criminal

The DOJ argued that the federal judge did not have the authority to make the decision.

A United States judge in Texas has approved the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss a criminal case against Boeing despite his objections to the decision.

On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court in Fort Worth dismissed the case, which will allow the plane maker to avoid prosecution over charges related to two deadly 737 MAX crashes: the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash.

O’Connor said he disagreed with the Justice Department’s argument that ending the case served the public interest, noting that he lacked the authority to overrule it.

The government argued Boeing has improved, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is providing enhanced oversight. Boeing and the government argued O’Connor had no choice but to dismiss the case.

He said the deal with the aerospace giant “fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public”.

In September, O’Connor held a three-hour hearing to consider objections to the deal, questioning the government’s decision to drop a requirement that Boeing face oversight from an independent monitor for three years and instead hire a compliance consultant.

O’Connor said the government’s position is “Boeing committed crimes sufficient to justify prosecution, failed to remedy its fraudulent behaviour on its own during the [deferred prosecution agreement], which justified a guilty plea and the imposition of an independent monitor, but now Boeing will remedy that dangerous culture by retaining a consultant of its own choosing”.

The DOJ first criminally charged Boeing for the crashes in January 2021, but also agreed to deferred prosecution in the case.

The plane maker was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the US. Courts found that Boeing deceived the FAA about what is called the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, which affects flight control systems on the aircraft.

“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” acting Assistant Attorney General David P Burns of the DOJ’s criminal division said in a statement at the time.

O’Connor said in 2023 that “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in US history”.

Under the non-prosecution deal, Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5m into a crash victims’ fund to be divided evenly per victim of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes, on top of a new $243.6m fine and more than $455m to strengthen the company’s compliance, safety, and quality programmes.

On Wall Street, Boeing’s stock was up by 0.2 percent as of 11am in New York (16:00 GMT).

And so another member of the old “war on terror” team has left the world. Dick Cheney, who served as the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States during the two-term administration of George W Bush (2001-2009), died on Monday at the age of 84.

According to a memorial statement issued by his family, Cheney was “a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing”.

And yet many inhabitants of the Earth will remember the late VP for rather less warm and fuzzy things than love and fly fishing. As the chief architect of the “global war on terror” – which was launched in 2001 and enabled the US to terrorise various locations worldwide under the guise of fighting “terrorists” – Cheney died with untold quantities of blood on his hands, particularly in Iraq.

In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cheney swore that the “Iraqi regime” had been “very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents” and that the country had continued “to pursue the nuclear programme they began so many years ago”. Per the vice president’s hallucinations, this pursuit of weaponry was “for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale”.

As Foreign Policy magazine charmingly noted in its 2012 compilation of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers”, which included Cheney as well as numerous other characters with objectively dubious credentials in terms of thinking: “If scaring us silly were a religion, Dick Cheney would be its high priest.”

But Cheney’s fearmongering – and repeated lies concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction – worked like a charm in paving the way for the infliction of “death on a massive scale” in the country. It also paved the way for the lining of certain pockets, such as those associated with the US oil and engineering firm Halliburton, where Cheney himself served as CEO from 1995 until 2000 and which just happened to win $7bn in no-bid contracts in post-invasion Iraq.

Anyway, it was business as usual in the land of conflicts of interest and revolving doors.

Until his dying day, Cheney espoused a no-regrets approach to the illegal perpetration of mass slaughter and attendant suffering, telling CNN 12 years after the effective pulverisation of Iraq: “It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then, and I believe it now.” Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the forcible displacement of millions, and the dousing of the country in toxic and radioactive munitions that will continue to impact Iraqi health basically for eternity.

Escalating cancer rates among the population have been attributed in part to the US military’s use of depleted uranium weapons, the traces of which “represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years”, as Al Jazeera has observed.

But, hey, I hear the fly fishing is great in Baghdad.

And the Iraq war is hardly Cheney’s only nonregret. In response to the 2014 CIA torture report on the US use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as rectal rehydration and waterboarding to extract information, Cheney stuck by his guns: “I would do it again in a minute.”

Nor is the “war on terror” the sole defining sadistic episode in the legacy of a man who was a fixture on the American political scene for decades. In December 1989, for example, the US military unleashed hell on the impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorrillo in Panama City, Panama, killing potentially several thousand civilians and earning El Chorrillo the nickname “Little Hiroshima”.

The US defence secretary presiding over the operation was none other than Cheney, this time under the leadership of George HW Bush, whose administration was eager to cure the American public of its post-Vietnam War aversion to military combat abroad with an excessive display of high-tech firepower and an easy “victory”. After the bout of devastation, during which many of El Chorrillo’s wooden shacks went up in flames along with their inhabitants, Cheney boasted that the deadly spectacle had “been the most surgical military operation of its size ever conducted”.

The “surgical” stunt in Panama was a test run for Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991, which was also overseen by Cheney in his own sort of test run for the future infliction of mass death in the country.

Now Cheney is no more, joining his former comrades in war crimes Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell in the great beyond. In the wake of his demise, US news agencies and media outlets have restricted themselves to memorialising him as a “polarising” and “controversial” figure who, as The Associated Press diplomatically put it, “was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without losing the conviction he was essentially right”.

As usual, the corporate media can never bring themselves to call a spade a spade – or a war criminal a war criminal. But against the current backdrop of Israel’s US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip and other global calamities, the loss of another mass murderer can hardly be considered bad news.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Nov. 4 (UPI) — Indigenous communities in the Yurúa district, on the remote border between Peru and Brazil, have raised the alarm over the growing presence of members of Brazil’s Comando Vermelho criminal organization in their territory.

They say the group is exploiting what they describe as a “state vacuum” that leaves those living there unprotected against the advance of organized crime.

The armed Brazilian group has been crossing from Brazil into the Peruvian Amazon, taking part in drug-trafficking routes, illegal logging and other illicit activities that threaten the physical, cultural and territorial integrity of the Amazonian peoples, according to reports.

Those reports come from the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, the Regional Organization AIDESEP Ucayali and the Association of Native Communities of the Yurúa-Sheshea District.

In the Yurúa and Breu river basins, residents have reported sightings of small planes landing on improvised airstrips in the early morning hours, establishment of unfamiliar camps inside Indigenous reserves and movement of boats carrying cargo without government oversight.

The situation has reinforced perceptions that Comando Vermelho and allied criminal networks are operating with relative impunity in the region.

After a large-scale operation at the end of October against organized crime in Rio de Janeiro, the Comando Vermelho’s main base of operations, alarms sounded over possible attempts by senior members of the criminal organization to seek refuge in neighboring countries.

Indigenous organizations are not only denouncing the problem but also demanding immediate and coordinated action from the Peruvian government, La República reported.

To that end, they have outlined five key areas for response: maintaining a permanent security presence, coordinating efforts between the Interior and Defense ministries, protecting Indigenous leaders, promoting alternative development for local communities and granting legal recognition to a “Transborder Indigenous Guard” to monitor the frontier with Brazil.

Former Interior Minister Rubén Vargas warned in an interview with Radio Exitosa that Comando Vermelho is conducting criminal operations in Peru, mainly along the Amazon River route, reinforcing community warnings in Yurúa and surrounding areas.

And the reach of this criminal network has expanded into the regions of Pasco and Huánuco, in the area known as Puerto Inca, a hub for drug trafficking and illegal mining.

“There are two businesses that interest Comando Vermelho: cocaine and illegal mining,” Vargas said.

Although press reports dating to 2019 have documented the activities of the criminal organization in Peru’s Amazon territories, many details about Comando Vermelho’s operations along the Peru-Brazil border remain unclear because of the region’s inaccessibility, lack of disaggregated official data and clandestine nature of the networks.

More than a month after he was arrested on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon with great bodily injury, UCLA backup quarterback Pierce Clarkson has taken a major step toward being able to resolve his case while avoiding charges altogether.

After the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office referred the case to the L.A. City Attorney for possible misdemeanor consideration, the latter agency has decided to handle the matter via a city attorney hearing, according to Ivor Pine, deputy director of communications for the City Attorney.

A city attorney hearing is an informal proceeding that allows individuals who face certain misdemeanors to resolve their situation with a hearing officer without a criminal filing.

The resolution of such hearings, including conditions imposed to remediate and rehabilitate, are fact-dependent and vary matter to matter, according to Pine. If the participant successfully complies with the conditions, the case is diverted and no charges are filed. If the participant fails to comply, then criminal charges may be filed.

A UCLA athletic department spokesperson said Tuesday evening that there was no update on Clarkson’s status with the team. He had been suspended from all team activities pending the resolution of legal proceedings after his Sept. 5 arrest.

Before his suspension, Clarkson had been one of the top backups to quarterback Nico Iamaleava. The son of quarterback guru Steve Clarkson, Pierce Clarkson had transferred to UCLA this offseason after having spent last spring at Mississippi. The former St. John Bosco High standout spent his first two college seasons at Louisville, where he played sparingly.

Luke Duncan has been UCLA’s top backup in Clarkson’s absence, playing briefly at the end of the Bruins’ victory over Michigan State.

Oct. 20 (UPI) — Florida’s attorney general announced Monday that criminal subpoenas have been issued to the online children’s gaming site Roblox as he called the platform a “breeding ground for predators.”

Attorney General James Uthmeier accused Roblox of failing to verify users’ ages and failing to moderate sexually explicit content.

“We are issuing criminal subpoenas to Roblox, which has become a breeding ground for predators to gain access to our kids,” Uthmeier announced Monday in a post on X.

