M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo recently allowed the BBC to visit a huge mining site under their control which is vital to the production of the world's mobile phones - and over its vast expanse not one person was idle.

Thousands of miners dotted the landscape covered with pits and tunnels.

Some were deep underground digging up ore with shovels, others then hoisted sacks of the extracted rock containing coltan, which is used to make many electronic devices, on to their shoulders. They then took it to assembly points where others washed and filtered it with spades and by hand.

"We usually have more than 10,000 or more people working here daily," Patrice Musafiri, who has supervised the Rubaya mining site since the rebels took control of it in April last year, told the BBC.

It is tricky terrain to navigate - our team needed the aid of walking sticks, as well as Mr Musafiri's guidance, to stop us falling - yet for most of the men it is the only life they have known. It may be onerous and dangerous, but it allows them to make a small living.

"When we are deep in the mines, temperatures are very high - digging the mineral is also very hard... plus there can be other harmful gases," mineworker Peter Osiasi told the BBC.

"Sometimes cold air is pumped inside so that we can continue working," he said.

But the young man said he was grateful that since he began mining five years ago, he has been able to save a little money for a dowry and is now married with children.

"My life has really changed. Mining has really helped me."

The swathe of golden scarred earth they mine is found in the sprawling, lush Masisi Hills of North Kivu province - around 60km (37 miles) north-west of the city of Goma - and holds 15% of the world's coltan supply and half of the DR Congo's total deposits.

Little wonder that global investors have their eyes on this area.

It has provided immense wealth over the years to the various armed groups that have overseen it at different times, including the army.

We arrived at the mine, which is around 10km outside Rubaya town, several days after a ceasefire deal was signed in Washington by DR Congo and Rwanda as part of the peace process aimed at ending three decades of instability in the region.

The roots of the insecurity in the east of DR Congo are notoriously complicated.

There is an ethnic dimension, with many rebel groups operating here - including an ethnic Hutu militia linked to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which Kigali believes has Congolese backing.

• What's the fighting in DR Congo all about?
• Ceasefire deal still faces many challenges
• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo

In Washington both sides committed on 27 June to disarm and disengage their alleged proxies (despite denying having any).

The M23 was not party to the deal. Mainly led by ethnic Tutsis, it controls large parts of eastern DR Congo - and since January has taken control of Goma, the city of Bukavu and two airports. Rwanda has been accused by many — including the UN — of backing the M23. However, the authorities there deny sending military or financial aid.

The US's involvement in the process seems to hinge on getting access to DR Congo's mineral resources - though nothing has so far been specified.

"We're getting for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the [DR] Congo," said US President Donald Trump ahead of the signing.

During our brief visit - we were allowed access for around 45 minutes - there was no hint that the chain of command was about to change.

The supervisor, appointed by the M23, was keen to explain how the set-up at Rubaya had been reorganised over the last year and how the rebel group had brought security to allow miners to work without fear - specifying that no armed men were allowed on the site.

"We have already solved so many issues," Mr Musafiri said.

"Presently we have a mining department that regulates and monitors safety issues and also resolves internal disputes within the mines. If a tunnel becomes dangerous, people are told to leave to avoid accidents.

"People from different groups come here to mine daily and others to buy the minerals and now we have a huge market in Goma where they can resell what they buy here."

In December, a UN experts' report detailed how the M23 makes hundreds of thousands of dollars each month from taxing coltan, much of it was sent directly to Rwanda - allegations both the M23 and Kigali deny.

Surrounded by his colleagues wearing jeans, sweaters and wellington boots, all of whom buy permits to work at the site, Mr Osiasi agreed that conditions were better.

"Business is going on very well here because we have at least some semblance of peace, but the pay is very low. We are paid very little money," the miner said.

Trump's second term coincided with the M23's seizure of much of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and the humiliating retreat of the Congolese army.

Political analyst Akramm Tumsifu says DR Congo decided to use its rich mineral reserves as a bargaining chip to get US assistance - for months it had sought military support.

With a tentative peace process under way, the Congolese authorities' great hope, he told the BBC, was that American firms would be in a position to make "massive investments" in its mining sector, which is currently dominated by Chinese companies.

