrove Marine park. Sitting in a hotel in Paris several months later, he shakes his head. “So they were there for me, but the worst happened to my wife.” He says his wife is “as well as she can be” and his son’s nightmares have started to ease.

This was not the first time violence had followed a finger being pointed at power; in 2021, after a Congolese NGO published a report alleging that a farm owned by Kabila encroached on a national park in eastern DRC, the NGO received a summons to the magistrates court for defamation. The night the case was dismissed, “a commando unit of about 15 people climbed over the fence and broke into my house”, Timothée Mbuya, president of the NGO, told the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, a Paris-based anti-corruption group. “They threatened my family with kalashnikovs and assaulted some of them. They pointed a gun at my wife and children and searched the entire house, saying that when I was found, my body would be taken to the morgue.” No investigation into the attack took place.

It remains unclear who carried out the attack on Rebholz’s family. He filed a complaint, but no investigation ever took place, and he left the country with his family. But first he wrote to DRC’s environment minister – copying in president Felix Tshisekedi – to lay out the environmental destruction he had discovered in the park and the people he believed responsible for it. They included Cosma Wilungula, who as former director general of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), was ultimately responsible for the Mangroves park; Augustin Ngumbi, DRC’s representative to the high-profile international wildlife protection agency CITES; and the former president of the DRC, Joseph Kabila.

Ngumbi said he was not informed of Rebholz’s allegations about the environmental issues within the park at the time and that they were “pure fabrication”. Wilungula said the allegations were “false, misleading and politically motivated” and that he had left the ICCN before Rebholz started as director of the park. He said Kabila’s company never posed a threat to the park and that the former president had helped combat poaching there.

Kabila, Congo Dihao, Amisi, the ICCN, and representatives for the DRC government, did not respond to requests for comment.

Rebholz looks back on his time at Mangrove Marine park with resolve. “Of course, I regret what happened to my family,” he says. “But I don’t regret the experience. I hope this will have served some purpose.”

The US government subsequently said Ngumbi and Wilungula would be ineligible for entry to the US “due to their involvement in significant corruption” related to wildlife trafficking. Both denied the allegations and said no evidence had been provided to back them up.

Kabila, meanwhile, was last month tried in absentia by the DRC government on charges of treason, crimes against humanity and corruption, and found guilty. Human Rights Watch has criticised the trial as “a political vendetta”.

Rebholz appears grimly vindicated. “I hope that by denouncing what happened, I can raise awareness of the issues at stake at both a local and international level, so a more responsible vision [for the park] can emerge.

“I hope it can contribute to a brighter future.”

The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.

The money sent to Equatorial Guinea is the first taken from a fund apportioned by Congress to address international refugee crises – and sometimes to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the US – that has instead been repurposed under the Trump administration to hasten their deportation.

According to government data, the sum from the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) emergency fund was sent directly to the government of Equatorial Guinea, whose president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in power for the last 46 years, and who is accused along with his son, Nguema Obiang, the vice-president, of embezzling millions of dollars from the impoverished nation to fuel their lavish lifestyles.

In a letter sent to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, Jeanne Shaheen, the top-ranking Democratic senator on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the payment “highly unusual” and noted the country’s “history of corruption” and government officials’ “complicity in human trafficking” that raised “serious concerns over the responsible, transparent use of American taxpayer dollars”.

She also asked what protections if any would ensure that the deportees would not be “vulnerable to human trafficking, human smuggling or human rights abuses”.

A copy of the letter was obtained by the Guardian. The letter was first reported by the Associated Press.

The deal fits the administration’s contentious third-country deportation push, which has alarmed human rights monitors. UN experts warned in July the policy could see people removed to foreign countries within a single day, without adequate legal safeguards or chance to raise torture or persecution concerns.

Washington has approached at least 58 governments about accepting deportees, often securing agreements through cash payments or diplomatic pressure including travel ban threats. Nearly all the countries involved – including Eswatini, South Sudan and El Salvador – feature in state department reports for serious human rights abuses.

