In post-Roe America, women who suffer miscarriages face threat of jail

Interview


Since the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark “Roe v. Wade” ruling in 2022, more and more American women have faced prosecution for miscarriages, accused of carrying out illegal abortions. These prosecutions are based on a legal concept known as “fetal personhood”, which means that fetuses, and in some cases even fertilised eggs, now have the same legal rights as a person – making any pregnancy loss potentially criminal.

Issued on: 11/04/2025
By: Barbara GABEL

In the US state of Georgia, a young woman was arrested and charged for concealing the death of a person and abandoning a body after a miscarriage. The charges were later dropped, but the case has sparked outrage among pro-choice activists. © Studio graphique France Médias Monde


Selena Maria Chandler-Scott thought she was getting help. Instead, she ended up in a prison cell. At the end of March, 24-year-old Chandler-Scott was found unconscious and covered in blood at an apartment in the southwestern state of Georgia. Alone, and 19 weeks into her pregnancy, she had just miscarried. Emergency responders rushed to her aid, but the story soon took an unexpected turn. After a witness said they had seen Chandler-Scott place “the fetus in a bag and placed that bag in a dumpster outside”, police recovered the remains and Chandler-Scott was charged with concealing the death of another person and abandoning a dead body, meaning she faced a possible jail term of 13 years.

“What her arrest was for was the fact that after she had the miscarriage, she put the remains in a dumpster,” explained Jill Wieber Lens, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert on stillbirth and pregnancy loss. “She did that because, what are you supposed to do, right? She wasn't sure what to do, so that's probably why she did it.”

After spending a few days in jail, Chandler-Scott was released. And on April 5, the Tift County District Attorney Patric Warren dropped the charges, saying the “heartbreaking” case was not legally sustainable. “Our decision must be grounded in law, not emotion or speculation,” he said.

Surge in prosecutions

But the case had already sparked shock and outrage on social media. In a video on Instagram, Jessica Valenti, a feminist writer and author of the newsletter “Abortion, Every Day”, denounced the lack of media coverage and what she said was the “normalisation” of cases similar to Chandler-Scott’s. “This is such a huge part of their strategy, to make us numb to their extremism, to get us accustomed to the horror stories, so as more and more of those stories come out, we’re not reacting with outrage, we’re not pushing public backlash, we’re just sort of letting them roll off our backs.”


The Chandler-Scott case, which occurred in a state that carries a six-week abortion ban, is far from the only one. Since Roe v. Wade was torn up in June, 2022 – ending the federal right for women to abort – the number of legal actions against pregnant women or women who have experienced a pregnancy loss have surged.

According to Pregnancy Justice, a reproductive rights group, at least 210 women were prosecuted the year after Roe v. Wade ended – the biggest number since the group began collecting such data. As many as 22 of the women were charged after they had experienced a pregnancy loss (i.e., through miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of a prematurely born baby).

In 2023, Brittany Watts, a young Black woman from Ohio, was prosecuted over a miscarriage that occurred 22 weeks into her pregnancy. Just before the miscarriage, she had experienced sharp abdominal pains and had sought treatment in hospital where she was told the fetus’s heartbeat could be detected but that it was non-viable. Watts was shocked by the news, and decided to return home as the pain subsided.

In the middle of the night, Watts felt an urgent need to go to the toilet. When she did, the fetus came. A still bleeding Watts returned to the hospital the next day, where hospital staff notified the police of the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus”. Police then found the fetus clogged in the toilet and charged Watts with “abuse of a corpse” – a felony that can lead to up to one year in prison and $2,500 in fines. An autopsy later showed that the fetus had died in utero and a grand jury declined to move forward with the case. Watts has since filed a lawsuit accusing the hospital and police of conspiring to fabricate the charges that were brought against her.

In a similar incident in 2023, 23-year-old Amari Marsh, also a Black woman, was arrested and detained for a total of 22 days after having lost her pregnancy when she went to the toilet. She was charged with “homicide by child abuse” and faced a life sentence for the crime. Although the charges were later dropped, she has been marked for life.

An embryo worth more than a woman?

At the core of this massive crackdown is the new legal concept of “fetal personhood” which designates fetuses, and in some cases even embryos and fertilised eggs, as entities that have the same rights and protections as a person.

According to the Guttmachter Institute, an international NGO that works to improve sexual health and promote reproductive rights, 27 laws in 14 US states now refer to this concept. Activists say prosecutors are increasingly using it to go after women, especially when a pregnancy has been lost under unclear circumstances.

“The message is brutal: an embryo, even a non-viable one, is worth more than a living woman,” said Alice Apostoly, co-founder and co-director of the institute. “They’re sanctifying unborn life as a way to reduce women to their reproductive roles.”

In the wake of the Chandler–Scott case, Democrats in Congress have stepped up their criticism of such prosecutions, with House of Representatives member Sara Jacobs writing on X: “We can't let fetal personhood become federal law.”

Even though the concept existed before 2022, expert say the overturning of Roe v. Wade has turbocharged its use. In the 19 US states that partially or fully ban abortion, every pregnancy loss can now potentially be treated as an illegal abortion. This has sparked growing concern for women, and the consequences it could have for them.

“There's increased suspicion in pregnancy loss after Dobbs [the decision that tore up Roe v. Wade],” Wieber Lens said. “Because now, every time there's a pregnancy loss, it's like, well, did you get abortion medication to cause that or was it really a pregnancy loss?”
Controlling women's bodies

There is also an inequality in the women being prosecuted. “Unfortunately a lot of law enforcement in the US will tend to suspect women of colour and women of lower income much more,” Wieber Lens said.

