Revealed: Where 'White Widow' Samantha Lewthwaite REALLY is... as jihadi bride becomes mum-of-six in a polyamorous marriage with Islamic terror warlord she shares with two more women
Lewthwaite - the widow of 7/7 suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay - is said to be hiding out with Islamic terror chief Osman Abdullahi Dhaga'ade in Somalia, according to intelligence sources.
She is described as living in a polyamorous marriage with a terror warlord husband and his two other wives.
Lewthwaite, 41, was thought previously to have had four children with two previous husbands.
It is claimed the fugitive - who is linked to a catalogue of atrocities that have led to the deaths of more than 240 people - continues to play a key role within the terror organisation, it's claimed.
She is said to help prepare bomb vests and 'brainwash' suicide bombers alongside her husband who is also a propaganda chief for the outlawed fanatics.
Sources told MailOnline the fugitive was last seen on July 8 in the southern city of Jilib - the de facto capital of the Islamic Emirate of Somalia controlled by al-Shabaab.
It's claimed Lewthwaite had also been spotted recently in other areas in the south with the family regularly switching locations for security reasons while protected by an elite squad of heavily armed bodyguards.
An al-Shabaab source said Lewthwaite was 'highly regarded and respected' within the terror group.
He said: 'She lives in several houses located in different areas. She does not move during the day but only at night and is highly protected by heavily armed elite Amniyat close protection security guards, which also includes women guards.
'The white woman also always carries a pistol and sometimes a rifle for her protection
'She does not stay in one location for long with her husband; they move around a lot.'
He added: 'The white woman works closely with her husband in preparing explosives and the suicide vests
'She is also responsible for training and brainwashing women suicide bombers before they are deployed for a mission.'
If the claims are true it would see a chilling switch in tactics for the terror organisation who are not known for using women in combat or suicide bombing missions.
Their roles have traditionally involved intelligence gathering and logistics support which are seen as crucial to the movement's military resilience.
A Somali intelligence source said: 'In 2023, she tried to leave Somalia to go to Yemen or Kenya.
'But al-Shabaab failed to find her a safe route, so had to stay in Somalia. The British woman helps recruit foreign fighters, especially women.
'She gets protection from her husband as he is high up in al-Shabaab. She speaks Somali and Arabic.'
Lewthwaite first came to public attention when her 19-year-old husband detonated an explosive-filled rucksack on a Piccadilly Line Tube train at King's Cross in 2005.
Her 'martyred' husband - a Jamaican-born carpet fitter - was responsible for 26 of the 52 deaths in the coordinated wave of attacks on London's transport network.
At the time Lewthwaite - who was eight months pregnant with the couple's second child - portrayed herself as another victim of the July 7 London bombings.
In reality she was a dangerous extremist hell-bent on plotting her own murderous missions.
She fled the country and was responsible for a string of atrocities in Africa while remaining one step ahead of law enforcement agencies and evading capture.
A series of mugshots of the fugitive in various guises have been circulated by Interpol since the international law enforcement agency issued a warrant for her arrest in 2013.
It followed a massacre after masked gunmen ran amok at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, murdering 71 people.
Lewthwaite is accused of planning, funding or taking part in the outrage, along with a grenade attack on a bar in the coastal resort of Mombasa the previous year in 2012 which left three dead.
She is also said to be behind a 2015 massacre at Garissa University which left 148 dead and was also linked with a terrorist attack on a hotel in Nairobi that led to the slaughter of 21 people in 2019.
Her transformation - from Home Counties prom queen to fanatical jihadist - is, controversially, being made into a feature film called Girl Next Door starring Bella Ramsey from the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last Of Us.
It was recently revealed that beyond her notorious image she has remained a fan of pop superstar Beyonce and has compiled shopping lists with British items such as Weetabix when she has been able to source them.
Lewthwaite - who is believed to have adopted a series of identities and altered her appearance through plastic surgery - is an unlikely jihadist mastermind after growing up as a shy schoolgirl in the Home Counties.
Her father, an English soldier called Andy Lewthwaite, met her mother, an Irish Catholic called Christine Allen, while he was serving in Northern Ireland during the 1970's.
Lewthwaite was born in Banbridge in County Down, Northern Ireland, in 1983 before the family moved to the Buckinghamshire market town of Aylesbury.
She is said to have been introduced to Islam after her parents divorced in 1994 as she sought comfort from Muslim neighbours who she considered to have a stronger family network.
Lewthwaite, who changed her first name to Sherafiya after converting aged 17, enrolled in a degree course in politics and the study of religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2002, although she dropped out before completing it.
She first made contact with Lindsay, also known by his Islamic name, Jamal, in an internet chat room and they met face-to-face at a Stop The War march in London.