“We will stop at nothing in the fight to protect Florida’s children, and companies that expose them to harm will be held accountable,” the state attorney general added.

Uthmeier said recent investigations into Roblox found sexual predators have used the in-game currency on the platform to bribe minors into sending them explicit content of themselves.

Before Monday’s criminal subpoenas, Roblox has faced lawsuits, accusing the platform of failing to implement safety measures, provide proper warnings or report incidents of child victimization.

In August, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a lawsuit, which also accused Roblox of enabling online predators to endanger children after an alleged sexual predator was arrested while using the site.

“Roblox profited off of our kids while exposing them to the most dangerous of harms,” Uthmeier said. “They enable our kids to be abused.”

Uthmeier issued a subpoena against Roblox in April to get more information on how the platform moderates chat rooms and markets its site to kids.

“As a father and attorney general, children’s safety and protection are a top priority,” Uthmeier said. “There are concerning reports that this gaming platform, which is popular among children, is exposing them to harmful content and bad actors.”

The United States Treasury has sanctioned two Haitians, one a former police officer and the other an alleged gang leader, for their affiliation with the Viv Ansanm criminal alliance.

On Friday, a Treasury news release accused Dimitri Herard and Kempes Sanon of colluding with Viv Ansanm, thereby contributing to the violence wracking Haiti.

The sanctions block either person from accessing assets or property in the US. They also prohibit US-based entities from engaging in transactions with the two men.

“Today’s action underscores the critical role of gang leaders and facilitators like Herard and Sanon, whose support enables Viv Ansanm’s campaign of violence, extortion, and terrorism in Haiti,” Bradley T Smith, the director of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement.

Since taking office for a second term, US President Donald Trump has sought to take a hardline stance against criminal organisations across Latin America, blaming the groups for unregulated immigration and drug-trafficking on US soil.

Trump has termed their actions a criminal “invasion”, using nativist rhetoric to justify military action in international waters.

Viv Ansanm has been part of Trump’s crackdown. On his first day in office, on January 20, Trump issued an executive order setting the stage for his administration to label Latin American criminal groups as “foreign terrorist organisations”.

That process began several weeks later. In May, Viv Ansanm and another Haitian criminal organisation, Gran Grif, were added to the growing list of criminal networks to receive the “foreign terrorist” designation.

Since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in 2021, a power vacuum has formed in Haiti. The last national elections were held in 2016, and its last democratically elected officials reached the end of their terms in 2023.

That has created a crisis of public confidence that criminal networks, including gangs, have exploited to expand their power. Viv Ansanm is one of the most powerful groups, as a coalition of gangs largely based in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

In July, Ghada Waly, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that the gangs now have “near-total control of the capital”, with 90 percent of its territory under their control.

Nearly 1.4 million people have been displaced in the country as a result of the gang violence, a 36 percent increase over 2024. Last year, more than 5,600 people were killed, and a further 2,212 injured.

In Friday’s sanctions, the US Treasury accused Herard, the former police officer, of having “colluded with the Viv Ansanm alliance”, including through training and the provision of guns.

It also noted that Herard had been imprisoned by Haitian authorities for involvement in the Moise assassination. He later escaped in 2024.

Sanon, meanwhile, is identified as the leader of the Bel Air gang, part of the Viv Ansanm alliance. The Treasury said he “played a significant role” in building Viv Ansanm’s power, and it added that he has been implicated in killings, extortion and kidnappings.

The UN Security Council echoed the US’s sanctions against Sanon and Herard, designating both men on Friday. It also agreed to extend its arms embargo on Haiti, which began in 2022.

In September, the UNSC also approved the creation of a “gang suppression force”, with a 12-month mandate to work with Haitian police and military. That force is expected to replace a Kenyan-led mission to reinforce Haiti’s security forces, and it is slated to include 5,550 people.

But on Friday, the Trump administration said that the UN had not gone far enough in its efforts to combat Haiti’s gangs. It called for more designations against individual suspects.

“While we applaud the Council for designating these individuals, the list is not complete. There are more enablers of Haiti’s insecurity evading accountability,” an open letter from US Ambassador Jennifer Locetta read.

“Haiti deserves better. Colleagues, we will continue pressing for more designations through the Security Council and its subsidiary bodies to ensure the sanctions lists are fit for purpose.”

The cold bites harder at night. Nathaniel Bitrus* feels it on his face as the motorcycle roars along the dirt path to Sunawara, a small community in the Toungo area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria. A chainsaw sits carefully on his lap, and with two other men, he disappears into the forest.

Nathaniel has spent nearly half of his 45 years taking this three-hour trip. It has helped feed his family, but it has also taken lives and stripped the forest bare. Once, he says, the forests were so dense that the sun barely touched the ground at noon. Now, there are clearings everywhere. Loggers like him have carved paths through the vast Gashaka-Gumti National Park, cutting less lucrative trees to reach the prize – rosewood.

The forest is patrolled, Nathaniel says, checkpoints mounted along the main routes. But with a government permit and the usual bribe, he says, a passage can be bought. 

The men prefer the cheaper way, the secret trails that slip past the eyes of rangers and guards, the paths only loggers know. One such road is called Yaro Me Ka Dauko, a Hausa phrase meaning, “Boy, what are you carrying?” It is the road of the daring. Nathaniel takes it again in silence tonight. He does not have a choice.

When farming is no longer enough 

Nathaniel was a farmer first, or at least he tried to be. He grew maize on a small plot outside Toungo, enough to feed his wife and children. But then the seasons turned. The rains came late or did not come at all, and so the harvests shrank.

In 2001, some men from Lagos, South West Nigeria, came asking for people who could supply rosewood. They showed pictures of the trees they wanted. The locals knew exactly where to find them. Nathaniel was in his twenties then, strong enough to swing an axe all night, and the pay was good – ₦1,000 (about $10 then) per tree log. It was enough to buy food, pay school fees, and buy fertilisers and insecticides, he recalls. 

He signed up.

Soon, there were chainsaws, trucks, and high-paying middlemen. They cut faster and worked into the nights.

David Isaac*, another Toungo farmer-turned-logger, tells us he has been at it for 15 years. “I cut trees to feed my family,” he says. “Farming does not pay anymore. This one does.”

In Baruwa, a forest community tucked in the Mambilla Plateau in the Gashaka Local Government Area of neighbouring Taraba State, George Johnson* has been logging for three decades. He first came to Gembu, a cold town on the plateau, to work on people’s farms. But farming paid too little. 

“Things were expensive,” he says. Logging was better. Sometimes he harvests eucalyptus for local farmers. Other times, when dealers call, he travels three hours to Baruwa to log rosewood.

“The work is dangerous,” Nathaniel says.

They spend days deep in the forest, cutting trees. At night, they sleep with one eye open in makeshift tents. Wild animals prowl close. 

“Sometimes people die or get injured,” says David. “Trees fall on people.”

It happened to him once. He lived. Others were not so lucky.

Rosewood is heavy. When a tree falls, the men loop chains around the trunk and drag it out of the forest until it reaches the dirt road, where trucks wait to transport the logs to a depot outside Sunawara. But as more people died, they pooled money for a crane.

“We did not choose this job,” Nathaniel says softly. “We went to school. But there is no work. If I had a choice, I would not do this.”

Road to China

The real money is not in Toungo or Gashaka or the Mambilla Plateau.

It is in the hands of dealers, foreign buyers, and complicit officials who turn forests into fortunes.

When a dealer receives a consignment request, he calls loggers like Nathaniel.

“We have dedicated loggers, the ones we contact anytime there is demand,” says Charles Ekene*, a Gembu-based dealer. The buyers rarely visit, he says. “They communicate over the phone.”

The dealer commissions the loggers, supplies chainsaws and trucks, sets the prices, pays the transporters, and handles all the paperwork.

Loggers like Nathaniel have their own tools and work independently. “We meet with loggers at a place called ‘Kan Cross, where we negotiate prices,” says  Aliyu Muhammad, a 20-year-old Toungo-based motorcyclist. A trip into the forest costs about ₦4,000 ($2.68), he explains. 

Inside the forest, the loggers cut the trees, paint their initials onto the stumps to mark ownership, and drag the trunks to the roadside. From there, trucks carry them to depots beyond Sunawara.

“They pay about ₦20,000 [$13.40] per log,” Nathaniel says. 

The logs are measured with tape, he adds. 

“And since we do not have access to the buyers in Lagos, we accept whatever the dealers pay us,” says David. 

George says he gets ₦40,000 ($26.81) no matter the size of the log. This is where the real profit begins.

“A truck could fetch ₦3 million [about $2,100] or more on a good day,” Charles says.

From Taraba and Adamawa, the trucks head southward. “From Baruwa, we drive to Jalingo,” Hamma Yusuf*, a 38-year-old truck driver, tells us. And from Jalingo, they reach Lagos, passing through Abuja. 

“It is close to the water,” he says vaguely of the final location. “There are a lot of containers there.”

Logs from Sunawara follow a similar path, passing through Yola, the Adamawa State capital, then Abuja. “Other drivers head first to Kano,” David explains. “A few take the hilly roads through Gembu before reaching Baissa in Taraba.”

Hamma has been transporting timber since 2010. It is mostly intrastate – moving logs from Baruwa and Nguroje, another logging hotspot in Taraba, to a major depot in Baissa, a town in the Kurmi Local Government Area. Occasionally, he makes the longer trip to Lagos.

Hamma works under someone else. They handle the paperwork and negotiate with the dealers, he explains. He carries the documents only to present at checkpoints. 