According to Pregnancy Justice’s report, more than 45 percent of the women prosecuted between 2022 and 2023 were either Black, Latina or Indigenous.

Some of these women have had their medical records shared with authorities without their consent. Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is supposed to protect the privacy of a person’s health information, such violations are rarely punished, and there are many exceptions. “We are seeing that healthcare providers are calling the police, disclosing medical information. We're not seeing the healthcare providers get in trouble, though,” Lens said. ”So I don't think the privacy laws are providing that much of a deterrent right now.”

According to the National Library of Medicine, an estimated 26 percent of US pregnancies end in miscarriages. Most of them occur in the first trimester, and sometimes even before the woman knows she is pregnant. “Miscarriage has been happening forever, right?,” Lens said. ”A person will just bleed in the pad and they will miscarry that way. Or, they have a miscarriage on the toilet and maybe they flush. This happens all the time. Am I now going to face possible criminal charges or criminal arrest if I flush the toilet? That, I think, is the really scary part.”

Apostoly said that this effort to control female bodies is part of a broader societal project "dreamed up and wanted" by the American far right.

"In this reactionary ideology, it’s about forcing a brutal return to the past.”

This article was adapted from the original in French by Louise Nordstrom.

SPACE/COSMOS

Scientists detect strong evidence of life on an alien planet


Scientists have detected potential evidence of life on K2-18b, a distant exoplanet. A Cambridge team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope found molecules in its atmosphere that, on Earth, are produced by living organisms. This marks the second and more promising detection of such chemicals.


Issued on: 18/04/2025 
FRANCE 24

The exoplanet K2-18b, which some astronomers think is the best known chance of life beyond our solar system. © M. Kornmesser, AFP


Astronomers have found possible chemical signs of life on a distant planet outside our solar system, though they caution more work is needed to confirm their findings.

The research, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, detected evidence of compounds in the exoplanet's atmosphere that on Earth are only produced by living organisms and contended it's the strongest potential signal yet of life.

Independent scientists described the findings as interesting, but not nearly enough to show the existence of life on another planet.

“It is the strongest sign to date of any possibility of biological activity outside the solar system," Cambridge astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan said during a livestream on Thursday.
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01:50© FRANCE 24



By analysing data from the James Webb Space Telescope, the researchers found evidence of dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide in the atmosphere of the planet known as K2-18b. The planet is 124 light-years away; one light-year is equivalent to nearly 6 trillion miles.

On Earth, those two compounds are produced primarily by microbial life, such as marine phytoplankton.

The planet is more than double Earth’s size and more than 8 times more massive. It's in the so-called habitable zone of its star. The study appeared in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Madhusudhan stressed that further research is needed to rule out any errors or the possibility of other processes, besides living organisms, that could produce the compounds.

David Clements, an astrophysicist at Imperial College London, said atmospheres on other planets are complex and difficult to understand, especially with the limited information available from a planet so far away.

“This is really interesting stuff and, while it does not yet represent a clear detection of dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, it is a step in the right direction,” he said in comments released by the Science Media Center in London.

More than 5,500 planets orbiting other stars have been confirmed so far. Thousands more are in the running out of the billions out there in our Milky Way galaxy alone.

Launched in 2021, Webb is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space.

Where are all the aliens?: Fermi’s Paradox explained


By AFP
April 17, 2025


"Where is everybody?": This question, about the lack of aliens in the vast universe, is called Fermi's paradox - Copyright NASA/AFP/File HO

Daniel Lawler

Astronomers raised hopes that humanity might not be alone in the universe by announcing on Thursday they have detected the most promising hints yet of life on a distant planet.

But given the age and vastness of the universe, a different question has long puzzled some scientists: why haven’t we already come in contact with aliens?

“Where is everybody?” Enrico Fermi asked fellow famous physicists including Edward Teller over lunch in 1950.

This quandary was named Fermi’s Paradox.

“It’s a numbers game,” Jason Wright, the director of the extraterrestrial intelligence centre at Pennsylvania State University, told AFP.

The Milky Way is around 10 billion years old and is home to more than 100 billion stars.

This suggests there is likely a mind-boggling number of potentially habitable planets in our home galaxy alone.

That could include K2-18b, where astronomers said Thursday they have detected signs of a chemical that is only produced by microbial life on Earth.

Wright said Fermi’s Paradox essentially suggests that — given enough time — “every alien species will eventually have their own Elon Musk who will go out and settle the next star over”.

That we have not yet heard from aliens is known as “the mystery of the great silence”.

– So what are the theories? –

At least 75 speculative solutions to Fermi’s Paradox have been proposed so far, according to a 2015 book, though Wright guessed more have been added since.

First, it is possible that humanity has not yet detected alien life because there isn’t any — we are truly alone.

Many scientists feel this is unlikely.

Some 87 percent of over 1,000 scientists in relevant fields surveyed in Nature Astronomy earlier this year agreed there is at least a basic form of extraterrestrial life.

More than 67 percent agreed that intelligent aliens are out there.

Of course, it is also possible that aliens are already here and we have not noticed — or that it has been covered up.

Or interstellar space could just be too difficult to traverse, the distances too vast, the resources needed too great.

– What if there is a ‘great filter’? –

Another theory is that there is some kind of “great filter” that prevents life — or intelligent life — from occurring in the first place.

Or perhaps there is some kind of barrier that stops civilisations from advancing beyond a certain point.

For example, once civilisations develop the technology to travel through space, they might tend to destroy themselves with something like nuclear weapons.

Or maybe they burn through their planet’s natural resources, or make their climate unliveable.