“Implementing the Trump Administration’s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State,” said a state department spokesperson in response to an inquiry from the Guardian. “As Secretary Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.

“We have no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments,” the response added.

Christopher Landau, the US deputy secretary of state, met in September with Obiang, the vice-president, who was convicted by a Parisian court in 2017 of embezzling tens of millions of euros and laundering the proceeds in France. The US Department of Justice in 2012 determined he had spent $315m around the world on properties, supercars and other luxury goods. The US ultimately seized more than $27m from the official, including properties, luxury cars and a white jewel-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson during his Bad tour.

During the meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Landau and Obiang “reaffirmed joint commitments to deepen commercial and economic ties, combat illegal immigration, and advance security cooperation”, the state department said. Obiang in late October confirmed he would cooperate with the Trump administration on the “orderly reception of undocumented immigrants, under strict joint protocols designed to guarantee a safe and coordinated process”.

Observers noted that the deal was conducted in relative secrecy for an administration that has been proud of its efforts to hammer out agreements for the deportation of third-country nationals (TCNs) who could not be sent back to their home countries.

“Knowing that this was a direct transfer of money to a government that is highly corrupt ... was a red flag,” said a congressional aide, who called the deal a “notable, egregious agreement”.

Funds for Migration and Refugee Assistance are traditionally used for “responding to refugee and humanitarian crises overseas”, said the aide, such as those in Gaza or Sudan, rather than the removal of non-citizens from the US.

There are “plenty of places where these funds should be used to support refugees overseas in the midst of conflict or humanitarian crises. There’s certainly need. So again, why are we sending this to Equatorial Guinea?”

Another congressional Democratic aide said it’s possible the state department only shared the agreement with Republican lawmakers, who have been “grossly partisan recently – even more than usual”.

The office of James Risch, a Republican senator, who chairs the foreign relations committee, did not immediately return a request for comment on how long the agreement has been on the table.

Protesters have disrupted a preview event at a new museum in Nigeria that has become embroiled in a bitter row over the restitution of artefacts looted by British colonial forces.

In a video circulating on social media, demonstrators were seen loudly chanting “Oba ghato kpere ise” (“Long live the King” in Bini language) while foreign and local visitors were ushered out of the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) by security personnel in Benin City. Reporters at the scene said there was minor damage to the museum, which is due to open publicly on Tuesday.

Phillip Ihenacho, Mowaa’s director, told Agence France-Presse: “Protesters entered and began vandalising part of the reception pavilion, where we receive visitors, then they stormed inside the front section, where the exhibition area is located.”

In a statement, the museum said it was deeply grateful to guests for their patience. “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this situation may have caused,” it said.

Mowaa is a highly anticipated art campus comprising conservation labs, galleries, and studios aimed at fostering exchanges around west African art. Originally called the Edo Museum of West African Art, it is in what was once the capital of the ancient Benin empire, whose vassal states included modern-day Lagos. Benin City is now the capital of Edo state.

The museum, which is co-funded by French and German governments as well as private donors, was supposed to host to host several of the Benin bronzes – the name given to artefacts looted by British soldiers during a punitive expedition in 1897 that were then scattered across collections in Europe and America. About 40 miles north of Mowaa is a smaller museum dedicated to the victim of a similar British expedition four years earlier.

More than 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years from European state museums and private collections, as the west attempts to atone for its past.

However, a rivalry between Edo state’s former and current governor, who belong to different political parties, means that none of the bronzes will be on public display at Mowaa.

The current administration is allied to Oba (King) Ewuare II, the spiritual and cultural leader of the Edo people. In March 2023, Nigeria’s federal government sided with Ewuare, a former diplomat who has long posited that the artefacts should be housed at the Benin palace since they were looted from there.

Although the demands of the people who protested at the museum on Sunday were not clear, their chants appeared to be in support of the king and the current Edo state administration.

In its statement, Mowaa distanced itself from the state government, saying it was an independent, nonprofit institution, of which the former governor had no interest financial or otherwise. It also advised against any visits to the campus until further notice.

