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.

The US is ending temporary deportation protections for South Sudanese nationals, which for more than a decade allowed people from the east African country to stay in the US after escaping conflict.

In a notice published on Wednesday, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said conditions in South Sudan no longer met the statutory requirements for temporary protected status. The agency also said that South Sudanese nationals with status through the programme have 60 days to leave the US before facing deportation from January.

“Based on the department’s review, the secretary has determined the situation in South Sudan no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning South Sudanese nationals,” the notice says.

In a statement, USCIS said South Sudanese nationals who use the Customs and Border Protection mobile app to report their departure could receive “a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 exit bonus, and potential future opportunities for legal immigration”.

Temporary protected status gives foreign nationals access to work permits and allows them to temporarily live and work legally in the US when their home countries are unsafe to return to.

South Sudan’s designation, which was first authorised in the Barack Obama administration in 2011 due to armed conflict, expired on Monday after many extensions.

The designation had so far been approved for about 232 people from the country.

The termination is the latest effort by the Trump administration to remove the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants living in the US. The government has also ended protections for countries including Cameroon, Haiti and Nepal.

The revocations have raised fears for the safety of the immigrants, with critics saying they may return to dangerous conditions.

South Sudan has faced on-and-off conflict since its independence, that has led to huge numbers of killings and mass displacement.

In 2013, the country descended into a civil war that killed more than 400,000 people and displaced nearly half the country’s population. A peace agreement in 2018 ended the fighting but observers say recent developments, including the arrest and prosecution of vice-president Riek Machar, risk plunging the country into conflict again.

Last week, the UN’s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned that a mix of political power struggles, ethnic tensions and local grievances threatened a renewed slide into full-scale fighting.

Ugandans reacted with joy and of hope to the news that Kampala-born Zohran Mamdani had been elected mayor of New York City, amid a stormy democratic and rights environment in east Africa.

Mamdani, who was born in Uganda 34 years ago to a family of Indian origin, on Tuesday defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa to become the city’s first Muslim mayor and the first of south Asian heritage.

He has lived in the US since he was seven years old. In his 20s, under the stage name Young Cardamom, he made music with Ugandan rapper HAB.

Many in Uganda had not heard of Mamdani before the election win or that a Ugandan had become the youngest mayor of New York City in more than a century.

But there was excitement and pride at Makerere University in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where Mamdani’s father taught until a few years ago.

“Seeing Zohran up there, I feel like I can also make it,” psychology student Anthony Kirabo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“It makes me feel good and proud of my country because it shows that Uganda can produce some good leaders,” said the 22-year-old, adding that he hoped it might encourage more tourists to come to the east African country.

Mamdani’s win comes at a trying period for democracy in east Africa, where observers describe growing repression and violation of human rights in some countries.

Uganda’s neighbour Tanzania is reeling from bloody election violence last week in which hundreds of people were reported to have been killed in demonstrations against what protesters said was the stifling of the opposition after the exclusion of key candidates from the presidential ballot.

Some hoped Mamdani’s victory would provide a lesson for Ugandan leaders as the country readies itself for a potentially fraught general election in January, with Yoweri Museveni, the president who has ruled the country for 39 years, seeking to extend his grip on power into a seventh term.

Developments in the run-up, including the months-long detention of opposition politician Kizza Besigye, the passage of a bill to try civilians in military court and the abduction of two Kenyan rights activists, have turned the spotlight on what critics deem intolerance and authoritarianism by Museveni’s administration.

Joseph Sendagire, a 28-year-old procurement officer, told AFP he hoped Uganda would “borrow a leaf” from New York City’s mayoral election.

“Uganda should embrace a culture of free and fair elections, allow candidates to compete for whatever post we want in a fair manner, treat them equally, and then at the end of the day, may the best candidate win,” he said.

Robert Kabushenga, a retired media executive who is friendly with the Mamdani family, told the Associated Press that the win offers “a beacon of hope” for embattled activists and others in Uganda. The lesson is that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way,” he said.

Bobi Wine, Museveni’s main challenger, sent “hearty congratulations” to Mamdani.

“From Uganda, we celebrate and draw strength from your example as we work to build a country where every citizen can realize their grandest dreams regardless of means and background,” the 43-year-old wrote on X.