Some of these theories seem to be influenced by fears for human civilisation — the one example we have of intelligent life.

But Wright felt this was unlikely because any such barrier would have to be the same across the whole universe.

It would also have to make the species go totally extinct every time, otherwise they would eventually bounce back and try again at space travel.

– Are we in a zoo or planetarium? –

There are even more galaxy-brained ideas.

Under the “zoo” hypothesis, technologically advanced aliens would be leaving humans alone to observe us from afar, like animals in a zoo.

The “planetarium” hypothesis posits that aliens could be creating an illusion that makes space seem empty to us, keeping us in the dark.

– …or a ‘dark forest’? –

This theory got its name from the second book in Chinese author Cixin Liu’s science-fiction series “The Three-Body Problem”.

It posits that the universe is a “dark forest” in which no one wants to reveal their presence lest they be destroyed by others.

There are other hypotheses that aliens prefer to “transcend” to another plane of existence — which some have compared to virtual reality — so don’t bother with interstellar travel.

– Why would they all be the same? –

But there is a big problem with many of these “so-called solutions,” Wright said.

They tend to assume that all the hypothetical kinds of aliens across the universe would all behave in the same way — forever.

This has been dubbed the “monocultural fallacy”.

Wright, who has used SETI telescopes to search for radio signals or lasers from the stars, also pushed back against the idea that humanity would necessarily have already picked up on any alien signal.

Aliens could be sending out messages using all sorts of unknown technology, so maybe the galaxy is not as silent as we think, he said.

“Those of us looking for life in the universe generally don’t think of the Fermi paradox or the great silence as such a big problem.”

Putin praises Musk, compares him to Soviet space hero

By AFP
April 16, 2025


Elon Musk (R) has become an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump (L) - Copyright AFP/File Jim WATSON

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Elon Musk on Wednesday, telling university students he was a pioneer comparable to legendary Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev.

The comments came as Russia and the United States forged closer ties under President Donald Trump’s administration, of which billionaire SpaceX founder Musk is a key figure.

“You know, there’s a man — he lives in the States — Musk, who, you could say, raves about Mars,” Putin told students on a visit to Bauman University, a Moscow college that specialises in science and engineering.

“These are the kind of people who don’t often appear in the human population, charged-up with a certain idea.”

“If it seems incredible even today, such ideas often come to fruition after a while. Just like the ideas of Korolev, our pioneers, came about in due time,” Putin added.

Korolev is considered the father of the Soviet space programme, developing the first satellite Sputnik as well as Vostok 1, which carried first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961.

Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s most powerful advisor, is the head of SpaceX — a US company that launches rockets for NASA and owns the Starlink satellite internet network.

Musk has been a frequent critic of Ukraine, which is currently battling a three-year Russian offensive.

The billionaire accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month of wanting a “forever war”, and in February said Kyiv had gone “too far” in the conflict.

Haiti’s independence ransom: Macron offers ‘truth’, Haitians want reparations

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said a joint commission of French and Haitian historians would investigate the legacy of the “heavy price” Haiti was made to pay for its independence, two centuries after France extracted a crippling indemnity from its former colony. His statement made no mention of Haitian demands for reparations for the ransom imposed on the first people in the modern world to free themselves from slavery.


Issued on: 17/04/2025 - 
By: Benjamin DODMAN

On April 17, 1825, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer was coerced into accepting an indemnity of 150 million gold francs in exchange for French recognition of his country's independence. © Wikimedia Creative Commons


It should have been a joint quest for liberty, equality, fraternity. Instead, it was a history of vengeance, plunder and enduring injustice.

French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the failure to “strike a common path” with Haiti on Thursday in a statement marking 200 years since the French King Charles X extracted a punitive indemnity from former slaves who had already won their freedom in battle.

Macron said the indemnity placed “a price on the freedom of a young Nation, which was thereby confronted, from its inception, with the unjust force of History.” Haitians’ successful struggle for freedom, he added, “was in harmony with the ideals of the French Revolution and should have enabled France and Haiti to strike a common path.”

His statement blamed a revanchist monarchy for dashing those hopes, appearing to exempt Napoleon – who previously tried, and failed, to crush the Haitian Revolution and reimpose slavery – from scrutiny.


The French president announced the establishment of a commission tasked with establishing the “truth” about the two countries’ fraught history, and notably the legacy of the “independence debt” imposed on Haiti. He said the commission, made up of French and Haitian historians, would propose recommendations to appease tensions and strengthen ties between the two countries.

But he made no mention of Haitians’ long-standing demands for reparations from the country that enslaved their ancestors and then trapped them in a vicious debt cycle, hobbling the Caribbean nation to this day.
Haiti’s ‘double debt’

The history of Haiti, previously known as the French colony of Saint-Domingue, is one of many firsts, both heroic and tragic, that turned an inspiring story into one of chronic poverty, violence and injustice.

Haiti is a product of the modern world’s first successful slave revolution, which kicked off in 1791, two years after the fall of the Bastille. The victorious Haitians proclaimed their independence in 1804, having defeated what was then the world’s mightiest military power in a feat that horrified slaveowners on both sides of the Atlantic.

“In a world that was still largely colonial and based on slavery, it was seen as an aberration that former slaves were able to free themselves,” says Frédéric Thomas, a Haiti expert at the Belgium-based research lab Centre tricontinental (CETRI). “No country wanted to recognise Haiti.”

Frozen out by France and other colonial powers, the fledgling nation was soon made to pay for its impudence.

