Sexual Assault

A New York Times reporter told Jeffrey Epstein that he could write an article that would define the financier on his own terms as he faced allegations of sexually abusing minors in the months leading up to his 2008 conviction, newly uncovered emails reveal.

After a negative article about Epstein was published in September 2007, then-New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr advised Epstein to “get ahead” of more bad publicity by doing an interview that would define the story “on your terms”.

“I Just read the Post. Now the floodgates will open — you can expect Vanity Fair and NYMag to pile on,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated September 20, 2007, referring to the magazines Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.

“My view is that the quicker you get out ahead of this and define the story and who you are on your terms in the NYT, the better it will be for you.”

Thomas, who left the Times in 2019, urged Epstein to quickly do an interview to prevent the “popular tabloid perception” about him from hardening, and expressed sympathy over his legal troubles.

“I know this is tough and hard for you, but remember jail may [be] bad, but it is not forever,” Thomas wrote.

As part of his pitch to Epstein, Thomas recalled a 2002 profile he wrote about the financier for New York Magazine, titled Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.

Written before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006, the profile portrayed the financier as an enigmatic but highly successful businessman with the appearance of a “taller, younger Ralph Lauren” and a “relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists”.

The piece contained glowing appraisals from Epstein’s many high-profile associates, whose praise-filled descriptions included that he was “very smart”, “amazing”, “extraordinary”, and “talented”.

“Remember how for a while my NY Mag piece was the defining piece on you? That is no longer the case after all this,” Thomas wrote to Epstein.

“But I think if we did a piece for the Times, with the documents and evidence that you mention, plus you speaking for the record, we can again have a story that becomes the last public word on Jeffrey Epstein.”

A little more than a week later, on September 28, Thomas sent Epstein an email reiterating the importance of “getting out ahead” of other publications.

Thomas suggested that he begin reaching out to associates of Epstein who could talk about the financier’s business activities and scientific and philanthropic work, including former Harvard President Larry Summers and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

“Before I get a glimpse of the legal material, I was thinking that I should at least start calling around to people who know you. Again to focus on the business and scientific/philanthropic aspect of the piece,” Thomas wrote.

“Could I start to do that — call people like Larry Summers, Jess Staley, George Mitchell, Ehud Barak, Bill Richardson and others?” Thomas finished the email expressing his hope that Epstein was “holding up okay” and stating his view that “we need to move on this.”

It is not clear how Epstein responded to Thomas’s emails, which were included in a trove of emails from Epstein’s personal accounts that were made available to Al Jazeera by the whistleblower website Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.

Following Thomas’s correspondence with Epstein, the Times went on to publish an article by the journalist detailing the financier’s downfall the following year.

The article, published a day after Epstein’s guilty plea on June 30, 2008, drew from in-person and phone interviews that Thomas had conducted with the financier, including during a visit to Epstein’s island of Little St James several months earlier.

In the article, Thomas described the financier sitting on the patio of his island mansion as he likened himself to the eponymous character of the satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels.

“Gulliver’s playfulness had unintended consequences,” Epstein was quoted as saying.

“That is what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits.”

A 2019 report by NPR said colleagues of Thomas at the Times had been “appalled” by the article when they reviewed it years later, following the journalist’s admission that he had solicited a $30,000 donation from Epstein for a cultural centre.

The emails obtained by Al Jazeera also show that Epstein emailed an error-strewn Word document to himself in which Thomas is described discussing the legal case against Epstein with then-Florida prosecutor David Weinstein.

The purpose and origin of the document, which describes Thomas and Weinstein discussing technical aspects of the charges facing Epstein, is unclear. Weinstein said he spoke to Thomas in January 2008, but that the document did not contain an accurate description of their conversation.

Weinstein said they had spoken about the “criminal justice process and general state and federal statutes”, but not Epstein’s case specifically.

He said he did not know where the information in the document came from or who provided it to Epstein.

“I never spoke with him about the specific facts of the late Mr Epstein’s case, nor did I offer any opinion about that matter,” Weinstein told Al Jazeera.

The emergence of the emails between Thomas and Epstein comes after correspondence the two men shared from 2015 to 2018 came to light last month in a batch of documents released by US lawmakers.

Among other revelations, those emails showed that Thomas let Epstein know that the late investigative journalist John Connolly had contacted him for information for Connolly’s 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.