Nigeria’s culture minister, Hannatu Musawa, said: “The reported disruption at Mowaa not only endangers a treasured cultural asset but also threatens the peaceful environment necessary for cultural exchange and the preservation of our artistic patrimony.”

The incident drew mixed reactions across Nigeria, with some calling for a quick resolution of the matter as the country looks to consolidate its standing as a cultural superpower.

“This is not good optics for Edo state and not also for Nigeria,” the Lagos-based Zero Prive gallery said in a post on Instagram. “We stand in support of Mowaa as an independent body. Whatever political issues or differences let it be sorted out in the interest of the people of Edo state and the country.”

As many as 200 terrorists were killed in a turf war on Sunday between rival jihadists in north-east Nigeria.

The fighting between Boko Haram and rival militants from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) broke out over the weekend in the village of Dogon Chiku, which lies on the shores of Lake Chad, a restive area located at the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

The lake’s riverine corridors serve as operational zones for jihadists who also bank on revenues from taxing fishers, loggers and herders.

The violent episode was the latest in a fight between the groups for territory and influence as more non-state actors stake a claim for dominance in the wider Sahel region. According to reports, Iswap reportedly incurred more personnel losses and several boats used in the assault were seized by Boko Haram forces.

“From the toll we got, around 200 Iswap terrorists were killed in the fight,” Babakura Kolo, a member of a vigilante group that works with the Nigerian military, told Agence France-Presse.

“We are aware of the fighting which is good news to us,” AFP also quoted a Nigerian intelligence source as saying. The source added that the casualty total was “more than 150”.

Iswap began as a splinter group from Boko Haram that allied with IS. Since the split in 2016, both factions have fought repeatedly, primarily in the Lake Chad basin area. Other groups have since split from Boko Haram, drifting to other parts of northern Nigeria.

The lake has lost more than 90% of its surface area since the 1960s, according to the UN Environment Programme. As the water recedes, new land routes across the territory open up.

By many analyst accounts, Iswap was long considered the stronger and more resourceful of the two factions, but Boko Haram was seen as successful in the fight to occupy the Lake Chad area. Sunday’s clash was potentially the deadliest between them yet.

In May 2021, Iswap launched an offensive on Sambisa, the forest enclave that was Boko Haram’s longtime base, and where it kept abducted schoolgirls. It is believed that Abubakar Shekau, the infamous leader of Boko Haram, killed himself during a clash with Iswap in Sambisa.

Between December 2022 and January 2023, Boko Haram also launched big raids on two Iswap bases in Borno state, the birthplace of the group’s radical ideology. Caches of weapons were seized as more than 100 Iswap fighters were killed and 35 others injured, according to reports by local newspapers the Guardian Nigeria and Punch.

After the extrajudicial killing of Shekau’s predecessor, Mohammed Yusuf, in 2009, a jihadist conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around 2 million in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north-east.

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, a politician and daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma, has pleaded not guilty to incitement to commit terrorism and public violence over deadly riots in 2021.

The trial, which began on Monday in the coastal city of Durban, is the first prosecution in South Africa in which terrorism‑related charges are being brought based on social media posts.

In July 2021, Zuma handed himself in to police to serve a 15-month sentence for contempt of court over his refusal to appear before a commission investigating widespread corruption – often referred to as “state capture”. He served only two months of an 18-month prison term, mostly in the prison’s hospital wing, before he was released as part of a decision affecting certain nonviolent offenders approved by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

His jailing sparked riots in the provinces of Gauteng, which is home to the economic capital of Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal, whose capital is Durban.

More than 350 people were killed and the economy ravaged in what was considered the worst episode of domestic unrest since the end of apartheid.

Prosecutors accuse Zuma-Sambudla, 43, of playing a key role in inciting the violence through social media activity.

She has denied the allegations and at a preliminary hearing wore a T-shirt with the words “Modern Day Terrorist” – a seemingly satirical retort to the charges.

Zuma-Sambudla followed her father when he left the ruling African National Congress in 2023 to found uMkhonto weSizwe(MK), the nationalist party named after the ANC’s former militant wing. She has become one of his most trusted allies and was elected to the national assembly in last year’s election on MK’s platform.