Baron de Mackau hands Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer a French order demanding payment of 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognition of Haiti's independence. © BNF, Wikimedia Creative Commons

Just two decades after independence, France sent a powerful fleet to extract a huge indemnity from the young nation, in exchange for recognition of its independence. Its staggering amount – 150 million gold francs – was nearly twice what the US had paid in the Louisiana Purchase, which almost doubled the country’s nominal size.

France also ensured its former colony took out a massive loan from French banks to make the payments, saddling the young nation with a “double debt” that showered French lenders with cash while pushing Haitians into poverty.

Effectively a ransom, this “double debt” ensured Haiti would also become the world’s first and only country where the descendants of slaves were forced to compensate the descendants of their masters over multiple generations.

“France granted an independence that had already been hard-won in 1804, on condition that Haiti gave it privileged access to its wealth and compensated the former colonists,” adds Thomas, describing the ransom imposed on Haiti as “a way of rewriting history”.
A dangerous precedent

Rewriting the history of Haiti has long been standard practice in Saint-Domingue's former colonial power. As late as March 2000, former French president Jacques Chirac argued that, “Haiti was not, strictly speaking, a French colony.”

Saint-Domingue wasn’t just any French colony. Dubbed the “pearl of the Antilles”, it was the richest French possession in the Caribbean, its exports of sugar and coffee generating fabulous wealth for France’s slave owners and merchants.

“It was also France’s cruelest colony, where the French forcibly transported more captive Africans than in any of their other possessions in the Caribbean,” says Marlene Daut, a professor of French and African American studies at Yale University, who has written extensively about the Haitian Revolution and its legacy.

Conditions were so ghastly that the colony’s estimated population when the independence struggle began was just over half the total number of people France forcibly transported there in the first place.

“Even people the French sent to study the population came back remarking on the extraordinarily high death rate, saying that a captive African wouldn't live beyond two or three years, and that an African born there would only live to about 15 or 16,” adds Daut.

01:49© FRANCE 24

Historians suggest those conditions, and the need to constantly renew the supply of slave labour from Africa, ultimately planted the seeds of Haiti’s uniquely successful slave revolt.

“They were still Africans, people who remembered their homeland and could envision perhaps returning there,” says Daut. “They had no reason to think that the condition the French had put them into was permanent. It wasn't generation upon generation upon generation of slaves being conditioned to believe that this is how the world works.”

That in turn informed the way colonial powers and slaveowners on both sides of the Atlantic debated slavery, leading some to advocate an end to the slave trade not on moral grounds but in order to stave off future revolt.

“The effects of Haiti's revolution on the world were enormous in terms of the policies that emerged to contain and prevent this kind of Black freedom from happening elsewhere in the world,” adds Daut.
A history of interference

Economic subjugation was another way of preventing a repeat of the Haitian Revolution.

“When the indemnity agreement is struck, it merely shifts France’s colonial war with Haiti from being one that is primarily physical, about land control, to one that is economic,” says Daut. “Today, Haiti is still locked in economic conflict with world powers, with the United Nations, with all the entities that it supposedly owes money to – when it should be the other way round.”

The 1825 ransom marked the start of what Thomas described as “normalised interference” in Haiti’s affairs that continues to this day.

“Two hundred years on, we're still in the same system,” he adds. “International players are constantly interfering and making arrangements with the oligarchy, generally to the detriment of the population.”

By any measure, the cost to Haitians has been immense.

It took more than half a century for Haiti to pay the indemnity and another 50 years to pay off its debt, during which time education, health care and infrastructure were starved of funding.

A 2022 study by the New York Times found that Haitians paid about $560 million in today’s dollars in indemnity and debt payments. Had that money stayed in the Haitian economy, the newspaper wrote, “it would have added a staggering $21 billion to Haiti over time, even accounting for its notorious corruption and waste.”

Citing a recent study by a ground of international scholars, the NYT added: “If Haiti had not been forced to pay its former slave masters (...), the country’s per capita income in 2018 could have been almost six times as large” – roughly equivalent to that of its much wealthier neighbour, the Dominican Republic.
‘Fancy words by Macron will not be enough’

While the plight of Haiti’s population – stricken by gang violence, disease and natural calamities – is frequently addressed in the media, France’s role remains little known in the former colonial power.

Read moreFRANCE 24 exclusive report in Haiti: The Iron Grip of the Gangs

Daut, who previously taught in France, says the ransom imposed on Haiti was largely omitted from history books and classes.

“I teach a class called Black France, and I get students from Martinique and Guadeloupe who tell me that it’s widely known that if you want to learn about slavery and France's colonial history, you go to the United States because it’s actually taught there,” said the Yale professor, citing Caribbean islands that have remained French.

She noted that the US had done no better at teaching its own history of economic plunder of Haiti and its brutal military occupation of the country between 1915 and 1934, which was also tied to the Haitian debt that US lenders eventually took over from the French.

12:28© France 24

In both cases, recognising this past would mark an important first step towards reconciliation, says the Haitian-American scholar.

“The first step would be for France to apologise, to recognise their wrong and to offer reconciliation – and that means engaging in conversations with Haitians living in Haiti, with civil society and with whatever government comes into place,” she says, though cautioning that apologies will not suffice.

“It’s one thing to acknowledge the past and teach about it. It’s quite another thing to recognise the contemporary injustice this past still generates, and find ways to repair it,” she says. “Fancy words by Macron will not be enough unless there is going to be a corresponding action that is about repair.”

