Sierra Leone's immigration chief fired after footage showed him with fugitive drug lord
Sierra Leone's president has fired the head of the immigration service days after footage was published showing him receiving a birthday gift from a fugitive Dutch drug kingpin.
The footage of Alusine Kanneh being handed a present by Johannes Leijdekkers – which has not been independently verified by the Guardian – was published by the investigative outlet Follow the Money and the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Friday.
The dinner is understood to have been held in an upmarket restaurant in Freetown, the country's capital.
Leijdekkers, 33, one of Europe's most wanted fugitives, was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison for drug smuggling by a Rotterdam court last June.
Kanneh was relieved of his duties the same day the reports were published but authorities in Freetown did not disclose the reason for his dismissal in a short statement by the presidential secretary.
For months speculation has swirled in the west African country that Kanneh and other members of the political elite had been helping Leijdekkers accumulate influence.
In February, a Guardian investigation established that Leijdekkers had been in the country since at least 2022 and had spent time at nightclubs and house parties.
A Reuters report in January placed him at a New Year's Day church service in President Julius Maada Bio's home town, sitting near the leader's daughter Agnes Bio, with whom he is believed to be in a relationship.
Days before that event, the immigration ministry introduced an investment-for-citizenship scheme under Kanneh's direction. Called Go-for-Gold, it offers a fast-track path to citizenship in 90 days for investors willing to pay $140,000 (£108,000). The traditional route to naturalisation involves eight years' residence.
Leijdekkers has a passport from Turkey, where he previously resided after going on the run from Dutch authorities. It is unknown if he has Sierra Leonean documentation too.
At a press conference in January, Sierra Leonean police said their own investigations had established that the church service footage depicted a man called Omar Sheriff. The country's police chief, William Fayia Sellu, declined to say at the time whether Sheriff and Leijdekkers were the same person.
Leijdekkers, who has assumed numerous aliases and nicknames, including Bolle Jos, was sentenced in absentia by a Rotterdam court last June to 24 years in prison for six drug transports totalling 7,000kg of cocaine, an armed robbery in Finland, and ordering the murder of an associate. He received a 10-year sentence in absentia by a court in Belgium in September over an attempt to smuggle drugs via the port of Antwerp in 2020.
Organised criminal groups have long used west African countries as a staging post for cocaine shipments from South America to Europe. The revelations about Leijdekkers come at an awkward moment for the authorities in Sierra Leone, which earlier this year recalled its ambassador from neighbouring Guinea after seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine were found in an embassy vehicle.
Dutch officials are still in discussions to extradite Leijdekkers, even though Sierra Leone does not have a formal extradition treaty with the Netherlands.
Sources in Freetown told the Guardian that Sierra Leone's government wanted to swap Leijdekkers for the Netherlands-based influential social commentator Abdul Will Kamara, AKA Adebayor, whose videos and long WhatsApp voice notes are popular among older people and those in rural areas.
Officials and ruling party supporters claim he incited deadly riots in 2022 in the capital and north of the country that left at least 26 civilians and six police officers dead.
In February, the information minister, Chernor Bah, said two attempts to extradite Adebayor had been unsuccessful. Bah was approached for comment on Monday.