In court on Monday, Zuma-Sambudla smiled and seemed under no pressure. Her father, who was in power for nine years, was in court to support his daughter, who was born in Mozambique while he was in exile.

Prosecutors said 164 WhatsApp social media chat groups were created to coordinate the riots in 2021 and that Zuma-Sambudla “intentionally and unlawfully encouraged the public to act in acts of violence under the guise of freeing Jacob Zuma from incarceration”.

A representative of the Jacob Zuma Foundation claimed the case was the latest example of the state’s targeted prosecution of the family.

“For more than two decades, state institutions have been selectively mobilised to destroy President Zuma and those associated with him,” said Mzwanele Manyi. “The state’s case rests on a bizarre premise: that her social media posts during July 2021 somehow ‘incited’ unrest. In truth, her posts were reactive commentaries on events already unfolding, as millions of South Africans expressed anguish and frustration at the unlawful imprisonment of a liberation hero.”

Most of the alleged corruption under investigation by the commission involved the Guptas, three brothers from a wealthy Indian business family who won lucrative government contracts and were allegedly even able to choose cabinet ministers.

Protesters have disrupted a preview event at a new museum in Nigeria that has become embroiled in a bitter row over the restitution of artefacts looted by British colonial forces.

In a video circulating on social media, demonstrators were seen loudly chanting “Oba ghato kpere ise” (“Long live the King” in Bini language) while foreign and local visitors were ushered out of the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) by security personnel in Benin City. Reporters at the scene said there was minor damage to the museum, which is due to open publicly on Tuesday.

Phillip Ihenacho, Mowaa’s director, told Agence France-Presse: “Protesters entered and began vandalising part of the reception pavilion, where we receive visitors, then they stormed inside the front section, where the exhibition area is located.”

In a statement, the museum said it was deeply grateful to guests for their patience. “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this situation may have caused,” it said.

Mowaa is a highly anticipated art campus comprising conservation labs, galleries, and studios aimed at fostering exchanges around west African art. Originally called the Edo Museum of West African Art, it is in what was once the capital of the ancient Benin empire, whose vassal states included modern-day Lagos. Benin City is now the capital of Edo state.

The museum, which is co-funded by French and German governments as well as private donors, was supposed to host to host several of the Benin bronzes – the name given to artefacts looted by British soldiers during a punitive expedition in 1897 that were then scattered across collections in Europe and America. About 40 miles north of Mowaa is a smaller museum dedicated to the victim of a similar British expedition four years earlier.

More than 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years from European state museums and private collections, as the west attempts to atone for its past.

However, a rivalry between Edo state’s former and current governor, who belong to different political parties, means that none of the bronzes will be on public display at Mowaa.

The current administration is allied to Oba (King) Ewuare II, the spiritual and cultural leader of the Edo people. In March 2023, Nigeria’s federal government sided with Ewuare, a former diplomat who has long posited that the artefacts should be housed at the Benin palace since they were looted from there.

Although the demands of the people who protested at the museum on Sunday were not clear, their chants appeared to be in support of the king and the current Edo state administration.

In its statement, Mowaa distanced itself from the state government, saying it was an independent, nonprofit institution, of which the former governor had no interest financial or otherwise. It also advised against any visits to the campus until further notice.

Nigeria’s culture minister, Hannatu Musawa, said: “The reported disruption at Mowaa not only endangers a treasured cultural asset but also threatens the peaceful environment necessary for cultural exchange and the preservation of our artistic patrimony.”

The incident drew mixed reactions across Nigeria, with some calling for a quick resolution of the matter as the country looks to consolidate its standing as a cultural superpower.

“This is not good optics for Edo state and not also for Nigeria,” the Lagos-based Zero Prive gallery said in a post on Instagram. “We stand in support of Mowaa as an independent body. Whatever political issues or differences let it be sorted out in the interest of the people of Edo state and the country.”