US companies are reportedly already looking to cash in on the opportunity to invest in Rubaya's mining sector.

The Rubaya supervisor told us investment would be welcomed, but only initiatives aimed at boosting the local economy - with jobs, schools and hospitals - would be allowed.

"Any foreign investor can come here, as long as they come with development for our people and increase daily wages for the miners," Mr Musafiri said.

Despite the country's colossal natural endowments, most mining communities have little infrastructure, without even accessible roads to the mines where the wealth is scooped from the ground.

Mr Tumsifu reckons the presence of American investors could also act as a "caution against fighting or a resurgence of other armed groups".

But it is not yet clear how or with whom an investor would do business given the M23 is still very much in control in the east.

A parallel mediation effort led by Qatar - which involves direct talks between the armed groups and the Congolese government - may yield more clarity in the coming months.

The M23, which is part of the broader Congo River Alliance, said the Washington-backed deal had fallen short of addressing the causes of the long conflict. It maintains it took up arms to protect the rights of the minority Tutsi group in DR Congo.

While the belligerents try and hammer out their preferred pathways to peace, local people at the Rubaya mine, like elsewhere in eastern DR Congo, only hope for a definitive end to the fighting and bloodshed which has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee their homes.

"My appeal to fellow young men and our leaders is to keep and maintain peace in our area," said Mr Osiasi.

As he prepared to go back to hours of more digging, he added: "I also appeal to the owners of the mines to increase our pay because it's very little."

Additional reporting by the BBC's Robert Kiptoo and Hassan Lali

You may also be interested in:

• Your phone, a rare metal and the war in DR Congo
• DR Congo-Rwanda peace deal met with scepticism in rebel-held city
• How DR Congo's Tutsis become foreigners in their own country
• Goma under M23 rule: 'They killed all these young people'
• 'They took all the women here': Rape survivors recall horror of DR Congo jailbreak

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

The US attorney general has ordered charges to be dropped against a doctor accused of destroying Covid-19 vaccines worth $28,000 (£20,742), distributing fake vaccination record cards, and giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine at their parents' request.

Pam Bondi said Dr Michael Kirk Moore Jr. "gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so". He had been indicted by the Justice Department under the Biden administration in 2023.

The plastic surgeon was already on trial in Utah, where he had pleaded not guilty to all charges including conspiracy to defraud the US.

The acting US Attorney for the district of Utah, Felice John Viti, filed to dismiss the charges on Saturday, saying this was "in the interests of justice".

Dr Moore was accused of providing fraudulently completed vaccination certificates for more than 1,900 vaccine doses, the US Attorney's office in Utah said in 2023.

These were allegedly provided, without administering the vaccine, for a charge of $50 (£37), in exchange for direct cash payments or donations to a specific charity.

The government also accused him of giving children saline shots at their parents' request so that the "children would think they were receiving a COVID-19 vaccine," according to the US attorney's office.

He was accused alongside his company - Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah, Inc. - and three others of seeking to defraud the US and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Bondi wrote on X on Saturday that she had ordered the Justice Department to drop the charges because Dr Moore "did not deserve the years in prison he was facing".

She said US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Mike Lee, both Republicans, had brought the case to her attention, calling them champions for "ending the weaponization of government".

Lee thanked the attorney general for "standing with the countless Americans who endured too many official lies, mandates, and lockdowns during COVID".

Dr Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison on multiple charges, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The current US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ran a group for eight years, Children's Health Defense, that repeatedly questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccination.

Kennedy has in the last year repeatedly said he is not "anti-vax" and will not be "taking away anybody's vaccines".

No burial records. No headstones. No memorials.

Nothing until 2014, when an amateur historian uncovered evidence of a mass grave, potentially in a former sewage tank, believed to contain hundreds of babies in Tuam, County Galway, in the west of Ireland.

Now, investigators have moved their diggers onto the nondescript patch of grass next to a children's playground on a housing estate in the town. An excavation, expected to last two years, will begin on Monday.

The area was once where St Mary's children's home stood, a church-run institution that housed thousands of women and children between 1925 and 1961.

Many of the women had fallen pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by their families - and separated from their children after giving birth.