“Most of the money goes to the owner,” he says. 

Like with the loggers, truck owners decide the pay. Hamma says he earns what could sustain him and his family.

A 2022 Arise News investigation confirmed what Hamma and David describe: rosewood from the region pass through Shagamu, Ogun State, before reaching Apapa Port in Lagos, where cargo ships carry it to China. Our GIS analysis corroborates this route.

Between 2014 and 2017, an average of 40 shipping containers – about 5,600 logs, or 2,800 trees – left Nigeria for China every single day, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In 2016 alone, the EIA reported, more than 1.4 million rosewood logs worth $300 million were smuggled into China, despite the species being listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a classification requiring strict permitting and oversight.

Today, the financial losses remain unquantified. Neither the National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime (2022–2026) nor Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) performance reports estimate how much Nigeria loses annually to timber trafficking. 

In search of clarity, we filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Federal Ministry of Finance and the NCS, asking for revenue-loss data. Neither agency had responded at press time.

China’s official 2025 import figures are also unavailable. However, Statista reports that in 2023, China imported $17.1 billion worth of wood products, second only to the United States. Meanwhile, the Enhancing Africa’s Transnational Organised Crime (ENACT) 2017 report estimates that Africa loses about $17 billion annually to timber smuggling.

Much of this demand traces back to China’s enduring cultural fascination with rosewood, known as hongmu. Once reserved for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, rosewood furniture became a coveted status symbol, admired for its deep hues, durability, and capacity for intricate carving. That appetite lives on. 

But China’s own forests could not sustain this demand. Large scale logging was banned decades ago. The hunger simply shifted elsewhere. First to Southeast Asia, and more recently to Africa, which now supplies the lion’s share. A 2022 Forest Trends report shows that by 2020, 83 per cent of China’s wood imports came from Africa, while shipments from Southeast Asia declined. CITES data adds that over 41 per cent of China’s rosewood log imports from range states – more than 2.2 million cubic meters worth about $1.037 billion – came from Africa. The scale of demand is staggering: Forest Trends noted that between 2000 and 2015, China’s rosewood imports surged by 1,250 per cent, with the value nearly doubling in a single year between 2013 and 2014, reaching $2.6 billion.

Laws exist, only on paper

Nigeria’s laws against illegal logging look formidable on paper. The Endangered Species Act (1985, revised 2016), the Nigerian Customs Act (2023) prohibiting the export of endangered timber, the pending Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill (2024), and multiple state laws ban or criminalise rosewood trafficking. Yet in 2022, CITES issued a rare Article XIII intervention, citing “persistent governance failures” and warning of possible trade sanctions if enforcement did not improve.

State-level bans tell the same story of power without teeth. Taraba State outlawed rosewood logging in 2023. Yet, George insists he pays ₦10,000 ($6.70) each to both local and state governments for annual permits. When asked for proof, he claimed he left the permit at home and promised to send a photo later – a promise he never kept.

Our attempts to verify his claim led nowhere. Officials at the Taraba State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change declined to comment. The ministry’s director of planning, research, and statistics, Fidelis Nashuka, told us, “We have a department of forestry which has no more details on this.”

That same year, Adamawa State governor Ahmadu Fintiri announced a tree-felling ban but framed it as a measure against burning trees “in the name of charcoal,” without naming specific species. Loggers say the ban changed nothing. 

“We obtain permits from the local government,” David says. 

A permit used to cost ₦30,000 ($20.11), he adds, but now goes for ₦50,000 ($34). Nathaniel agrees. “Officials could even issue them at ₦70,000 [$47],” he says, “because the business became competitive.”

When asked to produce these permits, none of the loggers could. They claim carrying the documents is risky, so they leave them at home unless heading deep into the forest. HumAngle wrote to the Adamawa State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to verify these claims. However, we got no response. 

On paper, Nigeria has the laws to end this trade. In reality, enforcement bends under corruption.

“We pay money at every security check point for us to be allowed to pass,” David claims.

The problem runs far deeper than local bribes. In 2017, the EIA revealed that Nigerian officials retrospectively issued about 4,000 CITES permits for rosewood logs seized in China, allegedly after payments of over a million dollars to senior officials, with the involvement of the Chinese consulate. Former Environment Minister Amina Mohammed reportedly signed the documents in her final days in office before becoming UN Deputy Secretary-General.

And this is not just a West African story. In 2021, a Kenyan court ordered the country’s Revenue Authority to return $13 million worth of confiscated rosewood to alleged traffickers. The timber had been seized at the Port of Mombasa while in transit from Madagascar through Zanzibar to Hong Kong

A 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies argued that illegal African rosewood trafficking thrives on corruption, weak enforcement, and legal loopholes across Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, with China’s demand as the engine driving it all. The report shows how high-level officials, court decisions, and lax port regulations across East and Southern Africa have turned enforcement into theatre, allowing traffickers to sidestep both domestic laws and CITES restrictions.

The Nigeria-Cameroon border tells the same story. Porous and poorly monitored, it serves as both source and smuggling corridor. Once, Nathaniel crossed the border into Cameroon. The locals there, he recalls, are not as deeply involved as those in Nigeria. The trees felled in Cameroon find their way into Nigeria, he explains.

A 2022 investigation traced the journey of logs from the forests of northern Cameroon through Taraba and Adamawa, showing how the wood, cleared to look Nigerian, made its way to export points. Forest Trends’ Illegal Deforestation and Associated Trade database confirms Nigeria’s role as both a major source and transit country.

People were caught along the way, Nathaniel says. “Our people were beaten, locked up. Some died in prison. At one point, we had to run to save our lives. Our equipment was even set on fire after clashes with security officials in Cameroon.”

There is some success. Occasionally, government officials seize illegal timber, arrest a handful of loggers and dealers, or burn trucks on the spot.

In Taraba, officials insist the 2023 logging ban is being enforced. 

“There are mobile courts, attached with a task force, that go round penalising illegal loggers,” says Fidelis. “They are stationed on major roads. Once the task force apprehends timber poachers, the mobile court immediately fines.”

Penalties, however, rarely go beyond fines. “No jail terms at the moment,” Fidelis admits. “We are still working on the law to include that. There have been arrests, almost every day. But I cannot mention the scale of these arrests, as I am not part of the team.”

Yet on our reporting trip, we saw no sign of these mobile courts or task forces. Only the usual immigration, military, and police checkpoints lined the roads.

At the federal level, the Nigeria Customs Service touts large-scale seizures across ports, border posts, and inland commands. Its 2024 performance report claims that from January to June 2024, the agency made 2,442 seizures with a Duty Paid Value of ₦25.5 billion ($17 million), 203 per cent higher than the same period in 2023.

The National Park Service (NPS) also points to progress. In an April interview with HumAngle, Surveyor-General Ibrahim Musa Goni said the NPS was working with agencies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, the NCS, and others to curb trafficking in wildlife species and plants.

At the end of 2023, Goni said, the NPS made 646 arrests across all national parks, with Gashaka-Gumti recording the highest number, a sign of persistent clashes between park rangers and illegal loggers, poachers, and other intruders in the reserve’s forests and buffer zones.

Regionally, Nigeria is working with the African Protected Area Directors (APAD), ECOWAS, and other regional blocs in East and Central Africa, Goni says. “We take our issues to the European Union and other regional bodies. This way, we get to reach the governments of various countries.”

Yet the logging continues.

The human and ecological toll

The scars are everywhere.

“Before, this place was covered with trees,” says Mary, a 45-year-old farmer in Sunawara, pointing to the bare stretch where stumps now stand like broken teeth. We flew a drone over the hills above Toungo. We could see the empty patches where forests once stood like walls.

Gathering firewood has become a daily struggle. “We have to walk a long distance now just to find enough for cooking,” Mary says.

But the loss is deeper than firewood.

“Rosewood belongs to the Fabaceae family,” explains Ridwan Jaafar, an ecosystem ecologist from the Mambilla Plateau and lead strategist for the Nigerian Montane Forest Project. “This group of species fixes atmospheric nitrogen and enriches the soil. When the trees are gone, that function disappears too.”

Farmers feel the loss directly. “It hardly rains anymore,” says Juris Saiwa, a 68-year-old farmer in Sunawara. “Maybe it is because of cutting down trees,” he adds, convinced that history links deforestation with drought.

Yields have shrunk. “We could cultivate even without fertiliser before,” says Jauro, the Sunawara village head. 

Mary agrees: “Now our crops do not grow well. The land does not produce the way it used to.”

Dr Hamman Kamale, a geologist at the University of Maiduguri in Borno State, confirms what the farmers sense. “Deforestation degrades soil fertility. Organic matter declines, soils compact, and land degradation spreads,” he says. HumAngle reported in July that farmers in Taraba complained of dry spells withering their crops.

The damage spirals outward. Ridwan explains that trees play a key role in carbon storage. “Forests act as terrestrial carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and locking it in biomass and soil,” he says. Remove the trees, and you release carbon while erasing that storage capacity.

The dangers multiply with floods and erosion. “Deforestation removes root reinforcement, increasing landslide risk, accelerates runoff, and triggers gully formation,” says Dr. Kamale. “Sediment loads rise in rivers, channels destabilise, groundwater recharge drops, and water quality declines.” 

In Adamawa, floods now come almost every year, destroying homes and displacing thousands.

The damage extends to wildlife.

“The animals we used to see, such as gorillas and monkeys, are gone,” says Jauro. “We don’t know if they left or died out.” 