Tanzania is seeking the arrest of 10 people, including senior opposition figures, it has blamed for the deadly protests during elections last week.

More than 1,000 people were killed by security forces during the demonstrations, according to the main opposition party, Chadema, and human rights bodies. The Tanzanian government has said these figures were exaggerated but did not give its own figures.

The incumbent president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was deemed the winner of the election with 98% of the vote, but the opposition – which was barred from participating – condemned the results as fraudulent.

The government claimed the elections were free and fair, but the main rivals were not allowed to run, election observers said the vote was not democratic and cited instances of ballot stuffing.

Tanzanian authorities said 10 people are wanted in connection with the unrest, including senior figures in Chadema. On Friday, prosecutors charged 145 people with treason.

“The police force, in collaboration with other defence and security agencies, is continuing a serious manhunt to find all who planned, coordinated and executed this evil act,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.

Chadema’s secretary general, John Mnyika, the party’s deputy, Amani Golugwa, and the head of communications, Brenda Rupia, were among those wanted for arrest.

The leader of Chadema, Tundu Lissu, was charged with treason in April and not allowed to run in the elections. The exclusion of Lissu and other political figures from the ballot fuelled the ensuing protests.

According to Amnesty International, in the run-up to the elections, Tanzanian authorities carried out enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.

Protests broke out on 29 October in cities across Tanzania, leading to violence and clashes with police, a statement from authorities said.

Amnesty International said authorities cut off internet access and used excessive force in its attempt to suppress post-election protests.

Rights groups said the government has cracked down on individuals perceived to be associated with the protests, including the prominent businesswoman Jenifer Jovin, who was accused of encouraging protesters to buy gas masks.

President Samia acknowledged that there were deaths, but blamed the unrest on foreigners, stating: “It was not a surprise that those arrested were from other countries.”

Despite the protests, Samia was sworn into office on Monday. Her inauguration ceremony was televised but closed to the public and held at a military parade ground in the capital.

The president was elected in 2021 and was Tanzania’s first female president. She was initially praised by activists for easing political repression, but has since been accused of reversing course.

Tanzania is seeking the arrest of 10 people, including senior opposition figures, it has blamed for the deadly protests during elections last week.

More than 1,000 people were killed by security forces during the demonstrations, according to the main opposition party, Chadema, and human rights bodies. The Tanzanian government has said these figures were exaggerated but did not give its own figures.

The incumbent president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was deemed the winner of the election with 98% of the vote, but the opposition – which was barred from participating – condemned the results as fraudulent.

The government claimed the elections were free and fair, but the main rivals were not allowed to run, election observers said the vote was not democratic and cited instances of ballot stuffing.

Tanzanian authorities said 10 people are wanted in connection with the unrest, including senior figures in Chadema. On Friday, prosecutors charged 145 people with treason.

“The police force, in collaboration with other defence and security agencies, is continuing a serious manhunt to find all who planned, coordinated and executed this evil act,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.

Chadema’s secretary general, John Mnyika, the party’s deputy, Amani Golugwa, and the head of communications, Brenda Rupia, were among those wanted for arrest.

The leader of Chadema, Tundu Lissu, was charged with treason in April and not allowed to run in the elections. The exclusion of Lissu and other political figures from the ballot fuelled the ensuing protests.

According to Amnesty International, in the run-up to the elections, Tanzanian authorities carried out enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.

Protests broke out on 29 October in cities across Tanzania, leading to violence and clashes with police, a statement from authorities said.

Amnesty International said authorities cut off internet access and used excessive force in its attempt to suppress post-election protests.

Rights groups said the government has cracked down on individuals perceived to be associated with the protests, including the prominent businesswoman Jenifer Jovin, who was accused of encouraging protesters to buy gas masks.

President Samia acknowledged that there were deaths, but blamed the unrest on foreigners, stating: “It was not a surprise that those arrested were from other countries.”

Despite the protests, Samia was sworn into office on Monday. Her inauguration ceremony was televised but closed to the public and held at a military parade ground in the capital.

The president was elected in 2021 and was Tanzania’s first female president. She was initially praised by activists for easing political repression, but has since been accused of reversing course.