According to death records, Patrick Derrane was the first baby to die at St Mary's – in 1915, aged five months. Mary Carty, the same age, was the last in 1960.

In the 35 years between their deaths, another 794 babies and young children are known to have died there - and it is believed they are buried in what former Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Enda Kenny dubbed a "chamber of horrors".

PJ Haverty spent the first six years of his life in the place he calls a prison - but he considers himself one of the lucky ones.

"I got out of there."

He remembers how the "home children", as they were known, were shunned at school.

"We had to go 10 minutes late and leave 10 minutes early, because they didn't want us talking to the other kids," PJ said.

"Even at break-time in the school, we weren't allowed to play with them – we were cordoned off.

"You were dirt from the street."

Read more from the survivors, relatives and campaigners who helped reveal the secret of Tuam after a decades-long wait for the truth.

The stigma stayed with PJ his whole life, even after finding a loving foster home and, in later years, tracking down his birth mother, who was separated from him when he was a one-year-old.

The home, run by the nuns of the Bon Secours Sisters, was an invisible spectre that loomed over him and many others in Tuam for decades – until amateur historian Catherine Corliss brought St Mary's dark past into the light.

Discovering the mass grave

Interested in delving into her family's past, Catherine took a local history course in 2005. Later, her interest turned to St Mary's and the "home children" who came to school separately from her and her classmates.

"When I started out, I had no idea what I was going to find."

To begin with, Catherine was surprised her innocuous inquiries were being met with blank responses or even suspicion.

"Nobody was helping, and nobody had any records," she said.

That only fed her determination to find out more about the children at the home.

A breakthrough came when she spoke to a cemetery caretaker, who brought her to the housing estate where the institution once stood.

At the side of a children's playground, there was a square of lawn with a grotto – a small shrine centred on a statue of Mary.

The caretaker told Catherine that two boys had been playing in that area in the mid-1970s after the home was demolished, and had come across a broken concrete slab. They pulled it up to reveal a hole.

Inside they saw bones. The caretaker said the authorities were told and the spot was covered up.

People believed the remains were from the Irish Famine in the 1840s. Before the mother-and-baby home, the institution was a famine-era workhouse where many people had died.

But that didn't add up for Catherine. She knew those people had been buried respectfully in a field half a mile away - there was a monument marking the spot.

Her suspicion was further raised when she compared old maps of the site. One, from 1929, labelled the area the boys found the bones as a "sewage tank". Another, from the 1970s after the home was demolished, had a handwritten note next to that area saying "burial ground".

The map did seem to indicate there was a grave at the site – and Catherine had read the sewage tank labelled on the map had become defunct in 1937 so, in theory, was empty. But who was buried there?

Catherine called the registration office for births, deaths and marriages in Galway and asked for the names of all the children who had died at the home.

A fortnight later a sceptical member of staff called to ask if she really wanted them all – Catherine expected "20 or 30" - but there were hundreds.

The full list, when Catherine received it, recorded 796 dead children.

She was utterly shocked. Her evidence was starting to indicate who was likely to be underneath that patch of grass at St Mary's.

But first, she checked burial records to see if any of those hundreds of children were buried in cemeteries in Galway or neighbouring County Mayo – and couldn't find any.

Without excavation, Catherine couldn't prove it beyond doubt. She now believed that hundreds of children had been buried in an unmarked mass grave, possibly in a disused sewage tank, at the St Mary's Home.

When her findings broke into an international news story in 2014, there was considerable hostility in her home town.

"People weren't believing me," she recalled. Many cast doubt - and scorn - that an amateur historian could uncover such an enormous scandal.

But there was a witness who had seen it with her own eyes.

Warning: The following sections contains details some readers might find distressing

Mary Moriarty lived in one of the houses near the site of the institution in the mid-1970s. Shortly after she spoke to BBC News, she passed away, but her family have agreed to allow what she told us to be published and broadcast.

Mary recalled two women coming to her in the early 1970s saying "they saw a young fella with a skull on a stick".

Mary and her neighbours asked the child where he had found the skull. He showed them some shrubbery and Mary, who went to look, "fell in a hole".

Light streamed in from where she had fallen. That's when she saw "little bundles", wrapped in cloths that had gone black from rot and damp, and were "packed one after the other, in rows up to the ceiling".