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New Statesman
12 hours ago
- New Statesman
James Cleverly's shadow Tory leadership bid heats up
Photo byIs James Cleverly making another bid for the Conservative leadership? That's certainly how his speech at the Conservative Environment Network's Sam Barker Memorial Lecture on Wednesday night, in which he talked about 'rejecting both the Luddite left and the Luddite right', has been interpreted by Tory watchers. 'James Cleverly takes on Kemi Badenoch over decision to ditch net zero targets', read the Guardian headline. The Mail went with 'Kemi Badenoch faces Net Zero revolt as Tory big beast James Cleverly warns her to ignore climate change 'luddites''. The Telegraph, meanwhile, wrote it up as 'Former home secretary directly challenges Kemi Badenoch on net zero'. Cleverly himself has pushed back hard against the suggestion that his speech was in any way a rebuke of the current Tory leader, calling it 'fake news'. In a punchy Twitter thread, he pointed out that he never once mentioned the term 'net zero' in the speech (he also didn't mention Badenoch), and claimed protecting the environment ('like Margaret Thatcher once did') was 'in our economic and security interests'. Indeed, the text of the speech itself was far more about foreign policy (in particular the threat of Chinese dominance and mass migration caused by climate change) than it was about carbon emission targets. But the fractured state of the Conservative party is such that any intervention from a high-profile figure will be read as a tacit (or not so tacit) criticism of Kemi Badenoch's leadership and attempt at positioning to be her successor. That applies to Cleverly's environmental speech just as much as it applies to Robert Jenrick's viral videos on confronting fare-dodgers on the London Underground. It is the latter who has drawn the most attention in the seven months since Badenoch became leader. Partly, this is due to the fact that Jenrick was the runner-up, after a mix-up over vote-swapping meant Cleverly was knocked up before he had the chance to face the membership. Partly it's down to Jenrick's place in the shadow cabinet, whereas Cleverly has taken a break from frontbench politics. And partly it's to do with visibility – once dubbed 'a very ambitious blur' by Andrew Marr, no one watching Jenrick's frenetic activity in opposition has any doubt that he still covets the top job. Jenrick's stance, in the leadership contest and since, has been to shift rightwards and attempt to neutralise Nigel Farage by moving onto Reform's turf. But as the Tory party grapples with having to rebuild from an election calamity that saw it lose hundreds of seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Cleverly's name is increasingly being whispered by moderate Conservatives anxious about both the polls and the Reform-wards tilt. Cleverly's positioning as the 'One Nation' candidate in the 2024 leadership race came as something of a surprise to those close to him. A Brexit-backer first appointed to the role of foreign secretary by Liz Truss, he assumed the role of the moderates' champion almost by default, with both Jenrick and Badenoch running from the right. One friend in the party described his politics as 'to the left of Kemi, but not by much – his heroes are Thatcher and Regan', and called the One Nation label 'grossly simplistic'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But it is true that Cleverly saw himself as a unifier, someone who could bring different strands of the party together after its worst ever defeat and who understood that parties can only win by building a broad coalition of support. Another ally said his pitch to the membership, had he got to that stage, would have been to argue there is more mileage in listening to voters who abandoned the Conservatives over concerns about competence and values rather than chasing people who have found a new home in Reform. At the time, the received consensus was that Tory members always pick the more right-wing candidate of the pair offered to them and would do again. That consensus is the reason Jenrick is the now bookies' favourite, seen as the likeliest successor to Badenoch. But something interesting may be happening to the Conservative membership. Tory members are notoriously hard to poll (we don't even know how many there are), but Reform now claims to have over 200,000. A substantial chunk of these are understood to be former Tories who have quit the party since the 2024 election. That will inevitably have shifted the internal dynamics among those who remain, perhaps to the extent that more moderate members – those repelled by Farage who find Jenrick's talk of some kind of pact with Reform anathema – now hold the majority. A Cleverly candidacy now, I was told by an active member in one local association, would have a much higher chance of success than in autumn 2024. (Others have different perspectives.) The parliamentary party too is more nuanced than current narratives about the Tories' rightwards tilt suggest. In the penultimate round of MP voting, the two candidates coded as more centrist – Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – received 59 votes together; Jenrick and Badenoch got a combined 61. (On the environmental front, the Conservative climate caucus in parliament boasts 49 MPs.) A former Tory MP referred to the remaining One Nation cohort as the 'sleeping giant' of the Conservative party – a group