Donald Trump said Friday that no US government officials would be attending the Group of 20 summit this year in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.

The US president had already announced he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the globe’s leading and emerging economies. JD Vance had been scheduled to attend in Trump’s place, but a person familiar with Vance’s plans who was granted anonymity to talk about his schedule said Vance would no longer travel there for the summit.

“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump said on his social media site. In his post, Trump cited “abuses” of Afrikaners, including violence and death as well as confiscation of their land and farms.

The Trump administration has long accused the South African government of allowing minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked. As it restricted the number of refugees admitted annually to the US to 7,500, the administration indicated that most will be white South Africans who it claimed faced discrimination and violence at home.

But the government of South Africa has said it is surprised by the accusations of discrimination, because white people in the country generally have a much higher standard of living than its Black residents, more than three decades after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule.

The country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said he’s told Trump that information about the alleged discrimination and persecution of Afrikaners is “completely false”.

Nonetheless, the administration has kept up its criticisms of the South African government. Earlier this week during an economic speech in Miami, Trump said South Africa should be thrown out of the Group of 20.

Earlier this year, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, boycotted a G20 meeting for foreign ministers because its agenda focused on diversity, inclusion and climate change efforts.

More than a dozen NGO rescue vessels operating in the Mediterranean have suspended communication with the Libyan coastguard, citing escalating incidents of asylum seekers being violently intercepted at sea and taken to camps rife with torture, rape and forced labour.

The 13 search-and-rescue organisations described their decision as a rejection of mounting pressure by the EU, and Italy in particular, to share information with the Libyan coastguard, which receives training, equipment and funding from the EU.

In an effort to reduce the number of people arriving in Europe, the EU has long faced accusations of ignoring widespread abuse and systematic human rights violations against people in Libya.

In 2021, a UN investigation found that migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees in Libya were subjected to a “litany of abuses” in detention centres and at the hands of traffickers, with one member of the mission noting that the findings were “suggestive of crimes against humanity”.

This week, the search-and-rescue organisations described the Libyan coastguard as an “illegitimate actor at sea”, noting that Libya was not a place of safety for refugees.

“We have never recognised these actors as a legitimate rescue authority – they are part of a violent regime enabled by the EU,” said Ina Friebe, of the German activist group CompassCollective, in a joint statement put out by the 13 organisations.

“Now we are increasingly being pressured to communicate with exactly these actors. This must stop,” she said. “Ending all operational communication with the so-called Libyan Rescue Coordination Center is both a legal and moral necessity – a clear line against European complicity in crimes against humanity.”

The organisations acknowledged that the decision could result in them facing fines, detentions and the confiscation of their rescue vessels.

Giulia Messmer, of Berlin-based Sea-Watch, said: “It is not only our right but our duty to treat armed militias as such in our operational communication – not as legitimate actors in search-and-rescue operations.”

In the past 10 years, rescue organisations operating in the Mediterranean have saved more than 155,000 people from drowning.

In doing so, they have come under increased pressure; campaigners have criticised an escalating crackdown on them by Italy, where hardline rules have blocked vessels from leaving port for a collective total of more than 700 days, while in August, Libya’s coastguard was accused of firing on a vessel belonging to SOS Méditerranée.

A report published last month by Sea-Watch accused the Libyan coastguard of 54 violent incidents since 2016, including shootings, ramming vessels, and threatening and assaulting people in distress.

The search-and-rescue organisations said this week that they had launched a new alliance, the Justice Fleet, whose website would track incidents involving the Libyan coastguard and compile information on legal cases pursued by the NGOs.

The NGOs behind the alliance – the largest group of civil search-and-rescue organisations to date – described it as a means of pushing back against the escalating pressure they faced.

“For 10 years, civil sea rescue has been providing first aid in the Mediterranean. For that, we have been blocked, criminalised, slandered,” the Justice Fleet website said. “That’s why we are joining forces now, stronger than ever – to defend human rights and international maritime law together.”