“He seems very interested in your relationship with the news media,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated June 1, 2016. “I told him you were a hell of a guy :)”.

A spokesperson for the Times said Thomas had not worked for the newspaper since early 2019 “after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards”.

A prominent Sudanese doctor’s group has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raping at least 19 women as they fled the city of el-Fasher in Darfur.

The Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Sunday that it documented the rapes among women who had fled to the town of al-Dabba in the neighbouring Northern State.

Two of the women were pregnant, the group said.

“The Sudan Doctors Network strongly condemns the gang rape being perpetrated by the RSF against women escaping the horrors of El-Fasher, affirming that it constitutes a direct targeting of women in a blatant violation of all international laws that criminalise the use of women’s bodies as a weapon of oppression,” the group wrote on X.

Sudan Doctors Network: We have documented 19 cases of rape committed by the Rapid Support Forces, including two pregnant women, at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba

The Sudan Doctors Network team at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba has documented the rape of 19 women while they were fleeing from… pic.twitter.com/u5qWp4bdSD

— Sudan Doctors Network – شبكة أطباء السودان (@SDN154) December 7, 2025

Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, according to the United Nations. It has also left some 30 million in need of humanitarian aid.

The RSF took the city of el-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, in October after an 18-month campaign of siege and starvation. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

Survivors who fled the city in the subsequent days recounted mass killings, rape, pillaging and other atrocities, prompting an international outcry.

Amnesty International has accused the RSF of “war crimes”, while the UN Human Rights Council has ordered an investigation into the abuses in el-Fasher. Officials who visited Darfur and spoke to survivors described the region as an “absolute horror show” and a “crime scene”.

Widespread sexual assault

Mohammed Elsheikh, a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that he was “100 percent sure” that sexual violence committed by RSF fighters is far more widespread than reported.

“Because most of the communities look at it as a stigma, most of the raped women tend not to disclose this information,” he said.

Elsheikh said the network had also documented 23 cases of rape among women who fled el-Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila.

“Unfortunately, the age of these raped victims varies from 15 years to 23 years old,” he said.

In its statement, the Sudan Doctors Network urged the international community to take urgent action to protect Sudanese women and girls.

It also called for “serious pressure on RSF leaders to immediately stop these assaults, respect international humanitarian law, and secure safe corridors for women and children”.

The latest accusations came amid a growing outcry over another RSF attack on a pre-school in the state of South Kordofan that local officials said killed at least 116 people. Some 46 of the victims were children, according to the officials.

On Sunday, Justice Minister Abdullah Dirife said Khartoum was willing to pursue political talks aimed at ending the conflict, but insisted that any settlement must “ensure there is no presence for ‘terrorist’ militias in both the political and military arenas”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, he said the rebels “need to agree to give their weapons in specific areas and leave all these cities, and the police should take over”.

Dirife also called for putting a stop to the “transfer of weapons and the infiltration of mercenaries into Sudan” and claimed that fighters and arms were entering from regions including South America, Chad and the UAE.

The RSF currently holds all five states of Darfur, while the Sudanese army retains control of most of the remaining 13 states, including Khartoum.

Dirife also accused the RSF of repeatedly breaking past commitments to adhere to regional and global mediation initiatives.

“The last initiative we signed was the Jeddah Declaration. However, this militia didn’t commit to what we agreed on,” he said in Doha.

The Jeddah Declaration – brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in May 2023 – was meant to protect civilians and lay the groundwork for humanitarian access. Several ceasefires followed, but both sides were accused of violating them, prompting the mediators to suspend talks.

The UN has meanwhile formally declared famine in el-Fasher and Kaduguli in South Kordofan and warned of the risk of a hunger crisis in 20 additional areas across the Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan regions.

The World Food Programme’s Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the agency was providing aid to five million people, including two million in areas that are difficult to reach, but warned that assistance has fallen far short of needs.

“World attention needs to be on Sudan now, and diplomatic efforts need to be stepped up in order to prevent the same disaster we saw in el-Fasher,” he said.

A Kenyan parliamentary report has accused British troops training in the country of widespread killings, sexual abuse and human rights and environmental abuses, following years of accumulated complaints from local communities.

The report, published on Wednesday, found that serious misconduct by British soldiers caused them to be viewed as something of an “occupying force” by local people.