Joel Ssenyonyi, the leader of the opposition leader in the Ugandan parliament, told the AP he sees Mamdani’s victory as an inspiring political shift but somehow too distant for many Africans at home.

“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” said Ssenyonyi. “But we have a long way to get there.”

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed reporting

A Libyan general wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity has been arrested in Tripoli.

Osama Almasri Najim, the former chief of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested over allegations of torturing prisoners, leading to the death of one, at Tripoli’s main prison, Libya’s prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

The Italian government came under fire in January after Najim was arrested in the northern city of Turin on the ICC warrant only to be released two days later and flown back to Tripoli on an Italian air force plane.

In a statement, Libya’s prosecutors’ office said that as it had pursued the ICC’s allegations, it had gathered additional information about “human rights violations against inmates at Tripoli’s main prison, who reported being subjected to torture and cruel, degrading treatment”.

Najim had been questioned about the alleged abuse against 10 prisoners and the death of one, the statement said. The arrest was made “given that sufficient evidence was established to support the charges”, the statement added.

Najim is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder.

He was arrested in Turin after attending a football match before being released and repatriated. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said he had been quickly repatriated because he was considered a risk to Italy’s national security.

Critics accused her administration of pandering to Libya because of its reliance on the north African country to stem the flow of migration towards Italy’s southern shores.

The ICC said Italy had failed in its obligations under the Rome statute, the court’s founding treaty, to execute the warrant and surrender Najim while he was on Italian territory.

The case prompted Rome prosecutors to investigate Meloni and three other government officials on suspicion of aiding and abetting a crime and embezzlement of public funds over use of the air force jet, although they were later cleared.

In May, Libya accepted the authority of the ICC to investigate alleged war crimes in the country despite not being party to the Rome statute.

Italian opposition parties reacted swiftly to news of Najim’s arrest, with the former prime minister and leader of the Five Star Movement Giuseppe Conte saying it was “a humiliation for the Meloni government”.

Elly Schlein, leader of the Democratic party, said: “The Libyan authorities ordered Almasri’s arrest on charges of torture and murder … the same criminal that [the Italian government] freed and escorted home on a government flight. This is a disgrace at an international level for which our government must apologise to Italians.”

Antonella Forattini, a Democratic party politician, said it was “a stain on our institutions and Italy’s image around the world”. She added: “Libya is now demonstrating that it is ahead of our country in defending justice and legality.”

The case put the spotlight on a controversial pact between Italy and Libya, signed in 2017 and renewed every three years. The deal, approved by the European Council, involves Italy funding and equipping the Libyan coastguard to prevent boats of refugees leaving the north African country. Humanitarian groups have criticised it for pushing people back to detention camps, where they face torture and other abuses.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres has said the war in Sudan is spiralling out of control as he called for a halt to the fighting and an end to the violence.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized El Fasher in Darfur last week after a near 18-month siege. Some of its soldiers have posted videos of civilians being shot, including in the town’s maternity hospital.

The two-year civil war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the RSF has created what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. More than 150,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million displaced from their homes.

Prosecutors at the international criminal court said on Monday that they were collecting evidence of alleged mass killings, rape and other crimes in El Fasher.

Guterres urged the warring parties to “come to the negotiating table, bring an end to this nightmare of violence - now”.

“The horrifying crisis in Sudan ... is spiralling out of control,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the World Summit for Social Development in Qatar.

“El Fasher and the surrounding areas in North Darfur have been an epicentre of suffering, hunger, violence and displacement,” he said.

“And since the Rapid Support Forces entered El Fasher last weekend, the situation is growing worse by the day,. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped by this siege. People are dying of malnutrition, disease and violence.”

His call at the Doha conference came as the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) based in Port Sudan discussed whether to support a US-proposed truce, or to insist any ceasefire be dependent on the RSF withdrawing from Sudan’s cities, including El Fasher.

The fall of El Fasher gives the RSF control of all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan could effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis, but the Sudanese ambassador to the UK, Babikir Elamin, said there was little support for partition in Darfur itself.

He said the priority was not a ceasefire, but action to end the massacres in El Fasher.

The US has been trying since September to persuade the two sides to back a peace plan agreed by Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia that would start with a three-month humanitarian pause, followed by a permanent ceasefire that would trigger a nine-month transition to a civilian-led government.