Britain rejected atrocity prevention plans for Sudan despite intelligence warnings that the city of El Fasher would fall amid a wave of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

Government officials turned down the plans six months into the 18-month siege of El Fasher in favour of the “least ambitious” option of four presented.

The city was captured last month by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which immediately embarked on ethnically motivated mass killings and rapes. Thousands of the city’s residents are missing.

An internal British government paper, prepared last year, detailed four options for increasing “the protection of civilians, including atrocity prevention” in Sudan.

The options, evaluated by officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in autumn last year, included the introduction of an “international protection mechanism” to safeguard civilians from crimes against humanity and sexual violence.

However, because of aid cuts, FCDO officials chose the “least ambitious” plan to protect Sudanese civilians.

A report dated October 2025, documenting the decision, said: “Given resource constraints, [the UK] has opted to take the least ambitious approach to the prevention of atrocities, including CRSV [conflicted-related sexual violence].”

Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist with the US-based human rights organisation Paema (Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities), said: “Atrocities are not natural disasters – they are a political choice that are preventable if there is political will.

“The FCDO’s decision [to pursue the least ambitious option for atrocity prevention] clearly shows the lack of priority this government places on atrocity prevention globally, but this has real-life consequences.

“Now the UK government is complicit in the ongoing genocide of the people of Darfur,” she said.

The British government’s approach to Sudan is considered important for many reasons, including its role as “penholder” for the country at the UN security council – meaning it leads the council’s activities on the conflict that has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Details of the options paper were cited in a review of British assistance to Sudan between 2019 and mid-2025 by Liz Ditchburn, head of the body that scrutinises UK aid spending.

Her report for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) said the most ambitious atrocity-prevention plan for Sudan was not taken up partly because of “constraints in terms of resourcing and staffing”.

It stated that an FCDO “internal options paper” outlined four broad options but concluded that “an already overstretched country team did not have the capacity to take on a complex new programming area”.

Instead, officials chose “the fourth – and least ambitious – option”, which involved allocating an additional £10m funding to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other organisations “for various activities, including protection”.

The report also found that funding constraints compromised the UK’s ability to offer better protection for women and girls.

Sudan’s conflict has been characterised by widespread sexual violence against women and girls, evidenced by new testimonies from those fleeing El Fasher.

“This [the funding cuts] has constrained the UK’s ability to support stronger protection results within Sudan – including for women and girls,” the report stated.

It added that a proposal to make sexual violence a priority had been hindered by “funding constraints and limited programme management capacity”.

A promised programme for Sudanese women and girls would, it concluded, be ready only “in the medium to long term (from 2026)”.

Sarah Champion, chair of the parliamentary international development select committee, said atrocity prevention should be fundamental to British foreign policy.

“I am deeply concerned that in the rush to save money, some essential services are getting cut,” she said. “Prevention and early intervention should be core to all FCDO work, but sadly they are often seen as a ‘nice to have’.”

The Labour MP added: “In a time of a rapidly reducing aid budgets, this is a dangerously shortsighted approach to take.”

Ditchburn’s appraisal did, however, highlight some positives for the British government. “The UK has shown credible political leadership and strong convening power on Sudan, but its impact has been constrained by inconsistent political attention,” it read.

UK sources say its aid is “making a difference on the ground” with more than £120 million awarded to Sudan and that the UK is working with international partners to achieve peace.

They also referred to a recent UK statement at the UN Security Council which promised that the “world will hold the RSF leadership accountable for the crimes committed by their forces”.

The RSF denies harming civilians.

A Sudanese paramilitary group accused of killing thousands of unarmed civilians in an ethnically motivated massacre has agreed to a truce.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is facing mounting criticism over apparent war crimes committed by its fighters in the city of El Fasher last month, said it had agreed to a “humanitarian ceasefire” put forward by the quad countries of the US, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Officials involved in ceasefire discussions say the agreement is for a three-month truce across Sudan. However, the development may be viewed by some as an attempt by the RSF to deflect attention from the El Fasher allegations.