that, were it to band together, could be a serious force in parliament. It will not have escaped their notice that the Tories are spiralling situation under Badenoch. A poll last month put the Conservatives fourth – below Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems – on a popularity level not seen since 2019 and Theresa May's Brexit deadlock. One Tory insider called the figures 'extinction-level'. Some Conservatives are getting desperate: rumours are swirling of various plots to oust Badenoch, possibly even before her year's grace period as leader is up in November. A Survation poll last week suggested 60 per cent of 2024 Conservative voters thought bringing back Boris Johnson would be better than keeping Badenoch as leader. Against this backdrop, any signs of dissent are being seized upon. Earlier this week, eight Tory MPs (including Father of the House Edward Leigh) wrote to Keir Starmer saying they would support him if the government were to move to recognise a Palestinian state – another move interpreted as an attempt to 'defy' Badenoch. Cleverly gave his Conservative Environment Network speech the following day, and was similarly read as a rebuke. The rumour persists that a coup is just around the corner, and every intervention plays into that narrative. Any hint of a Cleverly revival, however, should be tempered with a few caveats, both personal and political. His wife Susie, who is herself much loved in Conservative circles, came through a difficult battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer two years ago, which would caution anyone considering what's widely considered one of the worst jobs in politics to think twice. 'I'm not sure he's really been able to be in that headspace,' was the assessment of one friend. More generally, while frustration with Badenoch is growing, even her fiercest critics acknowledge that changing leaders yet again would do 'irreparable damage' to the already wounded party and be 'a colossal act of self-harm'. And that's without taking into considering how difficult it is to rebuild so soon after an election. One former MP who lost their seat in July put it bluntly: 'She's doing an impossible job badly.' Even Jenrick, for all his obvious ambition, doesn't want a leadership challenge now. His video efforts are aimed firmly at attacking Labour figures (Keir Starmer, Richard Hermer, Sadiq Khan). Yes they can be viewed obliquely as presenting an alternative pattern for leadership, but it isn't Badenoch in the direct crosshairs. Axing a leader so soon would fuel Labour and Reform narratives that the Tory party is too dysfunctional to be taken seriously, and the new leader – whether Jenrick, Cleverly, or someone else entirely – would be facing the exact same challenges and the same uphill battle. Boris Johnson has in past years likened himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who 'returned to his plough' after leading the state at a time of crisis and was then called back to assume power a second time. But years before that the then London mayor described his ambition to be PM with the line that 'Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum – which it won't – it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at.' A passionate rugby fan himself, this was the comparison made by several people close to Cleverly about his leadership hopes. That doesn't mean that the former home secretary was clueless as to how his speech might be interpreted. One of the major criticisms of Badenoch is not merely the direction in which she seems to be taking the Tories, but the fact this seems to be down to 'drift' as opposed to a conscious and deliberate strategy, leaving the party undefined and chaotic. 'The first stage of surviving is defining yourself,' one centrist Tory put it. They then quoted the line from the musical Les Miserables: 'It is time for us all to decide who we are.' Cleverly's bold defence of a Conservative environmental agenda – one that takes in both economic and national security concerns – should be read, they argued, as a reminder that there is another way of doing leadership, one that isn't afraid of taking stances that come with trade-offs, 'and someone has to be a flag-bearer for it'. Finally, there is the personality issue. While Badenoch's management style veers towards abrasive and her media appearances lack cut-through, Cleverly is respected from all wings of the party as a strong media performer who can bring people together. 'James was pointing out that charismatic leaders are available,' one Tory insider quipped. 'He can't help being likeable and human.' What the speech does reveal is how far perceptions of the Tory party have travelled in a very short space of time. When Badenoch announced the party's U-turn on net zero in March, Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, noted the decision 'undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments'. Six years ago Theresa May was signing the UK's net zero commitments into law; three and a half years ago Boris Johnson was championing Britain's climate leadership at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Back then, Cleverly's insistence that 'the idea that we must choose between a strong economy and protecting our environment is outdated and wrong' or support of climate commitments as 'defences against energy shocks and geopolitical instability' would not have been considered remotely controversial in Tory circles. Now, it's interpreted as a leadership challenge. And until the situation improves the Conservatives, so will everything else. [See also: Kemi Badenoch is in a hole – and she keeps digging] Related