How many?

"Hundreds," she replied.

Some time later, when Mary's second son was born in the maternity hospital in Tuam, he was brought to her by the nuns who worked there "in all these bundles of cloths" - just like those she had seen in that hole.

"That's when I copped on," Mary says, "what I had seen after I fell down that hole were babies."

In 2017, Catherine's findings were confirmed - an Irish government investigation found "significant quantities of human remains" in a test excavation of the site.

The bones were not from the famine and the "age-at-death range" was from about 35 foetal weeks to two or three years.

By now, a campaign was under way for a full investigation of the site - Anna Corrigan was among those who wanted the authorities to start digging.

Until she was in her 50s, Anna believed she was an only child. But, when researching her family history in 2012, she discovered her mother had given birth to two boys in the home in 1946 and 1950, John and William.

Anna was unable to find a death certificate for William, but did find one for John – it officially registers his death at 16 months. Under cause of death it listed "congenital idiot" and "measles".

An inspection report of the home in 1947 had some more details about John.

"He was born normal and healthy, almost nine pounds (4kg) in weight," Anna said. "By the time he's 13 months old, he's emaciated with a voracious appetite, and has no control over bodily functions.

"Then he's dead three months later."

An entry from the institution's book of "discharges" says William died in 1951 – she does not know where either is buried.

Anna, who set up the Tuam Babies Family Group for survivors and relatives, said the children have been given a voice.

"We all know their names. We all know they existed as human beings."

Now, the work begins to find out the full extent of what lies beneath that patch of grass in Tuam.

'Absolutely tiny'

The excavation is expected to take about two years.

"It's a very challenging process – really a world-first," said Daniel MacSweeney, the head of the operation, who has helped find missing bodies in conflict zones such as Afghanistan.

He explained that the remains would have been mixed together and that an infant's femur - the body's largest bone - is only the size of an adult's finger.

"They're absolutely tiny," he said. "We need to recover the remains very, very carefully – to maximise the possibility of identification."

The difficulty of identifying the remains "can't be underestimated", he added.

For however long it takes, there will be people like Anna waiting for news - hoping to hear about sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts and cousins they never had the chance to meet.

Details of help and support with child bereavement are available in the UK at BBC Action Line

In an unassuming building in Stratford, east London, British start-up Better Dairy is making cheese that has never seen an udder, which it argues tastes like the real thing.

It is one of a handful of companies around the world hoping to bring lab-grown cheese to our dinner tables in the next few years.

But there has been a trend away from meat-free foods recently, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).

The statutory research organisation says that plant-based cheese sales across the UK declined 25.6% in the first quarter of 2025, while sales of cow's cheese grew by 3%.

One reason for this, the AHDB tells the BBC, might be because the number of vegans in Britain is small – just 1% of the population (the Vegan Society puts it at 3%), far fewer than the amount of dairy cheese eaters – and has slightly declined lately.

The Vegan Society insists that the meat-free food market remains "competitive" and steady.

Other reasons may be concerns about health and price. A recent government survey found that that food being ultra-processed - a key challenge with vegan cheese - was the second-greatest concern for consumers, the first being cost. Plant-based cheese is generally more expensive than cow's cheese, the AHDB says.

So are these efforts a recipe for success or disaster? Some think the coming years present an opportunity.

In the Netherlands, Those Vegan Cowboys expects to bring its cheeses to the US later this year, and Europe in three to four years due to regulatory hurdles. This is because lab-made cheeses count as a "novel food" and so need EU approval to go on sale.

Its chief executive, Hille van der Kaa, admits the appetite for vegan cheese is low right now, but her company is targeting a "silent revolution" by swapping cheeses people don't often think about.

"If you buy frozen pizza, you don't really think of what kind of cheese is on that," she explains. "So it's quite easy to swap."

Meanwhile, French firm Standing Ovation plans on launching in the US next year, and in the UK and Europe in 2027.

And back in Stratford, London-based Better Dairy hasn't launched its lab-grown cheese yet because it would cost too much right now.

But chief executive Jevan Nagarajah plans to launch in three or four years, when he hopes the price will be closer to those seen in a cheesemonger, before getting it down to the sorts seen in a supermarket.