Hours before news emerged that the group had agreed to a ceasefire, satellite images appeared to show its recruits hiding bodies in mass graves.

The ceasefire agreement is thought to have involved the RSF’s principal backer, the UAE, which has faced criticism for allegedly supplying weapons and mercenaries used in the capture of El Fasher.

The UAE denies the claims despite evidence being presented in UN reports and elsewhere.

The RSF’s decision to accept the truce is unlikely to end its 30-month war against Sudan’s army. Earlier this week, the military-aligned government indicated it would carry on fighting after an internal meeting on a US ceasefire proposal.

The ceasefire announcement arrived amid more grim updates from Darfur, the vast region of west Sudan where El Fasher is located.

A report from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which is monitoring war crimes in El Fasher, said the RSF appeared to be conducting systematic body disposal, with mass graves being dug in trenches and pits.

The extent of the massacre is not clear, although the activist group Avaaz says its Sudan team believes “tens of thousands of civilians” have been slaughtered in the city.

Prosecutors at the international criminal court said on Monday they were collecting evidence of alleged mass killings, rapes and other crimes in El Fasher. Witnesses have reported RSF fighters going house to house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults. According to the World Health Organization, gunmen killed at least 460 people at a hospital and abducted doctors and nurses.

Efforts are being made to bring the RSF and army together for talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at a permanent peace deal.

South Africa is launching an investigation into how 17 of its citizens ended up in the war-torn region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

The office of the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said it had received distress calls from 17 men, aged between 20 and 39, who had been “lured to join mercenary forces involved in the Ukraine-Russia war under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts” and were now requesting assistance to return home.

The discovery has drawn attention to the role that foreign fighters are playing in the war as it drags towards its fourth anniversary with a mounting death toll on both sides.

It is not clear which side the men were fighting for, although their presence in Donbas, a region of Ukraine that is largely occupied by Russia, as well as the reference to them having been lured by the promise of financial reward strongly suggests they were enlisted by Russia.

Both sides have enlisted foreign fighters, though Russia has done so on a far larger scale, often relying on coercion and deception.

There have been numerous reports of Russian authorities and murky intermediaries forcing or deceiving African nationals, as well as recruits from Nepal, Syria, and Cuba, into fighting in Ukraine, often after luring them with false promises of lucrative non-military jobs advertised on social media.

In September, the Ukrainian military released a video of a captured Kenyan fighter who said he had been tricked into fighting for Russia.

Last month, the Center for Countering Disinformation, an agency of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, said Russia was launching a mercenary recruitment campaign in south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Russia is also supported by the presence of thousands of North Korean soldiers sent by Pyongyang to aid Moscow’s war effort, the only state-backed foreign forces to have joined the war. Hundreds of North Koreans are estimated to have died in the fighting.

Ukraine has encouraged foreign nationals to enlist in its armed forces, with many volunteers from Europe and the US joining units such as the International Legion. More recently, Ukraine has recruited about 2,000 Colombian nationals as contract soldiers to help fill manpower gaps nearly four years into the war.

Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst, said: “The role of foreign fighters on both the Ukrainian and Russian side has somewhat increased over the last two years.”

For Ukraine, even an additional influx of foreign fighters would not be able to address its manpower shortage, Gady said, which “remains the biggest impediment in the Ukrainian war effort”.

Jethro Norman, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the numbers of foreign fighters were “marginal on both sides”. “But symbolically, they punch far above their weight, especially in propaganda and recruitment narratives,” Norman said.

“Early in the war, foreign volunteers carried significant propaganda value, signalling international solidarity with Ukraine. Numbers appear to have declined since, but the idea of foreign fighters continues to feature prominently in social media, recruitment videos and Russian disinformation.”

Chinese social media is awash with recruitment videos for the Russian army, with influencers touting the glamour, riches and masculine kudos that supposedly come with joining the war. Beijing says it does not support its citizens getting involved in the conflict, but it allows the videos to circulate on China’s otherwise tightly controlled internet.

Ukraine denies it recruits mercenaries but says it allows foreign volunteers to become part of its armed forces.