Rosewood provides shelter for these animals, ecologist Ridwan says. “They are also a food source as their leaves are rich in nitrogen. Their disappearance means animals and birds migrate.”

Satellite analysis reveals what the farmers, scientists, and ecologists are saying. Our Landsat data analysis (USGS, 2023) shows a dramatic transformation of the Gashaka-Gumti National Park between 2010 and 2023. Bare land expanded by more than 1,800 km² between 2010 and 2015 alone, a fourteen-fold increase in just five years. Farmland and sparse vegetation actually shrank by nearly 80 km² during the same period, proving that this was no slow encroachment by farmers but a rapid, organised logging boom. By 2020, cleared land exceeded 2,050 km². Even after a slight recovery by 2023, dense forest cover stood at just 39.8 km², far below pre-boom levels, leaving the park deeply scarred.

Experts say the solutions must begin where the damage began. “Even some security agents don’t understand the environmental laws,” Ridwan laments. “The government must involve the communities, enlighten them on the risks, and provide sustainable alternatives like beekeeping or shea butter processing. These are more profitable and ecologically sound. But the key is community ownership.”

Dr. Kamale recommends protecting riparian zones and steep headwaters, restricting logging on fragile soils, building erosion control structures like check dams, reforesting degraded slopes with native species, enforcing low-impact harvesting, and strengthening Nigeria–Cameroon cooperation on monitoring.

But money remains the missing piece. NPS boss Goni admits enforcement cannot rely on security agencies alone. “Half the success depends on local communities,” he says. “We have begun training people with new skills and giving starter packs for alternative livelihoods. It has reduced hunting and logging in some areas. But we need more resources to make this sustainable.”

The last ride

It is dawn. Nathaniel and his crew emerge from the forest, three men on a motorcycle, just as they had gone in. 

They will not make this trip again for months, Nathaniel says. The trees are thinning out. The dealers have moved south, to Cross River, where rosewood still grows in abundance. 

“The market is no longer like it used to be,” he tells us. “The people from Lagos don’t come anymore. The foreigners too, we don’t see them like before.”

He sits on the stump of a felled rosewood at the depot outside Sunawara, where he speaks to us.

The air here is damp and cold; fog drifts between the few remaining trees. We can feel the cold, despite putting on jackets. The temperature is below 19°C. A few birds call from somewhere deep inside the remaining trees in the forest, their songs thinner than was described before our trip.

Nathaniel looks towards the forest. He has made this journey hundreds of times, yet each one leaves him with a hollowness he cannot name. The money never lasts. The danger grows each season.

It is hard to picture the world Ridwan, the ecologist, dreams of, a world where bees hum between restored trees, where tourists come to see the wildlife instead of empty clearings. Harder still to imagine a government willing to stop the trade not only with arrests but with real work for men like Nathaniel.

A tricycle moves past, stacked with rosewood planks. It disappears down the road, leaving behind a ribbon of smoke and the smell of fuel hanging in the cold morning air.

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

Satellite image analysis and map illustrations were done by Mansir Muhammed. Imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro and the multi-decade Landsat archive of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with official park boundaries obtained from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

This story was produced by HumAngle with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

On Nov. 26, 1983, six men robbed a warehouse serving London’s Heathrow Airport. Hoping to find £1 million worth of foreign currency, they found instead 6,800 gold bars, worth £26 million in 1983 money — a record-setting robbery at the time — under the temporary supervision of Brink’s-Mat. (A union of the American security firm and a British transport outfit.) This event has been transmuted into “The Gold,” an involving British drama premiering here Sunday on PBS.

The robbery itself takes up little screen time; the question on the criminal side becomes how to turn three tons of gold into cash, and for the police, one of recovering the loot and bringing the villains to justice. The cops and the criminals overlap here and there, a point screenwriter Neil Forsyth does not want you to miss, and is a particular bee in the bonnet of upright Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), self-contained but always ready to speak his mind. (He is also “infuriated” by what people get wrong about jazz, which he likens to police work.)

Recruited by Boyce to a special task force are detectives Tony Brightwell (Emun Elliott), historical, and Nicki Jennings (a charismatic Charlotte Spencer), invented, who are good company for the viewer and generally for each other, though as people who spend long hours sitting together in cars waiting for something to happen, they have their moments of friction, played for humor. As a created character, Jennings — who, as a woman, has to outline the many steps and hard work it took to achieve her position — offers an opportunity for emotional elaboration, notably in scenes (affectionate, prickly) with her father, Billy (Danny Webb), “by a country mile the worst villain in England,” his criminal career sidelined by ill health.

Though one of the actual robbers, Micky McAvoy (Adam Nagaitis), gets a good deal of attention, the bulk of the series involves three criminals subsequently processing the gold and laundering the money. Kenneth Noye (Jack Lowden) is “a fence with protection,” owing to his friendship with police officers through membership in the Masons. (When Boyce brings Jennings and Brightwell onto his team, he sets the rules as “no overtime, no drinking at lunchtime, no freemasonry.”) John Palmer (Tom Cullen), a dyslexic dealer in gold and jewelry, has a handy portable smelter in his yard. And the invented Edwyn Cooper (Dominic Cooper), an up-from-the-streets solicitor with posh airs and a rich wife whose snooty parents treat him with barely disguised disdain, finds himself working for “a group of businessmen who have a lot of money that needs to be made respectable,” in the words of liaison Gordon Parry (Sean Harris, sinister).

Stretched over six episodes, it’s not a speedy telling, and, in fact, a second series covering a long tail of aftermath has already aired in the U.K. Apart from some surveillance, tailing suspects, one fatal encounter and an occasional chase, there’s little in the way of capital-A Action, mostly just a lot of talk — inquisitive, instructive, threatening, discursive, domestic or speechifying. Though the production is naturalistic — in a way that ties it to an earlier, golden era of British productions — the dialogue can sound highly composed. Characters are given little monologues, often to explain how they became the person they are, that play as the sort of thing that might occur late in the last act of a stage drama: Jennings found the sirens outside her window comforting, which led her to police work, “so that kids like me will be safe”; Boyce had a life-changing moment involving a pair of red leather shoes while fighting in the so-called Cypriot Emergency. Some dialogue might have been lifted whole from a 1930s gangster film. Critiques of British class structure and bad actors within the police department are raised high enough to be impossible to miss.

There are a lot of moving parts in “The Gold,” represented in sometimes brief alternating scenes, and it may take a while, among the crooks, at least, to get a handle on things, to sort out where you are, who’s who, who’s married to whom, and what part each plays in the caper. Though Noye is arrogant enough to root against, Forsyth wants to show, as much as each character allows, the just-folks elements of his bad guys, psychologically relatable sorts who have, from early experience, a lack of opportunity, or a certain kind of genius, decided that the path to freedom is best paved with other people’s money. (“If it wasn’t for people trying trying to break out of the lives they’ve been given,” observes Boyce of his country’s social stratification, the police would be out of a job.) This may be soft-pedaling matters somewhat — to read the historical accounts might give you a different picture — but as drama it pays dividends.

As a period piece, it doesn’t oversell the era. There are old cars, of course, and more mustaches than we are currently accustomed to. But apart from the pop songs that run over the end credits, nothing screams These Are the ’80s. (Compare, for example, the “Life on Mars” sequel, “Ashes to Ashes.”) It’s more a question of what isn’t there. The detectives have a computer, but only Brightwell has an idea of what it’s for or how to use it. No cellphones, but there are walkie-talkies. A tracking device, apparently the only one in all of British law enforcement, has to be imported from Belfast (and sneakily at that). There is a refreshing absence of guns — none of those Kevlar-clad teams going in with pistols raised. (Just truncheons.) And the remodeling of East London into a gentrified glass forest, a minor plot point, has only just begun.

It’s like a vacation from now, and who can’t use one of those?

Paraguay is one of just 12 countries that maintains diplomatic ties with Taiwan, not China.

But is Beijing using unofficial channels to extend its influence into the South American nation?

In our three-year undercover investigation, we meet a shadowy Chinese businessman who says he is a proxy for Beijing, a claim that China denies.

Our undercover researchers reveal that the alleged middleman has his own agenda.

He is plotting to build a secret scam compound near the Paraguayan capital, a safe haven for Chinese crime bosses fleeing crackdowns in Southeast Asia.

In a special exclusive report, 101 East investigates China’s Paraguay connection.

You can read the full statements given to 101 East below:

LIVERPOOL could follow Chelsea by exploiting a Uefa loophole to add Federico Chiesa to their Champions League squad.

The Italian forward was snubbed from Arne Slot’s initial European group, with many fans describing the decision as “criminal.”

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Chiesa, 27, is a 51-time Italy international and highly popular among Anfield supporters.

But now, the winger could be set to feature in the Champions League after all.

Fellow Italian Giovanni Leoni made his debut in Tuesday’s 2-1 Carabao Cup win over Southampton.

The defender joined Liverpool for £26million from Parma this summer.

But his first appearance ended badly after he was stretchered off with a serious injury.

And due to a new Uefa rule only brought in weeks ago, Liverpool are now allowed to replace Leoni in their continental squad.

It has opened the door for Chiesa to take his place, despite the stars playing in different positions.

Chelsea have already taken advantage of it, with Facundo Buonanotte replacing Dario Essugo.

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While in the Europa League, Nottingham Forest subbed out injured Ola Aina for Oleksandr Zinchenko.

Uefa stunned clubs with a surprise announcement this month, revealing it had agreed an “amendment” to registry regulations.

The governing body announced clubs will be allowed the “temporary” replacement of one outfield player “with a long-term injury or illness.”