So does it taste any good?

Better Dairy invited me – a committed carnivore and dairy devotee – to its lab to poke holes in this new cheese.

Currently, the company is only making cheddar because it sees vegan hard cheeses as having the biggest "quality gap" to dairy cheeses. It has made blue cheese, mozzarella and soft cheese, but argues the proteins in dairy don't make as big a difference in taste.

The process starts with yeast that has been genetically modified to produce casein, the key protein in milk, instead of alcohol. Jevan says this is the same technique used to produce insulin without having to harvest it from pigs.

Other companies also use bacteria or fungi to produce casein.

Once the casein is made through this precision fermentation, it is mixed with plant-based fat and the other components of milk needed for cheese, and then the traditional cheese-making process ensues.

Having tried Better Dairy's three-month, six-month and 12-month aged cheddars, I can say they tasted closer to the real thing than anything else I've tried. The younger cheese was perhaps a bit more rubbery than usual, and the older ones more obviously salty. On a burger, the cheese melted well.

Jevan accepts there's room to improve. He says the cheese I tried was made in his lab, but in future wants artisanal cheesemakers to use the firm's non-dairy "milk" in their own labs to improve the taste.

As the company cannot use dairy fats, it has had to "optimise" plant-derived fats to make them taste better.

"If you've experienced plant-based cheeses, a lot of them have off flavours, and typically it comes from trying to use nut-based or coconut fats – and they impart flavours that aren't normally in there," Better Dairy scientist Kate Royle says.

Meanwhile, Those Vegan Cowboys is still focusing on easy-to-replace cheeses, like those on pizzas and burgers, while Standing Ovation says its casein can make a range of cheeses including camembert.

Will these new cheeses find their match?

It'll be a tall order. Of those who bought vegan cheese on the market in the past year, 40% did not buy it again, according to an AHDB survey – suggesting taste may be a turn-off.

Damian Watson from the Vegan Society points out that resemblance to the real thing may not even be a good thing.

"Some vegans want the taste and texture of their food to be like meat, fish or dairy, and others want something completely different," he tells me.

And Judith Bryans, chief executive of industry body Dairy UK, thinks the status quo will remain strong.

"There's no evidence to suggest that the addition of lab-grown products would take away from the existing market, and it remains to be seen where these products would fit in from a consumer perception and price point of view," she tells the BBC.

But both Better Dairy and Those Vegan Cowboys tout partnerships with cheese producers to scale up production and keep costs down, while Standing Ovation has already struck a partnership with Bel (makers of BabyBel).

Standing Ovation's CEO Yvan Chardonnens characterises the recent unpopularity as a first wave in the vegan "analogues" of cheese faltering because of quality, while he hopes that will improve in the next phase.

Besides the current concerns about a shrinking vegan market, taste, quality and price, the issue of ultra-processed foods is one that these companies may have to grapple with.

They argue a lack of lactose, no cholesterol and lower amounts of saturated fats in lab-made cheese can boost its health benefits - and that any cheese is processed.

Precision fermentation may also allow producers to strip out many ultra-processed elements of current vegan cheeses.

Hille suggests it's a question of perception. People have a "romanticised view" of dairy farming, she says, despite it now being "totally industrialised" - a point backed by AHDB polling, which found 71% of consumers see dairy as natural.

"I wouldn't say that's really a traditional, natural type of food," Hille argues.

"We do have an important task to show people how cheese is made nowadays."

Russian conductor Valery Gergiev has been barred from European stages ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A close ally of Vladimir Putin for many years, the director of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Russian state theatres has never spoken out against the war.

But a region of southern Italy has now invited Gergiev back to Europe, signalling the artist's rehabilitation even as Russia's attacks on Ukraine intensify.

Vincenzo de Luca, who runs the Campania region, insists that the concert at the Un'Estate da RE festival later this month will go ahead despite a growing swell of criticism.

"Culture… must not be influenced by politics and political logic," De Luca said in a livestream on Friday. "We do not ask these men to answer for the choices made by politicians."