For the past 60 years, British soldiers in the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK) have routinely trained in the East African nation, favoured for its temperate weather and realistic combat scenarios. However, they have attracted rising numbers of accusations of gross violations, ranging from killings to neglectful disposal of military grade chemicals. The most notorious case was the murder of a 21-year-old Kenyan woman, Agnes Wanjiru, which gained international media attention.

Community activists who have for years sought redress in Kenyan courts told Al Jazeera the report’s publication represented an “enormous victory” not just for Kenya, but for other African countries which host foreign military bases on their territory, but are wary of regulating them.

“The Kenyan parliament has demonstrated that the British Army is not above the law,” said James Mwangi, founder of the grassroots advocacy group, Africa Centre for Corrective and Preventive Action (ACCPA), which has been at the forefront of bringing community grievances to Kenyan courts, and which advised lawmakers during their investigation.

“The impunity that has been perpetrated by these forces has been appalling. The world has seen that African parliaments can take measures to combat injustices by these forces, and Kenya has become the first country in Africa to do such a thing,” he added.

Here’s what we know about the report, the most serious allegations against the British troops, and what will happen next:

What is BATUK?

BATUK (British Army Training Unit in Kenya) is a permanent training force based in Nanyuki, central Kenya. It has been stationed there since Kenyan independence from the UK in 1963 and has about 100 permanent staff and some 280 rotating short-term troops from the United Kingdom.

The unit trains British troops and provides anti-terrorism training for Kenyan troops fighting the al-Shabab armed group, as agreed in the UK-Kenya Defence Cooperation Agreement, which, since 2015, allows both armies to share intelligence and training.

In 2022, the UK government reported that BATUK had contributed more than 5.8 billion Kenyan shillings ($45m) to the local economies in which its garrisons are based, and that it employed more than 550 local staff. Local businesses close to BATUK training sites also benefit from the unit’s presence, it said.

However, there have been numerous complaints from local people about the conduct of the troops. They say mishandling of dangerous training material and unexploded bombs left in the ground have caused serious injuries, and they have complained about how British soldiers behave towards Kenyan women in the area.

Many Kenyan women say they have been left to care for children alone after British soldiers they began relationships with left the country at the end of their training.

There has been no mechanism within the UK or Kenyan justice systems to hold British soldiers under BATUK to account. On that basis, the UK government initially pushed back against Kenyan authorities’ attempts to investigate the troops’ behaviour.

In April 2024, therefore, the Kenyan parliament voted to amend the defence agreement with the UK to allow for local prosecutions of British soldiers.

What does the new report say?

The 94-page inquiry into the conduct of BATUK troops was released following a one-and-a-half-year investigation by the Kenyan parliament’s defence, intelligence and foreign relations committee.

The report examined complaints from residents in Laikipia and Samburu counties in central Kenya, close to where the BATUK camp is. Lawmakers began conducting public hearings to hear evidence in June 2024, with victims detailing harrowing accounts of mistreatment by BATUK soldiers. BATUK did not cooperate with the parliamentary investigation, the committee noted.

The report found that BATUK soldiers showed a “disturbing trend” of sexual misconduct, including rape, assault and the neglect of children fathered by the troops.

It found that an internal inquiry by BATUK in 2003 had mishandled evidence and failed to provide justice for women who brought complaints.

BATUK, which the report said does not conduct environmental impact assessments for its field exercises, has also caused serious environmental damage. In at least one case, a major fire killed livestock and destroyed 4,900 hectares (12,000 acres) of vegetation. BATUK also illegally dumped military waste and toxic materials openly, breaking Kenyan environmental law, the report concluded.

Additionally, the Kenyan parliament said British troops showed “gross negligence” in the way they handled unexploded ordnance during their training and that their neglect had led to multiple deaths and injuries.

Communities were routinely not informed about loud training drills, leading to shock, injury or trauma in some cases.

Kenyan workers hired to clean up ammunition debris were not provided with protective gear in line with Kenyan labour laws, the report added.

Complainants who brought claims of injuries to BATUK were not fairly compensated, the report found.

What other abuses is BATUK accused of?

Thousands of serious allegations against BATUK members have been made by locals. At the public hearings which parliament conducted, the mother of a young woman testified in June 2024 that her daughter had been the victim of a hit-and-run incident involving a BATUK truck, which left her wheelchair-bound. BATUK paid for the daughter’s hospital bills for two years, but did not compensate the family beyond that, she said.