US and Canada-based scholars Sabine Cadeau, Michael Kwass and Mary Lewis made a similar case in an op-ed published by French daily Libération on Tuesday, calling for the establishment of a commission tasked with “considering the restitution of the 1825 debt as well as reparations for the slavery that preceded it”.
Changing the conversation

On January 1, the now-former president of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Leslie Voltaire, urged France to “repay the debt of independence and reparations for slavery”. His call echoed former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s 2002 claim that France should give his country $21 million in compensation – a stance Haiti observers say partly explains French support for the coup that removed Aristide two years later.

“French officials don't want to hear talk of ‘repayment’ or ‘restitution’; they prefer to talk of ‘aid’, because it shifts the relationship in their favour,” says Daut. “If you're helping someone, they don't get to make demands upon you. They need to be grateful. But when you think about restorative justice, it shifts it the other way. You need to ask people what that justice looks like for them. You need to have a relationship. You need to listen.”

Following Aristide’s compensation claim, a French government-appointed committee concluded that such a demand was “anachronistic”.

Ahead of a state visit to Haiti in May 2015, former French president François Hollande raised false hopes by acknowledging that France needed to “settle the debt”, before his entourage clarified that he was referring to a “moral” debt. Hollande was duly welcomed in Port-au-Prince with signs reading: “We'll take the money, not the morals."

"We'll take the money, not the morals": A poster welcoming former French president François Hollande in Port-au-Prince on May 12, 2015. © Alain Jocard, AFP

Daut suggests the discrepancy between French and Haitian views on compensation has much to do with the way the discussion is framed in former colonial powers.

“The situation is typically presented as, ‘Why should contemporary people apologise or be responsible for something others did?” she explains.

“If the conversation were framed differently, I think French people could understand why there should be an apology, why there should be reconciliation and some form of restitution,” Daut adds. “Because while contemporary French people might not be the perpetrators who have harmed Haitians, contemporary Haitians continue to be harmed by that past.”

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution - C.L.R. James

Thirsty giants: Big tech's data centres multiply in drought-hit Spain

REPORTERS © FRANCE 24


Issued on: 18/04/2025

In recent years, Spain has become a leading destination for tech giants to set up their data centres in Europe. Madrid even aims to become a "digital hub" on the continent, like Germany and the UK. But at what cost to the environment? To cool down their servers, data centres consume billions of litres of drinking water: a huge worry in Spain, one of the countries worst affected by drought in Europe. Our correspondent Armelle Exposito investigates the environmental impact of these data centres.

Large data centres are multiplying in Spain. From Amazon to Meta and Microsoft, the tech giants have more and more plans to set up there, driven in particular by artificial intelligence. By 2030, Madrid forecasts €58 billion of investment from the sector, turning it into the digital hub of southern Europe.

To attract these centres, Spain is vaunting its underwater cable connections with other continents and its thousands of hectares of available land. The country is also one of the main producers of renewable energy in Europe, giving it cheap green energy. These arguments are successfully attracting tech giants looking for new land.

But the centres nevertheless consume a huge quantity of electricity. By 2030, they will be using double the amount of electricity used today, to reach almost 3 percent of the world’s total. Data centres also need billions of litres of drinking water to cool down the servers. It’s impossible to know precisely how much, since the tech giants don't like to communicate that information. This is a huge concern in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by drought in Europe.

12:48 min
From the show

Türkiye: Solidarity with the teachers defending democracy


Eric Lee - LabourStart 
Thu, Apr 17, 2025

As you may know, the Erdoğan government in Türkiye has become increasingly authoritarian, jailing opponents and using violence and intimidation in its crackdown on dissent.

As part of this process, the Turkish government has now placed the entire Executive Board of the teachers' union under house arrest.

As the Education International (EI) reported: "Almost 2,000 people, including students, journalists, and lawyers, have also been detained. While independent unions in Türkiye have been facing considerable pressure from Erdoğan's increasingly authoritarian regime, this latest attack marks a significant escalation and highlights the distressing erosion of democracy and rights in the country."

At the request of EI and the education union Eğitim Sen, LabourStart has now launched a major campaign to put pressure on the Turkish government demanding a lifting of all restrictions on union rights and the dropping of charges against union leaders.

Please support the campaign by clicking here.


And some good news, for a change

Less than one month ago we launched a campaign in support of striking Alamo cinema workers in New York City. Over 3,000 of you supported the LabourStart campaign, sending a clear message to the employer. This week those workers won a resounding victory -- click here to learn more.

Thank you to everyone who supported this campaign.



Focus on Belarus

This week the attention of many trade unionists was focussed on Belarus, where the trade union movement was crushed and outlawed three years ago.

* In Norway, the jailed leader of the independent democratic unions of Belarus, Aliaksandr Yarashuk, was awarded the Arthur Svensson International Prize for 2025. Read more here.

* The LabourStart online campaign in support of the embattled unions of Belarus already has over 4,300 supporters. Will you join them? Can you share the campaign with your fellow union members? Click here!

* Want to learn more about the situation of workers and their unions in Belarus? Listen to our recent podcast interviews:

- Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation

- Lizaveta Merliak, exiled Belarusian trade unionist

Thank you for your support!

Eric Lee
LabourStart

Trial opens for students, journalists over Istanbul protests


By AFP
April 18, 2025


Students have played a key role in the protests that erupted after the Istanbul mayor's arrest on March 19 - Copyright AFP BASHAR TALEB

Fulya OZERKAN

A trial of nearly 200 people, among them students and journalists, arrested over Turkey’s biggest protests in more than a decade opened in Istanbul on Friday.

In the dock are 189 suspects who were rounded up in a government crackdown on the protests, which erupted following the March 19 detention and subsequent jailing of Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

As the trial opened, the Caglayan courthouse was packed with family members, journalists, university lecturers and lawmakers from the main opposition CHP party, an AFP correspondent said.