Uefa added: “The reasoning for the adaptation is to ensure that squad lists are not unfairly reduced and players are safeguarded from additional workload pressure.”

It remains to be seen whether Slot decides to recall Chiesa though.

Young centre-back Rhys Williams was also left out of Liverpool’s Champions League squad.

And he could get the nod if Slot feels his squad is light on defenders.

When I wrote last week about how immigration raids are targeting far more laborers than criminals, and whacking the California economy at a cost to all of us, I was surprised by the number of readers who wrote to say it’s high time for immigration reform.

The cynic in me had an immediate response, which essentially was, yeah, sure.

Bipartisan attempts failed in 2006 and 2014, so there’s a fat chance of getting anywhere in this political climate.

But the more I thought about it, nobody has done more to make clear how badly we need to rewrite federal immigration law than guess who.

President Trump.

Raids, the threat of more raids, and the promise to deport 3,000 people a day, are sabotaging Trump’s economic agenda and eroding his support among Latinos. Restaurants have suffered, construction has slowed and fruit has rotted on vines as the promised crackdown on violent offenders — which would have had much more public support — instead turned into a heartless, destructive and costly eradication.

I wouldn’t bet a nickel on Trump or his congressional lackeys to publicly admit to any of that. But there have been signs that the emperor is beginning to soften hard-line positions on deportations of working immigrants and student visas, sending his MAGA posse into convulsions.

“His heart isn’t in the nativist purge the way the rest of his administration’s heart is into it,” the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, David J. Bier, told the New York Times. Despite the tough talk, Bier said, Trump has “always had a soft spot for the economic needs from a business perspective.”

So too, apparently, do some California GOP legislators.

In June, six Republican lawmakers led by state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent Trump a letter urging him to ease up on the raids and get to work on immigration reform.

“Focus deportations on criminals,” Martinez Valladares wrote, “and support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders and protect our communities.”

Then in July, a bipartisan group of California lawmakers led by State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), followed suit.

Ochoa Bogh urged “immediate federal action … to issue expedited work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants who are considered essential workers, such as farmworkers who provide critical services. These workers support many industries that keep our country afloat and, regardless of immigration status, we must not overlook the value of their economic, academic, and cultural contributions to the United States.”

State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent President Trump a letter urging him to ease up on raids and focus on immigration reform.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Ochoa Bogh told me she heard from constituents in agriculture and hospitality who complained about the impact of raids. She said her aunt, a citizen, “is afraid to go out and carries a passport with her now because she’s afraid they might stop her.”

The senator said she blames both Democrats and Republicans for the failure to deliver sensible immigration reform over the years, and she told me her own family experience guides her thinking on what could be a way forward.

Her grandfather was a Mexican guest worker in the Bracero Program of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ended up being sponsored for legal status, and eventually moved his entire family north. Since then, children and grandchildren have gone to school, worked, prospered and contributed.

If Trump were to respond to her letter and visit her district, Ochoa Bogh said, “I would absolutely have him visit my family.”

Her relatives include restaurateurs, the owners of a tailoring business, a county employee and a priest.

“We don’t want undocumented people in our country. … But we need a work permit process” that serves the needs of employers and workers, Ochoa Bogh said.

Public opinion polls reflect similar attitudes. Views are mixed, largely along party lines, but a Pew study in June found 42% approval and 47% disapproval of Trump’s overall approach on immigration.

A July Gallup poll found increasing support for immigration in general, with 85% in favor of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, and 60% support among Republicans for legal status of all undocumented people if certain requirements are met.

State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, shown with Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk in 2022, says constituents in agriculture and hospitality have complained about the impact of raids.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

So it’s not entirely surprising that a bipartisan congressional immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act of 2025, was introduced in July by a Florida Republican and a Texas Democrat. It would allow legal status for those who have lived in the U.S. for five years, are working and paying taxes, and have no criminal record.

Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, isn’t optimistic, given political realities. But he’s been advocating for immigration reform for decades and said “we need to continue the fight because there will be a time of reckoning” in which the U.S. will “have to rely on immigrant workers to assure economic survival.”

“Germany had to resort to guest worker programs when birth rates declined,” said Kevin Johnson, a former UC Davis law school dean. “We may be begging for workers from other nations in the not too distant future.”

“No side wants to give the other a victory, but there have got to be ways to close that gap,” said Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA immigration scholar whose new book, “Borders and Belonging: Toward A Fair Immigration Policy,” examines the history and causes of immigration, as well as the complexities of arguments for and against.

“Practically and politically, there’s potential” for reform, Motomura said, and he sees a better chance for rational conversations at the local level than in the heat of national debate. “You’re more likely to hear stories of mixed families … and that kind of thing humanizes the situation instead of turning it into a lot of abstract statistics.”

Ochoa Bogh told me that when she wrote her letter to Trump, the feedback from constituents included both support and criticism. She said she met with her critics, who told her she should be focused on jobs for citizens rather than for undocumented immigrants.

She said she told them she is all for “American people doing American jobs.” But “we have a workforce shortage in the state in various industries,” and a U.S.-born population that is not stepping up to do certain kinds of work.

“I said to them, ‘You can’t keep your eyes closed and say this is what it should be, when there are certain realities we have to navigate.”

So what are the chances of progress on immigration reform?

Not great at the moment.

But as readers suggested, a better question is this:

Why not?

[email protected]

In “Task,” premiering Sunday on HBO, Brad Ingelsby, creator of the 2021 miniseries “Mare of Easttown,” which introduced the wider world to Wawa and the Delco accent, returns with another tale of crime and family in the rural-suburban wilds west of Philadelphia. Where women were at the center of “Mare,” men are the subject here — a cop and a criminal, symmetrically arranged — messed-up middle-aged single fathers who care about their kids.

Both have been loaded with tragedy. Robbie (Tom Pelphrey), whose wife took off a year before, has a much-missed dead brother in whose house he’s living with his two kids and young adult niece (Emilia Jones as Maeve, a secret hero); he’s a garbage collector with a sideline in robbing drug houses, which he identifies through their trash. This routine has been successful enough that he and his partner, fellow trashman Cliff (Raúl Castillo), have drawn the attention of the authorities.

FBI agent Tom (Mark Ruffalo) has a dead wife (Mireille Enos, seen briefly in flashback), a son in jail he can’t bring himself to visit and a semi-estranged adult daughter (Phoebe Fox); on leave from field work, he’s been manning the agency table at job fairs. That changes when his boss (Martha Plimpton), much to his displeasure, calls him back as a substitute to lead a task force into the drug house robberies, already assembled by his predecessor from other branches of law enforcement. There’s Lizzie (Alison Oliver), young and distractable; Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), terse and focused; and Anthony (Fabien Frankel), loose and Italian.

It’s clear from the guns that both sides pack, and the fact that Robbie has been stealing from criminals — notably a drug-dealing motorcycle gang, the Dark Hearts, which has its own explosive internal business — that something is going to go fatally wrong sooner or later. (If that’s a spoiler, you are blessed with a special brand of naivete.) The bikers, who are not at all nice, though painted with some recognizably human qualities — represented primarily by Jamie McShane as Perry and Sam Keeley as Jayson — are the usual screen collection of exclusively good-looking men and women, though to be fair, this is true of Tom’s team too — Tom perhaps excepted. (Ruffalo put on weight for the role, and wants you to notice.)

In “Task,” Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) is a single father who steals from other criminals.

(Peter Kramer / HBO)

Indeed, the predominant experience of watching “Task” is waiting for the next terrible thing to happen, which may be called suspense or dramatic tension, but in the event makes for an often depressing watch, especially since the safety (physical, psychological) of young children is involved. (That can feel a little cheap, dramaturgically, like endangering a kitten, but it works.) One is grateful for anything relatively ordinary — Lizzie and Anthony dancing in a bar, Tom’s younger daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio) connecting with a co-worker at the custard ice stand. (Another item for the regional reference bucket.)

In the compare-and-contrast structure of the series, we learn that Robbie, though he is a fount of bad decisions, is the more optimistic, proactive of the two characters — he has a dream, in the form of a brochure, regarding a Canadian island, where he would like to spirit his family away. (He’s doing the crime to afford it.) He’s interested enough in finding “a life companion” to open a dating app. Tom, who had been a priest for eight years before losing the spirit and joining the FBI, still in mourning for his wife, drinks too much, is packing a paunch and can’t connect with Emily, the only family member left in the house.

Both have connections to nature. Tom, who grows vegetables, is a birdwatcher; Robbie keeps chickens. Both are essentially tenderhearted, which is perhaps not the most practical quality for their professions, but necessary for the story — we need to like them. They’re like one and a half sides of the same coin.

In among the criminal antics and police work is a lot of talk about life and death and God, guilt and forgiveness. Ingelsby thinks big. The title to one episode, “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing There Is a River,” paraphrases the 13th century Persian poet Rumi, and water is a motif — diving into it, swimming in it, hanging around by it. Birds, too, which show up in random shots and, like the lakes and rivers, function as a sort of psychic relief for the viewer and metaphors for the story. When Tom, speaking to Robbie, identifies a certain bird as a “vagrant … a bird that strayed outside its normal range, strayed so far that it’s forgotten how to find its way home,” that is not really about birds. The writing can be a little on the nose, but better a violent story with ideas than one with none.

For all my reservations when it comes to this sort of drama, it’s very well made and very well acted, and, where many crime stories settle for sensational nihilism, “Task” does want to leave you feeling … pretty good. Not horrible. Hopeful. I trust that hasn’t spoiled it for you.