The Independent
14 hours ago
- The Independent
What the Trump administration doesn't get about the ‘fake news' media
It was the summer of 1997 – a few months after a notable marathon libel case in which our crime correspondent, Duncan Campbell, had successfully defended his exposé of suspected corruption at Stoke Newington police station. Around four in the morning, I was jolted awake by a burly policeman in the bedroom. We were living in Highbury, North London, and I soon worked out that the house was swarming with police officers, along with their dogs. It turned out that a burglar had smashed through our front door in the middle of the night. The police eventually left and, as the last one disappeared up the path, he said to me: 'You're the editor of the Guardian, aren't you? You might like to know we're all based at Stoke Newington nick.' My heart may have missed a beat. Duncan had, after all, just vanquished five of his colleagues in court. But I was wrong: as the copper tugged his dog into the van and drove off, he said: 'Tell your Mr Campbell to keep digging.' That was the thing some people struggled to understand about the way Duncan – who died recently – worked. You could expose bent cops and be in favour of the police. You could be dealing with the Met Commissioner as chair of the Crime Reporters' Association in the morning and have a drink with a bank robber in the evening. Of course, with Duncan, it went further, as anyone who attended one of his publishing parties would know. There would be chief constables, great train robbers, judges, barristers, old lags and old hacks. The art was to work out which was which. Everyone trusted Duncan – except Mr Justice French in the Stoke Newington trial. In the previous 33 months, the police union, the Police Federation, had fought and won no fewer than 95 libel cases in a row. They were called 'garage actions' because coppers would use the guaranteed settlement money for home extensions. If Mr Justice French had had his way, the score would have been 96-0. But Duncan went into the witness box to give evidence. The jury, like everyone else, trusted Duncan. It cost him a huge amount in sleepless nights and anxiety, but the stand he took did his colleagues in the British press a considerable favour. It was now much safer to write about police corruption; it was a game-changer. Duncan died within a week of another reporter, Andrew Norfolk, whose reporting on child-grooming gangs for The Times was similarly widely lauded for its courage and integrity. At a time when trust in the media is underwater, it's heartening to be able to celebrate the best among us. Duncan wrote about the world of crime like no other reporter could even dream of. How he did it, no one could quite explain. Nick Reynolds, son of the great train robber Bruce, told me: 'You know, most villains hate journalists. I mean, the whole point of it is to try and do something and get away with it and be discreet. But somehow, through his integrity, approach, sense of humour, diligence, and demeanour, he managed to get the Golden Pass to the underworld, and they all respected him. ' Freddie Foreman, who killed people for the Krays, loved him. Mad Frankie Fraser, who extracted the teeth of his victims with pliers, adored him. But so did lawyers and police officers who cared about the truth. He was very proud of the website he created, Justice on Trial, which ran until 2017 and covered numerous miscarriages of justice. He took an interest in so many. The Miami Five, the Craigavon Two, the Shrewsbury 24, the Birmingham Six, the Cardiff Three. The Torso murders, George Davis, and Gary McKinnon. Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who had been sentenced to life for killing her abusive husband. They and many, many more had reason to thank Duncan for swimming against the tide and taking the time and trouble to investigate their cases. But most of the time, when people think about journalists, they don't think of the Campbells and Norfolks. They don't think of the risks that reporters take in covering events in the Middle East, or Ukraine, or even, as a new Amnesty International report highlights, in Northern Ireland, where there have been 71 attacks or threats against journalists since 2019. When journalists are not being attacked physically, they are under attack verbally. It is now routine White House policy to denigrate, mock, discredit and delegitimise the so-called legacy media. The objective seems plain: if Donald Trump can persuade you that the New York Times is fake news, you might not believe them the next time they investigate his affairs. The White House press secretary is 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt, who believes that Donald Trump won in 2020 and who used her very first briefing to (falsely) claim that $50m a year of US taxpayers' money was going to fund condoms in Gaza. It's unclear whether she has any journalistic experience, although she did once apply for an internship at Fox News. This week, she took it upon herself to lecture the BBC on editorial standards, tearing into a report about deaths in Gaza and claiming the BBC had been forced to retract its claims. This was fantasy stuff, as the BBC's Ros Atkins demonstrated in a devastating three-minute film the following day. But, as the