Washington is hoping that with the two-year civil war finally attracting greater worldwide attention, the publicity may force the warring parties and their external supporters to relent on their maximalist positions.

Initial signs from a lengthy SAF security and defence council meeting, however, are that there is strong resistance to the US plan developed by Donald Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos.

Some SAF sources, admitting they were under new pressure from Egypt to accept a ceasefire, countered with a call for the RSF to be confined to camps outside cities. It is not clear how such RSF withdrawals could be enforced.

Speaking in London, Elamin called on Washington to designate the RSF a terrorist organisation by the US and for a ban on all arms sales to the UAE.

The UAE denies supplying weapons to the RSF.

“The RSF are now openly and publicly vowing to commit yet further crimes in cities and parts of the country. They have named the cities, the communities and the ethnic groups they are targeting,” Elamin said.

“Parts of the country that have never witnessed violence are now threatened. They are proudly making videos of themselves murdering innocent civilians. Some of them admit they have lost count of the number of people they have killed.”

He pointed out that as the SAF leadership had been exploring the potential US peace plan, the RSF were attacking El Fasher.

“What is the reason for getting engaged in talks while they are still committing these kind of atrocities,” he said. “Before we can discuss the kind of proposal, the international community should show some kind of seriousness in dealing with these atrocities that are still taking place in El Fasher.

“The priority now must be to stop the atrocities and this kind of genocide.”

A British teenager whose parents left him in Ghana, fearing he was at risk from “gang culture” in the UK, should stay there until at least the end of his GCSE exams, a judge sitting at London’s high court has ruled.

The boy took legal action against his parents, seeking a court order that would force his return, after they enrolled him in a boarding school and arranged for him to live with extended family in Ghana without telling him.

But after the boy’s parents told the court they did not want him to return until after his exams and did not believe they could keep him safe in England, his legal efforts to force an immediate return failed.

His parents were born in Ghana but he was born in England and “regards himself as an outsider” in the West African country, a social worker told the wardship proceedings.

In a judgment published on Tuesday, Mrs Justice Theis ruled that while the boy, who can be identified only as ‘S’ for legal reasons, had been “tricked”, she concluded he “should remain living in Ghana with the aim of setting out a roadmap and taking the necessary steps for ‘S’ to return here after completing his GCSEs.”

He had travelled from his home in England to visit relatives in Ghana in March 2024 with his parents and a sibling, but his family returned in April without him. His mother and father had become “increasingly concerned” for his safety in the year prior, fearing he was “becoming involved in the gang culture which was prevalent in the area”.

Videos, photos and messages, which made them fear he was involved in theft, fraud and possessing knives, had been found on his phone by his parents, while his mother had found a kitchen knife hidden at the home.

The judge said since his parents did not want him to return home soon, the risk of relationship breakdown would be “very high” if he did, with the likelihood he would be exposed to “the very serious risks” they had tried to protect him from.

Before being taken to Ghana, the boy had become “secretive and dishonest about his whereabouts and possessions,” with his parents struggling to manage “deteriorating behaviour” that was “influenced by peer pressure”.

His mother still “considers him at risk of serious physical harm or death” if he returns, her barrister, Michael Gration, KC told a hearing last month.

In her judgment, Mrs Justice Theis said while there was “very real concern” about the effect of him remaining in a country where he felt abandoned, he had “more of an understanding of why his parents took the steps they did”.

She added that while she was “acutely aware” the conclusion did not accord with his wishes and “how that will feel for him”, he had the “talent, ability and intelligence to make this work” and the family shared the “common aim” for him to return eventually.

In a statement, the boy’s father, who has been visiting him in Ghana, said: ‘I love [S] very much. However, I do not believe I can ensure [his] safety if he remains in England.

“This is not a reflection of a lack of love or care but rather a realistic assessment of the risks involved. Ghana is currently the safest and most suitable place for him.”

The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy after suffering reputational damage over its support for the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group that has carried out mass killings in El Fasher since it captured the city late last month.

Speaking in Bahrain on Sunday, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said the UAE and others had been wrong not to impose sanctions on the instigators of the 2021 coup – jointly led by the RSF and the army – that overthrew Sudan’s transitional civilian government.