Aug. 28 (UPI) — The Trump administration Thursday night announced a second criminal referral against Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud, as she sues President Donald Trump for attempting to illegally dismiss her.

William Pulte, the agency’s director, announced the second referral on X, stating “3 strikes and you’re out.”

“Lisa Cook needs to step aside — with the evidence coming out on her 3rd mortgage and her alleged misrepresentations to the Federal Government ethics department, I believe she is causing irreparable harm to our beloved Federal Reserve,” Pulte said in a second statement. “How is Jay Powell fine with her behavior?”

Pulte had sent the first criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Aug. 26, accusing Cook, the first Black woman to sit on the independent board, of falsifying documents and committing mortgage, bank and wire fraud. She is accused of signing two separate mortgage documents for two separate properties that claim each is her primary residence. One property is in Michigan and the other is in Atlanta. The two documents were allegedly signed two weeks apart during the summer of 2021.

The new referral is about a third property in Cambridge, Mass.

Pulte states Cook misrepresented the property by calling it her “second home” on a 15-year mortgage document in December 2021, and then listing it on a U.S. ethics form as an “investment/rental property” weeks later.

Trump moved to fire Cook on Monday, after calling for her to resign, citing the first criminal referral as reason for the dismissal, the legality of which was unclear and has prompted staunch opposition from Democrats.

The second referral was announced hours after Cook sued Trump for attempting to fire her.

“This case challenges President Trump’s unprecedented and illegal attempt to remove Governor Cook from her position, which, if allowed to occur, would be the first of its kind in the Board’s history,” the suit said.

“It would subvert the Federal Reserve Act, which explicitly requires a showing of ’cause’ for a Governor’s removal, which an unsubstantiated allegation about private mortgage applications submitted by Governor Cook prior to her Senate confirmation is not,” the case introduction continued.

“The President’s actions violate Governor Cook’s Fifth Amendment due process rights and her statutory right to notice and a hearing under the [Federal Reserve Act],” it further stated. “Accordingly, Governor Cook seeks immediate declaratory and injunctive relief to confirm her status as a member of the Board of Governors, safeguard her and the Board’s congressionally mandated independence, and allow Governor Cook and the Federal Reserve to continue its critical work.”

The suit names Trump, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and the Fed Board of Governors as defendants, and a hearing for a request for a temporary restraining order has been slated for 10 a.m. EDT on Friday in front of Federal Judge Jia Cobb.

Should she win the case, her lawyers ask for Trump to declare she remains an active Fed governor, and that board members can only be removed for cause, as described in the Federal Reserve Act, the law under which Trump is attempting to fire her.

The suit also seeks “an award of the costs of this action and reasonable attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act or any other applicable law,” as well as an “award of all other appropriate relief.”

Trump campaigned on retaliating against political opponents. Since returning to the White House in January, he has used his executive powers to strip lawyers and law firms that have represented or are connected to his rivals of security clearances.

Two other Democrats and Trump critics — New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff of California — have also been accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration.

Trump’s attempt to fire Cook follows months of the president applying political pressure on her boss, Powell, to lower interest rates. Despite the insults and demands from Trump, Powell has resisted, stating economic policy will not be determined by politics.

Democrats have accused Trump of perpetrating an illegal authoritarian power grab by firing Cook. On Thursday night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, accused Trump of attempting to “turn the Federal Reserve into the ‘Central Bank of Trump.'”

“The Fed makes decisions based on economic data — not political pressure,” she said in a statement. “This move would undermine the world’s confidence in our economy and harm working people.

“And it is illegal.”

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda has agreed to a deal with the United States to take deported migrants as long as they don’t have criminal records and are not unaccompanied minors, the foreign ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said in a statement that the agreement had been concluded but that terms were still being worked out. It added that Uganda prefers that the migrants sent there be of African nationalities, but did not elaborate on what Uganda might get in return for accepting deportees.

The U.S. Embassy in Uganda declined to comment on what it called “diplomatic negotiations,” but said that diplomats were seeking to uphold President Trump’s “policy of keeping Americans safe.”

The Trump administration has been seeking ways to deter migrants from entering the country illegally and to deport those who already have done so, especially those with criminal records and including those who cannot easily be deported to their home country.

Human rights activists criticized the deportee deal as possibly going against international law.

Henry Okello Oryem, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs, on Wednesday had denied that any agreement on deportees had been reached, though he said his government was in discussions about “visas, tariffs, sanctions, and related issues.” He also suggested that his country would draw the line at accepting people associated with criminal groups.

“We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he said at the time.

Oryem and other Ugandan government officials declined to comment Thursday.

Opposition lawmaker Muwada Nkunyingi suggested that such a deal with the United States would give the Ugandan government legitimacy ahead of elections, and urged Washington not to turn a blind eye toward what he described as human rights and governance issues in Uganda.

Uganda’s leaders will rush into a deal to “clear their image now that we are heading into the 2026 elections,” Nkunyingi said.

Human rights lawyer Nicholas Opio likened a deportee deal to human trafficking, and said it would leave the status of the deportees unclear. “Are they refugees or prisoners?” he said.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law. We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency; in this case because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States,” he said. “That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me; how is that different from human trafficking?”

In July, the U.S. deported five men with criminal backgrounds to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini and sent eight more to South Sudan. The men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam sent to Eswatini are being held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year.

A legal challenge in the U.S had halted the deportation process of the eight men in South Sudan but a Supreme Court ruling eventually cleared the way for them to be sent to South Sudan.

Uganda has had challenges with the U.S. after lawmakers passed an anti-homosexuality bill in 2023 that punishes consensual same-sex conduct with penalties including life imprisonment. Washington threatened consequences and the World Bank withheld some funding.

In May 2024, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Uganda’s parliamentary speaker, her husband and several other officials over corruption and serious abuses of human rights.

Aug. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Justice has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James‘ office in a criminal investigation.

Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, according to CNN, NBC News and ABC News.

There is also a grand jury investigation into James in Albany, N.Y. It is said to be looking into deprivation of rights against Trump.

“Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign,” said Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James. “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”

Neither the Justice Department nor the White House has commented on these investigations.

A spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office told NBC News: “Any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American. We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”

James sued and won against Trump and his company over fraudulent misrepresentations of his wealth and financial statements. Her office won over $300 million in the case, which is now at over $500 million in interest while he appeals.

James’ office also sued the NRA and its leadership. James had sought dissolution of the NRA, but that was struck down. But she did win a civil fraud case against Wayne LaPierre. A jury convicted him of taking millions from the organization for personal use.

In May the Justice Department opened an investigation into James’ real estate transaction. She responded, saying that she had made a mistake on a mortgage application and that she had filed letters correcting the error.

James is one of many on Trump’s list of political enemies.

He has repeatedly said she is biased against him. In 2021, he sued to stop her fraud investigation, saying, “Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent.” The lawsuit also alleged that Trump was the victim of “viewpoint discrimination.” He later dropped the suit.

Dean Cain played a superhero on TV 30 years ago. Now he wants to help the government in its unconstitutional sweeps of Home Depot parking lots, schools and bus benches for people who appear to be immigrants.

Cain played Superman in the 1990s TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” On Tuesday, he encouraged his Instagram followers to apply for a job with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“Here’s your opportunity to join ICE,” he told followers in a video. “You can earn lots of great benefits and pay. Since President Trump took office, ICE has arrested hundreds of thousands of criminals including terrorists, rapists, murderers, pedophiles, MS-13 gang members, drug traffickers, you name it — very dangerous people who are no longer on the streets.”

Clearly, Cain is still fighting fantasy villains because nonpublic data from ICE indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Of the 200,000 people detained by ICE since October, 65% have never committed a crime, and 93% haven’t committed a violent crime.

Dean Cain with co-star Teri Hatcher in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”

(ABC Television Network)

But he wasn’t the only player from series TV to end up in a recruitment post for the Department of Homeland Security. On its X account, the department pulled an image from a “South Park” teaser for the show’s forthcoming episode “Got a Nut.” It showed masked men riding in black cars marked “ICE.” Homeland Security added its own caption: “Join.Ice.Gov.”

The show’s last episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” mercilessly lampooned the president’s manhood and penchant for vengeance-driven lawsuits. Trump responded by calling the animated comedy “irrelevant,” though its searing indictment of the president represented the show’s highest-rated season opener since 1999.

Paramount Global reported that viewership was up 68% from the previous “South Park” season premiere and was the top show across cable on July 23. The episode reached nearly 6 million viewers across Paramount+ and Comedy Central platforms in the three days after it aired.

A 20-second teaser of Wednesday’s “Got a Nut” episode shows Trump at a dinner event with Satan. As Trump’s courage is heralded by an off-screen speaker, the president rubs Satan’s leg under the table. Satan tells him to stop. Even the devil is disgusted.

It also appears “South Park” will be focused on ICE recruitment or, rather, the absurdity of the administration’s public call to arms. “When Mr. Mackey loses his job, he desperately tries to find a new way to make a living,” reads the caption about “Got a Nut” on “South Park’s” X account. It’s accompanied by a screenshot of the oft-misguided former school counselor Mackey looking out of sorts in a face mask and ICE vest. He stands near a characterization of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who vamps in ICE gear and points a pistol in the air.

On Tuesday, “South Park” responded via X to the department’s usage of an image from the forthcoming episode: “Wait, so we ARE relevant?“ followed by a hashtag we can’t reprint here.

Satire around MAGA’s inhumane immigration policy has ramped up after the Trump administration launched an ICE hiring campaign, promising a $50,000 signing bonus and retirement benefits. “Your country is calling you to serve at ICE,” Noem said in a news release last week. “Your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country. This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland.”