The 76-year-old local leader has previously called Europe's broad veto on pro-Putin artists "a moment of stupidity – a moment of madness" at the start of the war and announced that he was "proud" to welcome Gergiev to town.

But Pina Picierno, a vice-president of the European Parliament, has told the BBC that allowing Gergiev's return is "absolutely unacceptable".

She calls the star conductor a "cultural mouthpiece for Putin and his crimes".

Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk said the invitation by the regional government was "hypocrisy", rather than neutrality.

Russian opposition activists have also condemned the director's sudden return. The Anti-Corruption Foundation, of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wants his concert cancelled and is calling on Italy's interior ministry to ban Gergiev's entry to the country.

Before Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, the virtuoso Gergiev was a regular visitor to stages in Italy and across Europe, despite his closeness to Putin.

His long and illustrious career includes stints at the London Symphony Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic.

But the invitations to Europe stopped abruptly on 24 February 2022.

Hours before the first Russian missiles were launched at Ukraine, Gergiev was on stage at Milan's La Scala opera house. Urged then by the city's mayor to speak out against the war, Gergiev chose silence.

He was promptly dropped from the bill.

Abandoned by his manager, despite calling Gergiev "the greatest conductor alive", he was then fired as chief conductor in Munich and removed from concert schedules across the continent.

That's why the invitation from Italy is so controversial.

Pina Picierno, who is from the Campania region herself, says her call to stop the event is not Russophobic.

"There is no shortage of brilliant Russian artists who choose to disassociate themselves from Putin's criminal policies," she told the BBC.

The European MP, who says she has received threats for her work exposing Russia's hybrid warfare, warns that allowing Gergiev to perform would be both wrong and dangerous.

"This is not about censorship. Gergiev is part of a deliberate Kremlin strategy. He is one of their cultural envoys to soften Western public opinion. This is part of their war."

The cultural controversy erupted in a week when Italy was hosting heads of state from all over Europe to reaffirm their support for Ukraine and discuss how to rebuild the country once the war is over.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been a strong and consistent critic of Vladimir Putin from the start. But her culture ministry is one of the backers of Un'Estate da RE, which has invited Gergiev.

A senior MP from Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, Alfredo Antoniozzi, has described Gergiev as "simply a great artist".

"If Russians have to pay for the mistakes of their president, then we are committing a kind of cultural genocide," he argued.

Last month, Canada formally barred Gergiev from entry and declared it would freeze any assets.

But the European Union has shied away from formal sanctions against the conductor, who has avoided voicing open support for the war.

Gergiev has been a vocal supporter of Putin since the 1990s, later campaigning for his re-election and backing Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

He was handed management of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, in addition to the Mariinsky Theatre, taking over from a director who signed an open letter against Russia's war.

Gergiev is a state employee, but in 2022 an investigation by Alexei Navalny's team uncovered properties in several Italian cities that they say he never declared.

They also alleged he used donations to a charitable fund to pay for his own lavish lifestyle.

The activists argued that was Gergiev's reward for his public loyalty to Putin.

The BBC has so far been unable to reach the conductor for comment.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, Eva Hrncirova, has clarified that the Un'Estate da RE festival is not receiving EU cash: it is financed by Italy's own "cohesion funds".

But she added that the commission urged European stages not to give space "to artists who support the war of aggression in Ukraine".

In Campania, the artistic director who crafted this year's festival programme declined to comment. A spokesman was confident Gergiev's performance would go ahead, though – despite the controversy.

"Yes," he assured the BBC. "For sure."

Additional reporting from Rome by Davide Ghiglione.

Within hours of the world-famous Sycamore Gap tree being illegally felled, Walter Renwick found himself in a maelstrom of accusations and abuse.

Online amateur sleuths, who had taken it upon themselves to investigate, thought that in the former lumberjack they had found their man.

He had the skills, a chainsaw and an apparent motive, but there was one flaw in the theories.

It was not him.

Photographs quickly appeared in a national newspaper showing police searching Mr Renwick's Northumberland home and a chainsaw being removed.

"It was heartbreaking," Mr Renwick said.

"There were police everywhere, drones flying around the valley, divers in the lake, they were 100% certain I'd done it.

"Every time I went shopping in Haltwhistle or Hexham, people were nudging each other and saying 'that's him that cut the tree down', stuff like that."