Another mother, who attended a hearing holding her five-year-old daughter, narrated how she had been abandoned by a British soldier with whom she had been in a consensual relationship when he discovered she was pregnant. The soldier is believed to have since left Kenya. The woman said she needed child support.

Survivors of a huge March 2021 wildfire, which started at the privately-owned Lolldaiga Conservancy nature reserve in Laikipia, where BATUK carries out trainings, also brought complaints. The nature reserve houses wildlife like elephants, buffalo, lions, and the endangered Grevy zebra.

The blaze, which raged for four days, is believed to have started after BATUK used white phosphorus, a lethal chemical, during a training exercise. The resulting fire ripped through the nature reserve’s grounds, burning 4,900 hectares (12,000 acres). It killed livestock and pushed fleeing wild animals to swaths of farm land further afield. Community members said the smoke was so heavy that it lingered for days and caused eye and breathing problems.

One man named Linus Murangiri was crushed by a moving vehicle as he rushed to help put out the fire, the BBC reported.

In 2022, the UK’s Ministry of Defence claimed that the fire was likely caused by a camp stove that had been knocked over during an exercise.

In August 2025, the UK agreed to pay what it called a “generous” settlement to the 7,723 claimants who sued BATUK over the incident with the help of organisations like ACCPA. The BBC reported that compensation amounted to just 2.9 million pounds ($3.9m).

The British government has also supported the restoration of burned areas on the conservancy where BATUK exercises continue to be held.

What happened to Agnes Wanjiru?

Agnes Wanjiru’s killing in March 2012, allegedly by a British soldier, was the most high-profile BATUK case.

Wanjiru, the mother of a five-month-old girl, disappeared on the night of March 31, after last being seen with British soldiers at the Lion Court Hotel bar in Nanyuki. Her naked body was found two months later in a septic tank on the hotel grounds, close to the room where the BATUK soldiers had been staying. The group of soldiers had left Kenya by the time her body was discovered.

A post-mortem determined Wanjiru had been stabbed in the chest and abdomen, had a collapsed lung, and had suffered from blunt force injury to her chest. She had been beaten and was likely still alive when she was placed in the tank, it said. It was not clear whether she had been sexually assaulted.

In June 2012, the Kenyan police asked that nine soldiers be questioned by the British Royal Military Police, but say they did not receive a response. Wanjiru’s family attempted to sue BATUK in Kenya, but the UK government argued the Kenyan court had no jurisdiction over UK troops.

Wanjiru’s murder case resurfaced in October 2021 after a Sunday Times investigation revealed that a British soldier had murdered her, and that BATUK bosses knew about the involvement of the soldier in her killing, but tried to cover it up.

One soldier who went to top officials after hearing a colleague, identified at the time as Soldier X, confess to the killings was told to “shut up”. The soldier said Soldier X took him to the septic tank and showed him Wanjiru’s body. Soldier X, who was not among the nine soldiers the Kenyan police initially identified, also poked fun at the murdered woman in Facebook posts, the Times reported.

The revelation brought renewed attention to the case and, this time, UK government officials agreed to cooperate with a new investigation.

In September 2025, a Kenyan court ordered the arrest and extradition of a British national, and in November, the UK government arrested a 38-year-old suspect, Robert Purkiss. The case could mark the first time a former or current British soldier will be extradited to face trial in a foreign country, according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

Purkiss served as a medic in the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, an Infantry Regiment based in the northwest of England, and was in Kenya for a six-week training exercise at the time of Wanjiru’s death.

He appeared in a Westminster court on November 7, where a prosecutor alleged that Purkiss and others had regularly paid local women for sex and that they had been “drinking heavily” the night of Wanjiru’s murder, The Guardian reported.

Friends of Wanjiru, a hairdresser, reported that she had told them she was going out to “hustle” (earn extra money) for her daughter, prosecutors told the UK court.

The court also heard that Purkiss confessed to a colleague that he murdered Wanjiru over “sex that went wrong”.

Purkiss denied the allegations. His next hearing is set for December 9.

How has the UK government responded to the report?

The British High Commission in Kenya responded in a statement on Wednesday, claiming that BATUK had not been sufficiently represented during the parliamentary hearings.

The commission said it had submitted written statements which were not taken into consideration in the report, and added that it was ready to investigate new allegations against BATUK “once evidence is provided”.

“While we deeply regret the challenges which have arisen in relation to our defence presence in Kenya, we are disappointed our submission to the Committee was not incorporated into the report’s conclusions,” the statement said.