They married in October 2002 and had a son in April 2004.
Shortly afterward the 7/7 bombings, Lewthwaite, who had been given police protection in the aftermath of the atrocity, cradled her newborn daughter in her arms as she said: 'We are victims as well.'
She added of her husband: 'I totally condemn and am horrified by the atrocities. I never predicted or imagined that he was involved in such horrific activities. He was a loving husband and father.'
But just months later, Lewthwaite is thought to have first moved to Kenya before travelling to South Africa under her own name in 2008.
She was deported to the UK the following year and returned to give birth to her third child at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury in August 2009.
Seemingly desperate to return to Africa, Lewthwaite changed her personal details and adopted the name of Asmaa Shahidah Bint-Andrews.
She used her new identity to return to South Africa with her three children where she reportedly found work in a halal pie factory.
While there, Lewthwaite activated a third identity - that of a British nurse called Natalie Faye Webb, whose details were stolen.
She also gave birth to a fourth child at a private birthing clinic in Johannesburg.
She later crossed into Tanzania in 2011 and then returned to Kenya - where she began masterminding campaigns.
Today the children she had with Lindsay, a boy and a girl, would be around 21 and 19.
The children she had with her late second husband, an Islamist terrorist she married in Africa are aged around 16 and 15. They are also a boy and a girl.
Lewthwaite has also recently been described as the 'main financier' of the cell of frontline fighters.
She narrowly escaped capture in 2011 after Kenyan police discovered the bomb-making factory in a villa in Mombasa.
Hidden under a sofa, they found a haul of fuses and 60 rounds of ammunition with magazines of bullets for AK-47 assault rifles.
They arrested a British man called Jermaine Grant at the scene who was later jailed but who named Lewthwaite as the senior member of the cell.
Police discovered she was in the adjacent apartment – the flats shared the same balcony - but the passport they found was in the name of Natalie Faye Webb.
By the time they realised that the nurse had been a victim of identity theft and they had made 'a mistake' Lewthwaite had fled.
This is the official version of events which was reported in the media at the time, but her getaway was more controversial, it seems.
Local sources claimed officers found Lewthwaite playing with her children when they first entered her accommodation around midnight.
They returned to their headquarters saying they thought she was 'innocent' of any involvement with Grant and another accomplice who was also taken into custody.
But they were strongly suspected of accepting five million Kenyan dollars (nearly £30,000) from Lewthwaite on the night, which she produced from her handbag, security sources have claimed.
The source said: 'She left the flat immediately afterwards. Officers returned the following day after anti-terrorist officers in the UK told them who she was.
'Several posh houses in the Nyali and Shanzu districts of the city were searched but she was nowhere to be found.'
Police discovered Lewthwaite subsequently got out of Kenya with the help of a police informer - a woman - who was the widow of a Kenyan terrorist killed in Somalia.
It is unclear whether she slipped back into the country again for the attack at the Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013 or simply helped organise and fund the terror campaign from outside.
Among her discarded possessions was her laptop which revealed a browsing history of any ordinary young woman including websites for hair, make-up, fashion, weight loss - and beyoncefan.net.
There was a handwritten journal in which she tells herself to 'look fabulous' for social occasions, along with a typical weekly shopping list: '32 eggs, 12 cheese, Weetabix, orange juice and tuna ...'
On the computer she had written a poem praising 9/11 terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden while fingerprints found at the property were also said to be hers.
And police discovered through a forensic examination of the device that Lewthwaite had spent eight years researching bomb-making and searching for the deadly chemicals used to make improvised explosives devices.