Mr Renwick even wore a disguise to hide his identity.

"I know it was daft but I put a Rod Stewart wig on so people didn't spot me."

Months earlier he had been evicted from Plankey Mill Farm near Bardon Mill, just a few miles from Hadrian's Wall, by landowners Jesuits in Britain.

His family had been there for decades, but the tenancy held by his grandfather and father had not passed to him.

"I'd just lost everything I had, my cows, my sheep, my parents' stuff. I'd lost my home and then this," Mr Renwick said of the Sycamore Gap accusations.

Jesuits in Britain said they made the "difficult decision" to evict Mr Renwick in 2021 after "many attempts to engage with him".

They cited "serious breaches of his tenancy, including unauthorised camping on the land, damage to the farmhouse and repeated refusal to allow inspections".

Mr Renwick admits he had been running a campsite and there had been concerns about anti-social behaviour there and elsewhere on his land.

One of the complaints, he alleges, was from the National Trust which owns a neighbouring property and the land at Sycamore Gap.

The National Trust said it would be "inappropriate to discuss our complaints procedure in relation to any individual".

Freelance journalist Kevin Donald was one of those deployed to try and find out who had been arrested in the days immediately following the felling.

"It's a bit tenuous, but there was a sort of motive there," he said.

"Suddenly everything was pointing to Walter Renwick who then became a massive target for online trolling."

Walter Renwick was arrested on 29 September 2023, the day after the felling, but hours earlier another person had also been taken into custody.

Journalist Mr Donald said neighbours in Haltwhistle described seeing "a large police presence" and a teenager being put into a car "with blue lights flashing".

"At first local people seemed reluctant to name him. They seemed to want to protect him," Mr Donald said.

Northumbria Police then announced they had arrested a 16-year-old boy, who we are not naming at his request.

But while being questioned, his name and photograph were posted on social media.

"The picture showed him with a chainsaw and he was in what you'd call lumberjack gear," Mr Donald said.

"It suddenly went from 'a kid couldn't do this' to 'maybe that kid could'."

Those in the boy's home town remember a time of febrile speculation.

Bed and breakfast owner Ed Corble called it "absolute chaos".

"His family had no idea why it was happening and for a 16-year-old to have the eyes of the world on him like that was so dangerous."

Scott Donaldson, owner of the nearby Milecastle Inn, said many people had concerns about the arrest.

"We had family members in the tree surgery business and they just thought there was no way a 16-year-old could have done it," he said.

"There was a lot of discussion in the pub and we quickly came to the conclusion that there was no way that young lad was involved."

That, however, did not stop trolls sending the teenager disturbing abuse online about the recent death of a relative.

"You've immediately got this trial by social media going on," Mr Donald said.

"It was all over the place that they'd arrested Walter and his grandson, but it turned out they didn't even know each other."

In November, the police said the teenager would face no further action. A month later the same announcement was made about Mr Renwick.

By that time Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, both from Cumbria, had been arrested.

We asked Northumbria Police what prompted the arrests of Mr Renwick and the teenager and why it had taken the force several weeks to conclude no further action would be taken against them.

In a statement the force said it recognised the "strength of feeling that the felling has caused" and that it had carried out a "a meticulous and proportionate investigation".

It added "the unwavering commitment" of those involved in the case had led to a successful prosecution.

On 9 May, a jury at Newcastle Crown Court unanimously convicted Graham and Carruthers of two counts of criminal damage.

"I just keep asking myself why they did it," Mr Renwick said.

"Was it just attention seeking? I don't know what it was but, for me at least, it's over.

"Actually, you know, the tree, that was one thing. But losing my farm. That was the thing that hurt most of all."

Jesuits in Britain said Mr Renwick's father "gave up" the tenancy in 2008 and Mr Renwick did not meet the legal criteria to succeed his dad, but he was offered a 10-year lease which was extended twice, "well beyond any legal obligation on our part".

A spokeswoman said Mr Renwick was "fully aware" of the process and options available and he was given "multiple opportunities to discuss alternative arrangements".

"Throughout we have sought to act with kindness and integrity," the charity said, adding: "We sincerely wish him well as he moves forward."

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