“We all made a mistake when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrew the civilian government,” Gargash said. “That was, looking back, a critical mistake. We should have put our foot down collectively. We did not call it a coup.”

It is a striking reversal. The UAE had actively undermined the idea of a strong civilian democratic government in Sudan in the aftermath of the popular uprising that led to the downfall of the 30-year, Islamist-aligned dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Throughout 2019, “in the interests of a stable transition”, the UAE and Saudi Arabia tried to enhance the role of the military and marginalise civilian rule, including by promoting the idea that the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, should be in charge of economic policy.

In a piece of bailout diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis quickly agreed a $3bn loan to the transitional military council that initially tried to succeed Bashir. In late 2019, when the civilian side of the government had the upper hand, further payouts from the loan were stopped.

Jonas Horner, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote that the loss of the loan not only critically undermined the civilian government but also led directly to the coup in 2021, followed by the civil war that broke out between the army and the RSF in 2023.

“The fate of the transitional government would likely have been dramatically different had the Gulf backed them with the billions they had pledged to the military,” Horner wrote.

Finger of blame

Four years on from the coup, the Gargash admission is a sign that in public at least the UAE acknowledges that its Sudan policy has gone wrong and that it must distance itself from the RSF, the force it so nurtured.

That the Emiratis covertly armed the RSF is clear from evidence compiled by the UN, independent experts and reporters, even though the UAE denies it. In January, the Biden administration pointed the finger of blame when it imposed sanctions on Hemedti and seven UAE-based companies funding him.

Sudanese civilian groups warned for more than 18 months that the RSF would commit ethnically targeted mass killings if it took El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. That placed a special obligation on the UAE, the country with the greatest ability to restrain Hemedti. Although the UAE has condemned the atrocities in El Fasher, it also put the blame for what happened on the army’s failure to compromise.

The UAE’s response to international criticism is to insist that it is being traduced and that it is the victim of a disinformation campaign fuelled by Islamists inside the Sudanese army and by leftwing NGOs long opposed to the Gulf state.

It insists it wants a transition back to a civilian-led Sudanese government, and says both the RSF and the army have disqualified themselves from shaping Sudan’s future.

Figures such as the UAE foreign affairs minister, Lana Nusseibeh, say the country is not the primary sponsor of the war but rather a neutral party seeking to mediate a return to the civilian, Islamist-free rule that started with the 2019 uprising and ended with the 2021 coup.

Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, said a minimum test of the UAE’s sincerity about breaking with the RSF would be pro-active cooperation with the UN expert panel policing the arms embargo on Sudan.

As Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to successive US special envoys on Sudan, puts it: “What we see is a complete and total denial by the UAE authorities they have any role or involvement whatsoever in this conflict. Until we can agree on a basic set of facts about what is happening and who is driving it, it is going to be very difficult to resolve.”

What happens next will also depend on whether the UAE thinks that the RSF – and its tainting brutality – are still indispensable to its two keys goals in Sudan: accessing resources and deterring the influence of Islamism, the belief that Islam is innately political and that it should influence political systems. The UAE in particular regards the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to security in the region.

Natural resources

The UAE is just one of the Gulf states to have been drawn to Sudan’s natural resources for decades. Jaafar Nimeiri, Sudan’s president from 1969 to 1985, promised that in return for Gulf investment Sudan could become the breadbasket of the Arab world, as well as a source of a badly needed and sometimes highly educated workforce.

Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all responded, each arriving with different political agendas. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both made multibillion-dollar agricultural investments in Sudan to secure food for their populations, first under Nimieri and then through the authoritarian rule of Bashir, who seized power in 1989 and worked in alliance with Islamists.

The fact that Bashir came to be heavily sanctioned by the US proved little constraint as the Gulf states poured money into Sudan. “For these young, wealthy monarchies – which import upwards of 80% of all the food they consume – securing access to Sudan’s agriculture, livestock and mineral resources is a virtually existential concern,” said Horner, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Sudan’s strategic location on the Red Sea made it highly attractive place for the UAE to build ports, and in December 2022 the state-owned Abu Dhabi Ports Group and Invictus Investment signed a $6bn deal to invest in the Abu Amama port, 125 miles north of Port Sudan. The contract has since been cancelled by Sudan’s de factor leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, but the UAE will be keen to revive the scheme under any successor.