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The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘The matter is in his hands alone': president of Sierra Leone urged to ban FGM as court rules it tantamount to torture
As Kadijatu Balaima Allieu walked to a neighbour's house in her village in Sierra Leone, she had no idea that what was about to happen would alter the course of her life for ever. It was a beautiful September morning in 2016 and Allieu, 28 at the time, had gone to resolve a dispute she had with another woman, who belonged to the Bondo society, an influential and secretive group of women. Shortly after she arrived, she was forced into a room and the door locked. Her hands were tied. She was beaten, blindfolded and gagged. Then a woman sat on her chest while others forced her legs apart. She was forcibly subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), the partial or total removal by cutting of the female genitalia. 'There was nothing left of me [to fight],' says Allieu. 'Out of 100% energy, I was left with something like 1%. So they carried on with their operation.' Nine years later, Allieu's experience has led to a ruling against Sierra Leone by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) court of justice, which described FGM as 'one of the worst forms of violence against women' which 'meets the threshold for torture'. The case, filed by Forum Against Harmful Practices (FAHP), We Are Purposeful, and Allieu, held the government liable for human rights violations due to its failure to criminalise FGM. The court ordered Sierra Leone 'to enact and implement legislation criminalising female genital mutilation and to take appropriate measures toprohibit its occurrence and protect victims'. Though the UN passed a resolution to ban FGM in 2012, it is still practised in about 30 countries. In Sierra Leone, a national survey in 2019 found that 83% of women had undergone FGM, with 71% of them subjected to the practice before the age of 15. There is no law explicitly criminalising the procedure, part of a traditional initiation ritual that marks a girl's entry into womanhood, carried out by senior members of Bondo societies. Every year, women and children are left with health complications, and some die, as a result of such rituals. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the removal of part or all of the external genitalia for nonmedical reasons, as defined by the World Health Organization. There are different types of cutting: removal of the clitoris and/or its hood; removing the clitoris and the inner fold of the vulva (labia minora); and the narrowing of the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning the labia minora through stitching. Also known as infibulation, this has the worst health consequences. The fourth type of cutting includes other forms of injury to the genitalia such as incising, scraping or cauterising. Since traditional practitioners use razor blades or knives, with no anaesthesia, girls experience excruciating pain and are at risk of severe bleeding and infections which can lead to sepsis. Some do not survive. For the girls, who are often married off soon after genital cutting, sex is traumatic and painful, and enjoying sex will always be difficult unless they have surgical reconstruction. In pregnancy, delivery is often risky due to obstructed and prolonged labour. Women are at risk of developing obstetric fistula (an abnormal opening between a woman's genital tract and her urinary tract or rectum) which can cause incontinence – leading to shame, stigma and rejection from their partners. When members of the Bondo society had finished mutilating Allieu, she was dragged to another room and left in a pool of blood for three days, until police found her and took her to hospital. She had three operations to fix some of the damage that had been inflicted. After the third operation, Allieu remembers the doctor telling her 'he had never seen this level of wickedness'. Even so, a crowd, including Bondo society members, marched on the hospital, calling for Allieu to be handed over. The woman who had cut her was very influential and was angry that Allieu had escaped, with the help of the police. Unable to walk, Allieu was dragged by staff to the basement to hide. 'I felt like this was the end of the road,' says Allieu. 'I was in so much pain, I was tired and had nothing left.' Police and soldiers were called to protect the hospital and the crowd dispersed, but remaining in the hospital was impossible. One of Allieu's neighbours worked for the UN and offered to drive her to the border with Liberia so she could leave the country. She made it to the other side and after 14 days arrived at a friend's house. Over the next five years, Allieu was helped by various people and organisations. She also met someone who offered to help after hearing her story, and paid for her to go abroad for surgery on her injuries. After her trauma had subsided and she found out there had been a change of government, Allieu's thoughts turned to her family, especially her son who was 10 when she left. She decided to return to Sierra Leone. 'People saw me, said I was dead and came to feel me to check I was alive,' she says. 'When I saw my son and my family, it was good, I was happy.' Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion When word spread she was back, an activist got in touch and introduced her to Yasmin Jusu-sheriff, a human rights lawyer and former vice-chair of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, who was instrumental, among others, in bringing the case to Ecowas. The ruling on 8 July comes at a critical time in the fight against FGM in Sierra Leone. A few weeks before, on 21 June, the president of Sierra Leone, Julius Maada Bio, became chair of Ecowas, marking a historic moment as the first Sierra Leonean head of state to hold the position. He has yet to acknowledge the ruling publicly. Meanwhile, celebrations at the passing of the Child Rights Act 2025 in Sierra Leone in early July were tempered when parliament issued a press release on 7 July stating that the act, which prohibits all forms of violence against children, including physical and mental abuse, 'does not contain any provision imposing a fine, penalty, or punishment specifically addressing FGM'. The act is awaiting presidential assent. But as there is no mention of banning FGM, Josephine Kamara, advocacy and communications manager at Purposeful, says: 'If we can't name a violent action for what it is, and boldly call it out, we cannot begin to end it.' 'Politically and internationally, the situation just does not look good,' says Jusu-sheriff. 'Since the president is chairman of Ecowas, and in light of the Ecowas decision, let him send the act back to parliament and let them rethink it.' She adds: 'The matter is in his hands, and his hands alone. He holds the sword of Damocles over himself. This is the thing that will determine whether he will go down as the greatest, most human rights-loving president of all time, or not.' Allieu, who is bringing a separate case in Sierra Leone against the woman who mutilated her, is due to be awarded $30,000 (£22,000) in compensation as part of the Ecowas ruling. She says she can't find work because of the public stigma surrounding her case, but wants to use the money to further her education and become an activist. 'I really want the government to look into this, especially the sitting president with his power as head of state,' she says. 'I want him to honour the ruling of the Ecowas court and [make it so] the Child Rights Act can help eradicate FGM.'