Cain’s signature show has been off the air as many years as “South Park” has been on, but Tuesday he decided it was time to slip on the virtual unitard one more time, imagining himself a superhero as he took to social media and said: “For those who don’t know, I am a sworn law enforcement officer, as well as being a filmmaker, and I felt it was important to join with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it. So I joined up,” the 59-year-old said.

A follower replied: “Unfortunately, you can’t join ICE if you’re over 37 years of age — even if you’re a fully licensed state law enforcement officer.”

Cain replied: “Perhaps we’ll get the changed. …”

Mere hours passed, then viola! Noem announced during an appearance on Fox News that ICE’s hiring age cap had been eliminated. And faster than a speeding rubber bullet fired at an ICE protester, Superman extended the dream of state-sanctioned kidnapping to the young and old.

She lost her pregnancy in prison in what she describes as “a miscarriage of justice”. 

The experience Ayodele Bukunmi had in detention tore her heart apart and still haunts her to date. Now 23, Bukunmi was only 17 when she was thrown behind bars in Ondo State, South West Nigeria. It was October 2020, during the nationwide EndSARS protests against police brutality in the country. On her way to visit a friend in the Akoko-Akungba area, police officers waylaid and whisked her away, alongside protesters.

The police forced her to admit to obtaining flammable materials and causing riots in the state amid the #EndSARS protests, she said. After a few hours of interrogation, they locked her in a crammed cell in the Special Investigations Department of the Ondo State police. Bukunmi insisted she was just a passerby and not a participant in the protest that turned violent, yet, a month later, she was moved to the Surulere prison facility in Akure, the state capital. 

For weeks, no one knew she was at the prison facility. She was held incommunicado until her boyfriend, worried about her safety, found out. 

She was not alone in this situation; Kemisola Ogunbiyi was also arrested and detained in a similar fashion. Kemisola was on her way to buy drugs for her sick mother when the police picked her up, claiming she was among the #EndSARS protesters.

Kemisola and Bukunmi languished in the Surulere correctional facility with blurry hopes for justice. The duo came from different families and locations, but fate brought them together in a government confinement, where the slow justice system subjected them to torture and inhumane treatment. Interestingly, they both found out they were pregnant while in detention, begging to be given a fair hearing.

The Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) was enacted in 2015 to reform criminal procedure, promote speedy trials, and protect the rights of suspects, defendants, and victims. However, the criminal justice system in Nigeria has been criticised for being riddled with mediocrity and systemic flaws. With overcrowded correctional facilities, more than 70 per cent of inmates are detained often for years without formal charges or access to legal representation, according to media reports.

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows how indigent defendants, especially women, suffer disproportionately due to underfunded legal aid and systemic corruption. What the teenage detainees experienced at the correctional facility in Ondo confirms this report. For months, they were held in the police cell without being charged in a court. When the police raided the street and arrested them, they were framed for offences they insisted they knew nothing about. Bukunmi recalled how the officers wrote statements on their behalf, forcing them to confess to crimes they never committed. As hoodlums infiltrated the protests, burning houses and vehicles, including the All Progressive Congress (APC) secretariat, the state authorities unleashed police officers onto the streets to pick up the arsonists; Bukunmi and Kemisola, among others, were scapegoated.

“I was new to Akure at the time and knew nowhere, but they framed me and accused me of arson. They tortured me until I lost consciousness, and at the police station, they didn’t give me any chance to explain myself. I was humiliated and harassed,” Bukunmi said.

When they were finally charged in court, they had no lawyer to back them, and lost their voices before the judge. From the police station, they were moved to an all-female correctional centre in the state, where they would face another level of ill-treatment and dehumanisation. 

“They gave us terrible meals – watery beans and lumpy soups. We ate rice occasionally, and our regular stew was simply hot pepper and water. No palm oil, fish, meat, the typically grounded pepper, or tomatoes,” Bukunmi told HumAngle five years later. “I faced hell in detention and still went through hell after I regained freedom.”

The prison officials were cruel and tolerated no one, Bukunmi reminisced. She was once locked in a single, dark cell for over a week, with her legs chained and hands tied for disobeying an officer. She can’t recall the officer’s name, but she described her as “very dark” and newly recruited at the time. Her offence? She hesitated to help the officer clean her shoe. The officer reported her to a superior official, who ordered her to be locked in solitary confinement. They untied her hands once a day to serve her food and water while she was serving the punishment.

“I was still pregnant at the time, and I think these could have contributed to why I had a miscarriage,” she told HumAngle. “The prison space is not for the weak; you could be on your own, and an officer would accuse you of looking at them disdainfully and punish you for no reason. I didn’t really mean to disobey the officer; I was tired and sluggish at the time, and she accused me of hesitating to clean her shoe.”

No detainee dared greet an officer standing, even if they were older, she said. “You must always greet them because if you refuse, that could be a reason to be punished. And you must speak to an officer, you must be on your knees, with your head facing down.”

The ill-treatment meted out on them, experts said, violates section 8(1) of ACJA, which mandates that all suspects be treated with dignity and prohibits inhumane or degrading treatment. The Act also encourages non-custodial sentencing, such as community service and suspended sentences, particularly for minor offences. However, implementation remains inconsistent across states, and many people are still detained in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. 

They were in and out of the courtroom for about eight months without a clear direction, until the story broke in the media in April 2021. Despite getting pro bono legal backing, the court still refused to hear their appeal, aggravating their condition in detention. This slow pace of judicial proceedings worsened their case, further violating ACJA regulations. 

The ACJA had introduced reforms like day-to-day trials and limits on adjournments to reduce delays, yet courts remain overwhelmed by case backlogs. A critique published on Academia.edu points out that despite the ACJA’s innovations, poor funding, lack of training, and resistance to change have hindered its effectiveness. Vulnerable defendants often languish in detention while their cases stall, violating their constitutional right to a fair and timely trial.

Foetus lost, baby born in prison

Bukunmi broke the news of her pregnancy to her boyfriend, Balogun Segun, when he visited her in detention. He didn’t believe her initially, but something terrible happened two days later. She started bleeding, and her stomach wouldn’t stop aching. She lost the pregnancy to the daily stress and discomfort she witnessed at the Surulere facility. The pregnancy was four months when she had a miscarriage, leaving her in pain and anguish. Her boyfriend cried out to journalists at the time that Bukunmi had no medical attention, despite her condition.

“She is not being given any medical attention,” he complained. “In fact, the foetus inside her hasn’t been flushed out. She needs help.”

Kemisola also found out she was pregnant in detention, but she scaled through the inhumane conditions. A few months later, she delivered the baby at the facility, catching more media attention. She was one month pregnant when she was arrested and detained in October 2020; she delivered the baby in June and still spent days in detention with the newborn. Her situation sparked social media outrage, with #FreeKemisola trending. Activists and social media influencers pressured the state government until Charles Titiloye, the state’s Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, promised to intervene.

A few weeks later, Kemisola was released, gaining public sympathy and receiving donations from well-wishers. The baby was christened and celebrated by notable Nigerians such as Naomi Ogunwusi, the estranged wife of the Ooni of Ife, a first-class monarch in Osun state. Amid the media outrage over Kemisola’s case, however, Bukunmi was left in limbo with no freedom insight. The dead foetus stayed in her belly for months, making her sick. Some online sympathisers protested and moved on quickly. But her mother and boyfriend protested while speaking to journalists, expressing fears that the public might have forgotten the detainee.

“I’m afraid something might go wrong with her in prison due to her health condition,” Iyabo Ayodele, Bukunmi’s mother, lamented. “Help me beg the public not to forget her there.”

She was not allowed to visit a hospital even after complaining on several occasions that her stomach ached badly. At the prison facility, only one matron attended to their medical needs, and she was accused of handling serious issues with levity and sometimes oversimplifying complex health conditions. When she complained bitterly about her aching stomach after having a miscarriage, the matron gave paracetamol, but that changed nothing. She said she endured the pain for months, until she regained freedom.

Three months after Kemisola was released, Bukunmi regained freedom after enduring gruelling complications from the miscarriage. Her life never remained the same, even when she became free. The memory of those moments still haunts her, continually flashing through her mind, she said. When she falls deeply asleep sometimes, she said, she finds herself in a dark dungeon, weeping bitterly to be set free. Other times, she appears in dramatic scenes, dragging matters with the police in her dream.

“Even after I was released, I suffered a lot, physically and mentally. Unknown to me, the miscarriage had affected my womb. But God, time and medical efforts helped me take in the second time,” she added.

ACJA protects the rights of vulnerable women like Bukunmi and their unborn children in detention, but the reality in many Nigerian prisons is different. Section 404 of the Act states that if a pregnant woman is convicted of a capital offence, the death sentence must be suspended until after childbirth and weaning. While this provision offers some relief, it does not prevent pretrial detention of pregnant women, even for non-violent offences. One woman, Fausat Olayonu, for instance, was pregnant when she was detained for stealing a radio set worth ₦20,000. Like Bukunmi and Kemisola, she had no legal representation and had resigned to fate that her unborn child would be delivered in prison. The International Association of Women Judges reports that over 1,700 women in Nigerian prisons are awaiting trial, many of them pregnant or nursing, with limited access to medical care and legal support.

Although the ACJA provides a robust framework for reform, experts, including social justice activists and lawyers, say its impact is limited by weak enforcement and institutional malfeasances such as prolonged detention and inadequate care. Abdullahi Tijani, a lawyer and pro-freedom activist, says bridging the gap between legislation and reality requires stronger oversight, better funding for legal aid, and targeted interventions for vulnerable populations. 