Most of the defendants were students, but among them were also eight Turkish journalists — including AFP photographer Yasin Akgul — who had been covering the biggest wave of street protests to grip Turkey since 2013.

The suspects are facing a number of charges, notably “taking part in illegal rallies and marches” and “failing to disperse despite police warnings,” court documents show.

If convicted, they could face between six months to four years behind bars, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.

Addressing the court on behalf of the journalists, lawyer Veysel Ok called for their acquittal on grounds they were reporting the news of the protests.

“They were there as journalists to cover the protests.. that’s what they are paid for,” he told the judge.

The judge rejected the acquittal request but agreed to separate their file from that of the students.

According to the indictment, their claim to be journalists “has not been counted” because the police did not establish that they were present for journalistic purposes, HRW said.

“We want the journalists to be acquitted” because they are being tried on the basis of false evidence, Erol Onderoglu, the Turkey representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) told AFP.

“Unfortunately, their prosecution is as arbitrary as their detention and arrest.”



– ‘Justice for our children’ –



For most of the youths, it was the first time they had joined a protest, as large-scale rallies have been largely non-existent since a government crackdown on the 2013 Gezi Park protests.

“We want justice for our children. They need to be at their desks in university, not in prison,” Avni Gundogdu, co-founder of The Parents’ Solidarity Network, told AFP outside the court.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said 819 people will be tried in 20 criminal investigations.

After reviewing nine indictments involving 650 defendants, HRW criticised the “rushed nature and mass scale of the trials,” saying the charges “lack evidence of criminal wrongdoing”.

“Given the glaring absence of evidence, it is hard not to conclude that the intended purpose of these rushed trials is to send a warning against exercising the rights to peaceful protest or free expression,” said HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director Hugh Williamson.

Istanbul’s jailed mayor is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s greatest political rival, and his arrest sparked protests that spread across the country, despite a ban on demonstrations in Turkey’s three largest cities.

Police cracked down using teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, and rounded up nearly 2,000 people, many during pre-dawn home raids.



– Social media posts –



HRW said 62 of those in court Friday were charged with carrying weapons or hiding their faces to avoid being identified “yet the only specifics provided… (was) an allegation that one protestor had a rock in his hand.”

Another 20 were charged with seeking to “incite a crime”. But HRW said that “overwhelmingly” involved social media posts declaring a wish “to join people in the streets and statements against the government, and not calls for violence or criminality”.

With many family members unable to enter the courthouse due to tight security, hundreds protested by the metal barriers outside, closely watched by an army of police, an AFP correspondent said.

“We are here for the trials of our friends who are in custody. We won’t leave them on their own,” a student called Ahmetcan Kaptan told AFP.

'We aren't scared': Meet the Turkish students defying Erdogan

Issued on: 18/04/2025 - 

06:56 min
From the show

The first trials of those arrested during recent anti-government protests in Turkey are expected to open this Friday. The rallies were sparked by the arrest one month ago of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, seen as a key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The student-led protests began on the campus of Istanbul University, where young people say they won't be scared off the streets. FRANCE 24's reporters Andrew Hilliar, Julie Dungelhoeff and Amar al-Hameedawi went to meet them.


Watch more    Which path for Turkey? Reporting on the students driving the protests

By:

Andrew HILLIAR

Julie DUNGELHOFF

Amar Al HAMEEDAWI

European weapons in Sudan (1/5): Bulgarian mortar shells in Darfur’s desert


From a Bulgarian factory to Sudanese militias, the FRANCE 24 Observers team reveals how European-made ammunition ended up on the Sudanese battlefield despite a European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. This five-part investigation starts in the middle of the desert, with a series of videos filmed last November by Sudanese fighters.


Issued on: 17/04/2025 
The FRANCE 24 Observers/
Elitsa GADEVA/
Quentin PESCHARD

After a long investigation, the France 24 Observers team was able to determine that the mortar shells that appear in footage filmed by Sudanese combatants with the Joint Forces on November 21, 2024 (at left) were manufactured in Bulgaria, a country in the European Union, by the company Dunarit (at right). © France Médias Monde graphic studio

The videos, posted to X and Facebook on November 21, 2024, show Sudanese militants in camouflage poring over piles of documents that include identity papers, photos and religious images. The militants are from the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups that are active in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. This group provides support to the Sudanese army in its fight against the rebel group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The militants who are filming these videos have just captured a convoy of several vehicles in the middle of the desert. In the images, they seem confused.

At one point, one of the militants shown in the video examines a passport.

“What country is this?” he asks, in Zaghawa, a language spoken in Darfur. Then he picks up an image of a Catholic saint and says, “Look, they are Jews working for an international organisation,” clearly confusing the two religions.



“These people will do anything, even come to die here in Sudan,” he continues. “They’ve come to support the RSF.” The militant claims many times that the owners of the passports, who have allegedly been wounded or captured by his unit, are “mercenaries”. There are no prisoners or bodies shown in the footage.

On several occasions in the video, you can see two of the passports that the Sudanese militants are examining. This allows us to answer at least one of the militant’s questions: both passports belong to Colombian nationals.

Two passports, belonging to two Colombian nationals, Christian L. and Miguel P., are visible in the videos filmed by the Sudanese fighters on November 21, 2024. The Colombians are thought to have been part of the arms convoy. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

Two large wooden crates marked with an orange diamond-shaped label depicting an explosion, the international symbol for explosives, also appear in the video. They are filled with cylinders and labelled, in English, “81 mm Mortars HE”.