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Daughter of woman murdered by man who US deported speaks out: ‘He was denied due process'
The daughter of a woman murdered by a man from Laos who is among those controversially deported from the US to South Sudan has spoken out about her family's pain but also to decry the lack of rights afforded to those who were expelled to countries other than their own. Birte Pfleger lives in Los Angeles and was a history student at Cal State University in Long Beach when her parents came to visit her from their native Germany in 1994 and ended up shot by Thongxay Nilakout during a robbery while on a sightseeing trip. Pfleger's mother, Gisela, was killed and her father, Klaus, wounded. Nilakout, now 48, is Laotian and was among eight convicted criminals from countries including Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam and Myanmar who were deported to the conflict-torn African country, amid uproar over Donald Trump's extreme immigration policies. In an interview with the Guardian, Pfleger said: 'It's been 31 years living with the irreparable pain and permanent grief, so, on the one hand, I wanted him gone. On the other hand, I'm a historian and I have taught constitutional history. He was denied due process and that's a constitutional problem.' The government of South Sudan has not disclosed the men's exact whereabouts since arriving in the country earlier this month, after legal problems had caused them to be stuck in nearby Djibouti after legal wrangling, or provided any details about their future. A lawyer representing the men said 'their situation is fragile,' noting their relatives have not heard from the deportees since a US military plane flew them to Juba, South Sudan's capital, before midnight on 4 July. A police spokesperson in South Sudan, Maj Gen James Monday Enoka, indicated that the men may ultimately be moved on. 'They will be investigated, the truth will be established and if they are not South Sudanese they will be deported to their rightful countries,' Enoka said. But few details are forthcoming. The US Department of Homeland Security called the men 'sickos'. The deportations had been initially blocked by US district judge Brian Murphy, who had ruled that the group needed to receive notice and due process before being taken to South Sudan, including the opportunity to express fear of being harmed or tortured there. But in a 7-2 ruling, the US supreme court paused Murphy's orders, clearing all obstacles preventing the Trump administration's plan. Just days after the ruling, the administration issued a memo suggesting officials would ramp up deportations to third countries with little notice and due process. The directive by Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said US officials may deport migrants to countries other than their own with as little as six hours' notice, even if those third party nations have not made assurances about their safety. Legal experts have objected. 'We are going to continue to fight the policy that conflicts with the statute, the regulations and with the constitution,' said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, an organization leading a class-action lawsuit against Ice. The UN human rights office denounced the action and urged the US to halt deportations to third-party countries. More than 250 Venezuelans have just been repatriated after being deported by the US without due process to a brutal anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador. Previously a multinational group of migrants was sent to Panama from the US and ended up trapped in a hotel then caged in a jungle setting, while more recently another group was deported to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, which critics there described as 'human trafficking' and lamented the prospect of more to follow. 'International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to serious human rights violations such as torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,' the UN said in a statement. Nilakout was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his murderous attack on Birte Pfleger's parents. In 2012, the US supreme court ruled that life without parole was unconstitutional for minors. After nearly 30 years behind bars, Nilakout became eligible for parole in 2022, despite a challenge from Pfleger, and was released from a California state prison the following year. He was picked up in Trump's mass deportation dragnet after the Republican president returned to the White House in January. Pfleger, now a history professor at Cal State University in Los Angeles, said she felt conflicted when she found out that Nilokaut had been deported to South Sudan. 'The moral dilemma here is that he should have never been let out of prison. But once he was released from prison, Ice should have been able to deport him, or he should have self-deported to Laos. But of course, what happened is he was put on a Gulfstream jet headed for South Sudan that violated a federal judge's orders to give notice. He and the others were denied due process,' she said. Pfleger continued: 'I am not involved in victims' rights organizations or anything like that. I have not gone to law school, but I have read the constitution and the history of it. And I think that due process rights are fundamental. And when they're no longer fundamental, we all have a problem.' The pain for Pfleger and her sister of losing their mother and their father being wounded having watched his wife get shot and being unable to help her persists, and the family had not expected Nilakout to be freed, she said, adding that her father, Klaus, is 93 and frail. My mom was everything to him,' she said. In a statement, the government of South Sudan cited 'the longstanding support extended by the United States' during its fight for independence and its post-independence development, for the latest cooperation. Between 2013 and 2016, a civil war killed 400,000 people in South Sudan. Earlier this year, the threat of a new war breaking out pushed the US embassy to issue a level 4 warning to Americans not to go to South Sudan because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict there. The German government recently warned, via the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, posting on social media that: 'After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is again on the brink of civil war.' The UN commission on human rights in South Sudan warned 'We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won public progress.' The UN added that a humanitarian crisis was looming with half the country already suffering food insecurity and two million internally displaced, with a further two million having fled the violence to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries.