“Until these systemic issues are addressed, the promise of justice under the ACJA will remain largely unfulfilled,” Abdullahi argued. “No doubt, Nigeria has proper frameworks to reform its criminal justice system, but compliance is a barrier.”

Ridwan Oke, a Nigerian lawyer and criminal justice activist, says reforming the criminal justice system begins with law enforcement agents, especially the police. During the #EndSARS protest, Ridwan helped facilitate the release of several protesters randomly arrested without a thorough investigation. The legal practitioner said the police need to check their system in terms of arresting people indiscriminately and charging them with ridiculous offences not backed by evidence.

“If the police can always check themselves by not arresting indiscriminately without any evidence, the criminal justice reform becomes easier,” he urged. “Police officers are fond of arresting people indiscriminately, releasing those they can release and charging others to court before looking for evidence.”

He also advised the court to be more critical of cases presented before them, especially cases lacking basic evidence. “Now, anybody can charge anybody without any evidence. That’s bad for our criminal justice system. The court should always put people in critical check and reduce bail conditions for lesser offences so that there would be no delay in justice delivery.”

July 16 (UPI) — Former New York Police Department Commissioner Thomas Donlon calls the NYPD a “corrupt enterprise” that rewards some and punishes others in a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

Donlon, 71, was named the NYPD’s interim commissioner in September 2024 after Edward Caban resigned due to a federal investigation.

He accuses New York City Mayor Adams and highly placed NYPD officials of running a criminal enterprise in the 251-page lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York, as reported by AMNY.

Donlon says Adams ignored his complaints about corrupt activities within the department and sided with Adams’ supporters within the NYPD, which made him the interim commissioner “in name only,” ABC News reported.

Adams’ inner circle of loyalists is who really has authority within the department, according to Donlon.

He exited the NYPD in November and accuses many highly placed department officials of running a scheme to promote politically connected officers who lack merit, obstructing internal oversight and manipulating misconduct investigations.

Donlon says former NYPD spokesman Tarik Sheppard used Donlon’s rubber signature stamp without permission to promote himself to a three-star department chief and threatened, the Daily News reported.

When Donlon confronted Sheppard, he said Sheppard threatened to kill him.

Donlon also accuses former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey of placing spies within Donlon’s office who blocked his attempts to launch probes into police misconduct.

He says Maddrey and Sheppard switched the names of officers whom Donlon chose for promotion and replaced them with their preferred officers without his knowledge and doctored the records to make it appear Donlon had okayed the promotions.

Donlon also accuses several of those named as defendants in his lawsuit of falsely arresting his wife, Deirdre O’Connor, and leaking her arrest to the press for driving with expired car insurance when she was rear-ended by another driver in December.

“This was not a mistake,” Donlon says in the lawsuit. “It was a deliberate abuse of power designed to punish and intimidate Donlon for exposing their misconduct.”

Donlon seeks compensation for emotional and punitive damages and an injunction to end the matter.

A New York City spokesperson called the lawsuit “baseless accusations” and an “attempt to seek compensation” after Donlon was “rightfully removed from the role of interim police commissioner,” AMNY reported.

Adams is seeking re-election as an independent candidate in the Nov. 4 mayoral election in New York City.

NEW YORK — New York City’s former interim police commissioner is suing Mayor Eric Adams and his top deputies, accusing them of operating the NYPD as a “criminal enterprise.”

In a federal racketeering lawsuit filed Wednesday, the ex-commissioner, Thomas Donlon, alleges Adams and his inner circle showered unqualified loyalists with promotions, buried allegations of misconduct and gratuitously punished whistleblowers.

It is the latest in a series of recent lawsuits by former NYPD leaders describing a department ruled by graft and cronyism, with swift repercussions for those who questioned the mayor’s allies.

In a statement, City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus called the allegations “baseless,” blasting Donlon as a “disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective.”

Donlon, a longtime FBI official, was appointed last fall by Adams to stabilize a department shaken by federal investigations and high-profile resignations.

He stepped down less than a month into the job, after federal authorities searched his home for decades-old documents that he said were unrelated to his work at the department.

During his brief tenure, Donlon said he uncovered “systemic corruption and criminal conduct” enabled by Adams and carried out by his hand-picked confidants who operated outside the department’s standard chain of command.

Their alleged corruption triggered a “massive, unlawful transfer of public wealth,” the suit alleges, through unearned salary increases, overtime payments, pension enhancement and other benefits.

In one case, Donlon said he caught the department’s former top spokesperson, Tarik Sheppard, improperly using his rubber signature to give himself a raise and promotion. When Donlon confronted him, Sheppard allegedly threatened to kill him.

Later, when Donlon’s wife was involved in a minor car accident, Sheppard leaked personal family details to the press, according to the lawsuit.

Sheppard, who left the department in May, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The lawsuit also accuses police leaders of blocking internal investigations requested by Donlon and refusing to cooperate with federal authorities. And it outlines several instances in which officers with little experience — but close connections to Adams’ allies — received promotions, sometimes in exchange for favors.

The lawsuit names Adams and eight current and former high-ranking NYPD officials, including Chief of Department John Chell and Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry.

It calls for a federal takeover of the NYPD and unspecified damages for Donlon, whose professional reputation was “deliberately destroyed,” according to the suit.

Before joining the NYPD, Donlon spent decades working on terrorism cases for the FBI, including the investigation into the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He also led New York state’s Office of Homeland Security before going into the private sector security industry.

He was replaced as commissioner by Jessica Tisch, who has pledged to restore trust within the department. But as Adams seeks reelection on a platform touting decreases in crime, he now faces renewed scrutiny over his management of the police force.

Last week, four other former high-ranking New York City police officials filed separate lawsuits against Adams and his top deputies, alleging a culture of rampant corruption and bribes that preceded Donlon’s appointment.

In response to that suit, a spokesperson for Adams said the administration “holds all city employees — including leadership at the NYPD — to the highest standards.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The United States sent five migrants it describes as “barbaric” criminals to the African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration’s largely secretive third-country deportation program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

The U.S. has already deported eight men to another African country, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. The South Sudanese government has declined to say where those men, also described as violent criminals, are after it took custody of them nearly two weeks ago.

In a late-night post on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the five men sent to Eswatini, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived on a plane, but didn’t say when or where.

She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

The men “have been terrorizing American communities” but were now “off of American soil,” McLaughlin added.

McLaughlin said they had been convicted of crimes including murder and child rape and one was a “confirmed” gang member. Her social media posts included mug shots of the men and what she said were their criminal records and sentences. They were not named.

It was not clear if the men had been deported from prison or if they were detained in immigration operations, and the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to requests for clarification.

Four of the five countries where the men are from have historically been resistant to taking back some citizens when they’re deported from the U.S. That issue has been a reoccurring problem for Homeland Security even before the Trump administration. Some countries refuse to take back any of their citizens, while others won’t accept people who have committed crimes in the U.S.

Like in South Sudan, there was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country. Civic groups there raised concerns over the secrecy from a government long accused of clamping down on human rights.

“There has been a notable lack of official communication from the Eswatini government regarding any agreement or understanding with the U.S. to accept these deportees,” Ingiphile Dlamini, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy group SWALIMO, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

It wasn’t clear if they were being held in a detention center, what their legal status was or what Eswatini’s plans were for the deported men, he said.

An absolute monarchy

Eswatini, previously called Swaziland, is a country of about 1.2 million people between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies and the last in Africa. King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986.

Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed political dissent, sometimes violently.

Pro-democracy protests erupted in Eswatini in 2021, when dozens were killed, allegedly by security forces. Eswatini authorities have been accused of conducting political assassinations of pro-democracy activists and imprisoning others.

Because Eswatini is a poor country, it “may face significant strain in accommodating and managing individuals with complex backgrounds, particularly those with serious criminal convictions,” Dlamini said.

While the U.S. administration has hailed deportations as a victory for the safety and security of the American people, Dlamini said his organization wanted to know the plans for the five men sent to Eswatini and “any potential risks to the local population.”

U.S. is seeking more deals

The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Leaders from some of the five West African nations who met last week with President Trump at the White House said the issue of migration and their countries possibly taking deportees from the U.S. was discussed.

Some nations have pushed back. Nigeria, which wasn’t part of that White House summit, said it has rejected pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.

The U.S. also has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, but has identified Africa as a continent where it might find more governments willing to strike deportation agreements.

Rwanda’s foreign minister told the AP last month that talks were underway with the U.S. about a potential agreement to host deported migrants. A British government plan announced in 2022 to deport rejected asylum-seekers to Rwanda was ruled illegal by the U.K. Supreme Court last year.

‘Not a dumping ground’

The eight men deported by the U.S. to war-torn South Sudan, where they arrived early this month, previously spent weeks at a U.S. military base in nearby Djibouti, located on the northeast border of Ethiopia, as the case over the legality of sending them there played out.

The deportation flight to Eswatini is the first to a third country since the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

The South Sudanese government has not released details of its agreement with the U.S. to take deportees, nor has it said what will happen to the men. A prominent civil society leader there said South Sudan was “not a dumping ground for criminals.”

Analysts say some African nations might be willing to take third-country deportees in return for more favorable terms from the U.S. in negotiations over tariffs, foreign aid and investment, and restrictions on travel visas.

Imray and Gumede write for the Associated Press. Gumede reported from Johannesburg. AP writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.