old cliche goes, Truth often takes some time to get its boots on. GB News presenters, for example, chortled with glee at the 'humiliation' of the BBC seemingly without lifting a finger to interrogate whether any of Leavitt's claims were actually, you know, true. Atkins works for BBC Verify, which GB News owner, Paul Marshall, incidentally wants closed down. Truth, lies – who cares? So journalism is struggling today. Which is why it's worth pausing to remember and celebrate the best rather than dwell on the worst. We said farewell to Duncan on Tuesday. He himself was a veteran of reporting on the funerals of the villains he'd known, including gangland figures such as Charlie Richardson and Ronnie Kray, as well as the Great Train Robbers, Buster Edwards and Ronnie Biggs. Though with one, Peter Scott, a noted jewel thief who died bankrupt and penniless in 2013, it was Duncan himself who ended up organising his funeral at Islington cemetery. He arranged it at 10.15 in the morning: 'There was a discount for the early hour,' he recalled. The undertaker demanded the deceased's occupation. 'Cat burglar,' said Duncan, who also chose the music for the ceremony. The coffin disappeared to the old gospel song, Steal Away. It helps to have a sense of humour if your life is spent covering crime. Not to mention today's White House.
NBC News
20 hours ago
- NBC News
U.S. hits International Criminal Court judges with sanctions over investigation into Israel
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is slapping sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court over the tribunal's investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and in the West Bank. The State Department said Thursday that it would freeze any assets that the ICC judges, who come from Benin, Peru, Slovenia and Uganda, have in U.S. jurisdictions. The move is just the latest step that the administration has taken to punish the ICC and its officials for investigations undertaken against Israel and the United States. 'As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC's illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. 'The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,' Rubio said. 'This dangerous assertion and abuse of power infringes upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel.' In February, The Hague-based court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was placed on Washington's list of 'Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons,' barring him from doing business with Americans and placing restrictions on his entry into the U.S. Khan stepped aside last month pending an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct. Within minutes of the administration's announcement, the court condemned its actions. 'These measures are a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution,' ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah said in a statement. The new sanctions target ICC Judge Reine Alapini-Gansou, who is from the West African country of Benin and was part of the pre-trial chamber of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year. She also served on the bench that originally greenlit the investigation into alleged Israeli crimes in the Palestinian territories in 2021. The 69-year-old was also part of the panel of judges who issued the arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023. Last year, a court in Moscow issued a warrant for her arrest. From Slovenia, Beti Hohler was elected as a judge in 2023. She previously worked in the prosecutor's office at the court, leading Israel to object to her participation in the proceedings involving Israeli officials. Hohler said in a statement last year that she had never worked on the Palestinian territories investigation during her eight years as a prosecutor. Bouth Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, from Peru, and Solomy Balungi Bossa, from Uganda, are appeals judges at the ICC. Each woman has worked on cases involving Israel. Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a member of and neither recognizes the legitimacy of the court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes over his military response in Gaza after the Hamas attack against Israel in October 2023. Israel strongly denies the allegations. During his first term in office, Trump targeted the ICC with sanctions, voicing displeasure with investigations into Israel and complaints about alleged war crimes said to have been committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Those sanctions were rescinded by President Joe Biden 's administration in early 2021. Rubio said the U.S. would continue to take action to protect its and Israel's interests at the court. 'The United States will take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our sovereignty, that of Israel, and any other U.S. ally from illegitimate actions by the ICC,' he said. Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the Trump administration's sanctions 'aim to deter the ICC from seeking accountability amid grave crimes committed in Israel and Palestine, and as Israeli atrocities mount in Gaza, including with U.S. complicity.' 'U.S. sanctions on ICC judges are a flagrant attack on the rule of law at the same time as President Trump is working to undercut it at home,' Evenson said in a statement. 'Sanctions are meant to put a stop to human rights violations, not to punish those seeking justice for the worst crimes.'