In their videos, the militants from the Joint Forces zoom in on the ammunition they've seized. Stored in wooden crates with an orange hazard symbol indicating explosives, the ammunition was found in numerous cylinders stamped, “81 mm Mortars HE.” © The FRANCE 24 Observers

'All that was for the Rapid Support Forces!'

As the video continues, one of the militants points to the ammunition.

“That’s for the Janjaweeds [Editor’s note: a name given to fighters in the Rapid Support Forces]. Mohammed bin Zayed sent them [Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the president of the United Arab Emirates].”

The man then pounds his fist on a vehicle that has apparently also been captured.

“The Emirates sent that, too,” he says.

A few hours after these videos first appeared online, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), one of the armed groups that is part of the Joint Forces, posted a statement on Facebook about the weapons that had been seized. Through these statements, we were able to learn a bit more about why two foreign nationals were traversing the Darfur desert with this ammunition.

“In the desert region on the border between Sudan, Libya and Chad, the Joint Forces thwarted a massive attempt at weapons smuggling to the terrorist militia the Rapid Support Forces (RSF),” reads a statement posted on the group’s Facebook page.

The SLM also reveals that the “mercenaries” were found to be carrying money from the UAE.

The SLM doesn’t say anything about the fates of the Colombian men suspected to be mercenaries— whether they have been captured, killed or wounded.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to discover much more about where the weapons seized by the Joint Forces came from, thanks to the footage filmed and posted online. It turns out that the weapons are from the European Union. They were manufactured in Bulgaria and bought by an Emirati company. Before being intercepted by the Joint Forces in Sudan, the convoy transporting the weapons passed through eastern Libya, a zone that is controlled by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the UAE.

The UAE has been accused in the past by UN experts of providing the Rapid Support Forces with military and financial aid to preserve its own geopolitical and economic interests in the region. However, Emirati authorities have always denied these accusations.

The Rapid Support Forces Are Accused Of Multiple attacks Against Civilians. Some Of Them Have Already Been Documented By The FRANCE 24 Observers team.

European weapons made in Bulgaria


The labels stamped on the cylindrical containers indicate they hold mortar shells.
Four seconds into this video filmed by militants with the Joint Forces on November 21, you can see the labels stamped on the cylinders containing the mortar shells. It explains that they are “81mm Mortar [shells]”.

“These weapons are very common in every conflict, and certainly extremely common in all of the conflicts that have taken place in Sudan for decades,” says Mike Lewis, a specialist in armed conflicts and former member of the United Nations panel of experts on Sudan. “Mortar bombs [or shells] are explosives that are fired from a short cylinder, normally along a high parabola trajectory. So it goes up quite a long way and then descends.”

The footage filmed on November 21 shows a man opening one of the crates containing the mortar shells and zooming in on a label that reads: “BG-RSE-0082-HT".

After filming the cartons stamped with the label “81 mm Mortar HE”, the militant zooms in on other details on the wooden crate containing the ammunition — first a label crossed out in red (middle) and then a code that seems to have been burnt into the crate: “BG-RSE-0082-HT" (right). © The FRANCE 24 Observers

The letters, which are seared into the wooden crate, are an ISPM-15 code that is mandatory for goods transported in wood packaging. The first two letters of the code indicate the country of origin: “BG” stands for Bulgaria.

There is another clue pointing to Bulgaria. While the label on the box is written in French and English, it bears two names written in Cyrillic that presumably belong to workers in the factory where the weapons were manufactured. Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic and both names are common for women in Bulgaria.

On the 5th and 6th lines of the label that appears in one of the videos from November 21, you can see two names written in Cyrillic. One name identifies the person who “packed” the munitions, and the other the “quality inspector”. Both surnames are common for women in Bulgaria. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

These labels provide clues not only on the composition of the ammunition, but also on their country of origin and their manufacturer.

The labels stamped on the cardboard tubes refer to a M-6 detonator, a model that is used in Russia, China and Bulgaria. The letters “HE” that follow the “81 mm Mortar” stand for “highly explosive.” The label also explains that these mortar shells have four propellant charges, which launch the mortar when it is detonated. Each of these pieces is marked with a corresponding six-number code. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

M-6 indicates a type of detonator that launches ammunition, while “81 mm Mortar HE” describes the ammunition, which measures 81 mm and is highly explosive. The “1+3 increment charges” refers to the number of propellant charges frequently found on this type of ammunition.

Each of these components has a 6-digit number that enables them to be traced. And all the numbers in the videos start with “46”. The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke to a weapons expert who explained that in Bulgaria’s identification system, a number beginning with “46” indicates that the weapons were manufactured by the Bulgarian company Dunarit. He said that the number “19”, the final two digits of the number, indicate that the weapons were manufactured in 2019. This can be cross-referenced with the label on the crate.

Dunarit’s website indicates that the Bulgarian company does indeed manufacture highly explosive 81 mm mortar shells.

Dunarit’s website (here translated into English by Google) shows that the company does manufacture weapons with the same characteristics as those shown in the footage filmed in Sudan on November 21, 2024: 81mm highly explosive mortar shells with M-6 detonators. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

Moreover, when we looked at the company’s social media accounts, we saw photos of mortar shells packed into a wooden crate, just like the ones that appear in the video filmed in Sudan. Both crates shown in Dunarit’s photos and the ones that appear in the footage have the code ISPM-15 stamped on them. The number is written in the same format as those on the ammunition found in Sudan.