Emirati banks hold stakes in Bank of Khartoum, the largest commercial bank in Sudan, whose digital platform facilitates money transfers for millions of displaced Sudanese and public institutions. However, it is Sudan’s gold reserves that are of particular importance, not just to the RSF and the army, which operate as businesses as much as fighting forces, but also to the UAE.

Gold represents about 49% of Sudan’s exports. In February, the state-owned Sudan Mineral Resources Company said gold production in army-controlled areas reached 74 tonnes in 2024, up from 41.8 tonnes in 2022. The Central Bank of Sudan reported that in 2024 almost 97% of official gold exports (from army-held areas) went to the UAE, earning $1.52bn.

Official exports are a drop in the ocean, however. An estimated 90% of Sudan’s gold production, amounting to approximately $13.4bn in illicit trade, is smuggled out of the country, often passing through transit routes in Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan before reaching the UAE.

In a report last month for Chatham House, Ahmed Soliman and Dr Suliman Baldo wrote: “The UAE continues to benefit from Sudan’s conflict gold, as the enforcement of restrictions on artisanal gold imports from countries where there is war or where gold is controlled by armed groups remains limited.”

The UAE’s conduit is Hemedti, with whom they forged a special relationship when he agreed to send RSF troops to Yemen in support of Emirati and Saudi forces fighting the Houthis. He owns many of the mines in Darfur through his family firm Algunade.

Politics, as well as profit, also drive the Emirati interest. As with its parallel interventions in eastern Libya and south Yemen, the UAE wants to contest the Islamism with which Bashir was allied.

Collective pressure

Now that its support for the RSF seems so perilous reputationally, there is an onus on the UAE to contribute to a resolution of the crisis.

The US hopes the solution lies in Sudan’s two key external players, the UAE and Egypt, which backs the army and wants keep the conflict within Sudan’s border, finally agreeing they will collectively press their proxies into a ceasefire. The statement agreed by the US, Saudi, Egypt and UAE – four countries engaged in mediation efforts collectively known as the Quad – on 12 September was a breakthrough in that regard in that it set out a course for a three-month humanitarian truce, leading to a permanent ceasefire, and within nine months the establishment of an independent, civilian-led government with broad-based legitimacy and accountability.

It added: “Sudan’s future governance is for the Sudanese people to decide through an inclusive and transparent transition process, not controlled by any warring party.”

One other passage in the joint statement protected UAE interests: “Sudan’s future cannot be dictated by violent extremist groups part of, or evidently linked to, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose destabilising influence has fuelled violence and instability across the region.”

Talks on these proposals in Washington – so far excluding Sudanese civilians – have not yet borne fruit, suggesting it may yet require more senior US officials to engage before the protagonists of Sudan’s civil war and their supporters accept that further fighting offers only more misery.

Nigeria-set drama My Father’s Shadow is the leading contender at this year’s British independent film awards (Bifas), after it scooped 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Akinola Davies Jr, and best screenplay for Davies’s brother Wale. The film came out ahead of Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s coming-of-age relationship story, which got 10 nominations, and biopic I Swear, which got nine.

My Father’s Shadow, which stars Sope Dirisu and is Davies’s debut feature as a director, premiered at the Cannes film festival to admiring reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives”. The film is yet to be released in the UK, but has already come out in Nigeria.

Pillion, likewise, had a successful premiere at Cannes in May, with Bradshaw calling it “an intensely English story of romance, devotion and loss from first-time feature director Harry Lighton, who has created something funny and touching and alarming – like a cross between Alan Bennett and Tom of Finland with perhaps a tiny smidgen of what could be called a BDSM Wallace and Gromit”. Due for UK release later in November, it is up for best British independent film, best director for Lighton and best lead performance for Harry Melling.

I Swear is already in cinemas, having been released in October. A life story of Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson, the film is likewise up for best British indepependent film, best director for Kirk Jones, and best lead performance for Robert Aramayo.

The nominations also include, for the first time, an award for cinema of the year, which is voted on by the public. The contenders include the Depot in Lewes, the Magic Lantern in Tywyn, Montrose Playhouse, Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast and the Watershed in Bristol.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 30 November.