What will happen next?

The parliamentary report recommended that Kenya’s Attorney General should immediately work with the UK government to extradite Purkiss to Kenya for the ongoing trial of Wanjiru’s murder. It also ordered inquiries into other deaths of local people suspected to have involved BATUK soldiers.

Negotiations should begin with the UK within three months to hold ex-BATUK soldiers who have neglected their children to account, the report said, and compensation and psychosocial support should be provided to victims of sexual offences committed by BATUK soldiers.

More broadly, the parliamentary report also recommended that government agencies should have more direct oversight over foreign troops stationed in the country by developing a code of conduct highlighting zero tolerance of gender-based violence and environmental degradation.

Kenya similarly hosts two US military bases with fluctuating numbers of personnel. The country often hosts US-Africa military drills along with several other African countries.

Mwangi of ACCPA told Al Jazeera that the parliament’s move was a step forward for communities which have to deal with foreign militaries in Kenya and elsewhere. Injustices committed by BATUK towards local communities, he said, dated back to Kenya’s colonial history with the UK, but officials have historically been wary of interrogating soldiers due to fears that development aid from the UK government could be affected.

Kenya is a top recipient of British aid, which mostly supports healthcare and humanitarian efforts. The country was also allocated a 24.6-million-pound ($33m) development budget in 2023.

Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the United States for her involvement in an alleged sex trafficking ring run by billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, has said she is planning to file a petition seeking her release.

The plan was revealed in a court filing on Wednesday and did not provide details about the legal grounds Maxwell would cite in her petition. It added that she would pursue her early release without the help of a lawyer.

The letter further cautioned against releasing documents related to Maxwell’s case, as they may “contain untested and unproven allegations”.

It explained that releasing grand jury materials from Maxwell’s case “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial”, should her petition to be released succeed.

The petition comes at a time of heightened scrutiny on the late Epstein’s crimes and those who may have known about them.

US President Donald Trump, in particular, has faced questions about his administration’s handling of files related to the case, which may contain details of Epstein’s powerful associates.

Critics have also pressed Trump to address his own relationship with Epstein.

Speculation about a pardon

The billionaire financier died by suicide in August 2019, while he was in detention in a New York City jail.

Hundreds of women have come forward to identify themselves as survivors of Epstein’s crimes. Many have demanded greater accountability from Epstein’s political and business contacts.

The circumstances of Epstein’s death and his influential social circle have also fuelled conspiracy theories about possible cover-ups and unnamed accomplices.

Members of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, including officials like Kash Patel, were among those who spread the conspiracy theories.

Prior to taking office, Patel — currently the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — spoke on podcasts about the possibility that Epstein might have kept a “client list” or “black book” to blackmail his contacts.

But in a July memo, Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi doused those conspiracy theories with a memo claiming there was no client list, nor grounds to prosecute additional defendants.

That memo roiled segments of Trump’s MAGA base and led to new attention to the president’s ties to Epstein.

The Trump administration has tried to tamp down on that speculation, and Trump himself has denied being close to the financier.

Amid pressure to release all of the government’s Epstein-related files, the Trump administration sent a Justice Department official to interview Maxwell in July over the course of two days.

In a published transcript afterwards, Maxwell said she never witnessed Trump in “any inappropriate setting”.

Shortly after the July interview, Maxwell was transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas.

Push to release documents

While the Trump administration has pledged transparency in its handling of the Epstein case, critics have argued that he has avoided releasing the relevant files.

But in late November, Trump made an about-face on the issue, signing a bill Congress had passed that compels the Department of Justice to release all unclassified materials related Epstein in a “searchable and downloadable format” within 30 days.

Speculation has also grown over whether Trump might move to pardon Maxwell or commute her sentence.

In November, House Democrats said a whistleblower reported that Maxwell was preparing a “Commutation Application” to be delivered to the Trump administration.

Weeks later, Jamie Raskin, the top Democratic on the House Judiciary Committee, filed a petition opposing a presidential pardon or commutation.

“Every Member should support this Resolution to send a clear and unequivocal message in advance to President Donald Trump before he makes a mockery of the pardon power once again,” he said.

“America opposes the grant of any get-out-of-jail-free card to the unrepentant, unremorseful liar and criminal who was an indispensable actor in a vicious billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring.”

Trump has maintained he has not considered a pardon for Maxwell.