On a photo posted by Dunarit on its Facebook account in June 2024, the ISPM-15 code stamped on a wooden box containing mortar shells (marked in red at left) is the same as the one filmed by Sudanese fighters on November 21, 2024 (upper right). The number that appears on the box in the Facebook post (marked in blue at left) is written in a similar format to the ones seen on the video filmed in Sudan (bottom right): three two-digit numbers separated by dashes. In both cases, the numbers begin with the digits “46”. © The FRANCE 24 Observers
Dunarit’s CEO doesn’t deny that mortar shells were manufactured by his company


Our team contacted the CEO of Dunarit, Petar Petrov, who doesn’t deny that these mortar shells were manufactured by his company. We spoke to him on the phone after we had earlier shown him screen grabs from the videos:


The regulations on this kind of thing are very strict in Bulgaria. According to my information, everything in this contract [Editor’s note: the contract that allowed for the weapons to be exported] was done according to the rules.

He said that he found it difficult to believe that mortar shells manufactured by his company were found in Sudan and contested the veracity of the videos filmed on November 21.
Bombs that violate the European Union’s embargo on Sudan


But how did these bombs manufactured in Bulgaria, a country belonging to the European Union, end up in a supply convoy going to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces?

Since 1994, the European Union, of which Bulgaria is a member state, has had a total embargo on exporting weapons to Sudan.

“The sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related material of all types, including weapons and ammunition, … to Sudan by nationals of Member States or from the territories of Member States... shall be prohibited whether originating or not in their territories,” the latest embargo states.

Nicolas Marsh is a specialist in arms exportation at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo:


There is an European Union arms embargo on Sudan that definitely covers this kind of equipment. There is a very clear EU policy. There are some exceptions, but I can’t see how a transfer that was going on to Sudan could possibly be covered by those exceptions. It is definitely a violation of the European Union policy.

Bulgaria has strongly rejected claims these weapons were sent directly from Bulgaria to Sudan.

The Interministerial Commission on Export Control, the Bulgarian authority that approves arms exportations, said by email that the weapons were sold with “suitable authorisation” to a “government of a country on which no sanctions are imposed.” They "denied categorically that the relevant Bulgarian authorities delivered export permits to Sudan” for these munitions.

As we continued our investigation, we did indeed establish that Dunarit’s mortar shells were not exported directly to Sudan. They were, however, sold to the International Golden Group — an Emirati company known for transfering weapons to zones under international embargo.


European weapons in Sudan (2/5): A €50 million Emirati contract


From a Bulgarian factory to Sudanese militias, the FRANCE 24 Observers team reveals how European-made ammunition ended up on the Sudanese battlefield, despite a European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. This second article in our five-part investigation focuses on International Golden Group, an Emirati company known for its involvement in diverting arms to countries under international embargo.


Issued on: 18/04/2025 - 
Quentin PESCHARD/
Elitsa GADEVA/
The FRANCE 24 Observers

Through exclusive documents, the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to trace the history of the Bulgarian mortar shells found in Sudan. Those were initially bought by International Golden Group, an Emirati company specialised in weapons known for its involvement in diverting arms. The image shows the head of the company, Fadel al-Kaabi, photographed during the inauguration of a partnership with the French company Safran. © France Médias Monde graphic studio


Recap of the first article in our series: On November 21, 2024, Sudanese fighters filmed what they said was a shipment of mortar shells bound for the Rapid Support Forces, the militia that is fighting against the Sudanese Army in the ongoing civil war. These weapons, manufactured in Bulgaria, were shipped to Sudan despite the European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. We’ve been investigating how this happened.

Read moreEuropean weapons in Sudan (1/5): Bulgarian mortar shells in Darfur’s desert

How did European bombs get to a Sudanese battlefield, despite an EU embargo on shipping weapons there? After identifying the Bulgarian company that manufactured the mortar shells, Dunarit, the FRANCE 24 Observers team tried to trace the history of these weapons. We questioned the Interministerial Commission on Export Control, the Bulgarian authority that oversees arms exportations.

Initially, the commission did not disclose where the mortar bombs shown in the video filmed on November 21, 2024 in Sudan had been exported. All they said was that they “had not issued an export permit to Sudan”.


“The export permit was issued to the government of a country that is not subject to UN Security Council sanctions,” they added. “The relevant Bulgarian authorities were informed of the delivery of the goods and the original delivery certificate for the final destination of these products was provided.”

But the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to obtain a copy of this delivery certificate from a source who asked to remain anonymous. The document, issued on August 16, 2020 by the “United Arab Emirates G.H.Q. [General Headquarters] Armed Forces”, provides a lot of information about the transaction. We learned that the “final destination" or end user of the Bulgarian mortar bombs was supposed to be the armed forces of the UAE.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team obtained a document linked to the sale of the Bulgarian mortar bombs found in Sudan. It is a delivery verification certificate, a document from the person supposed to be the end user of the weapons that attests that they were delivered. Issued by the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (first frame), this document attests that the Army received a shipment of the same type of mortar shells shown in the video filmed in Sudan, “81 mm Mortar Bomb HE” (final frame) as well as other types of mortar bombs. The Emirati Army is listed as the “end user” of the bombs. Two companies involved in the transaction are also listed: an Emirati company called “International Golden Group PJSC” (second frame) and a Bulgarian company “ARM-BG LTD” (third frame). © The FRANCE 24 Observers

This document shows just how large the shipment of mortar bombs was: 15,000 bombs measuring 81 mm (like those seen in the videos from November 21, 2024 filmed in Sudan) but also 2,780 bombs measuring 60 mm, 30,000 measuring 82 mm and 11,464 bombs measuring 120 mm, a much more powerful calibre.

The arms were delivered to the Emirati Army in two shipments, in January and February 2020. Moreover, the document lists two companies, as well as the General Headquarters of the Army: a Bulgarian “supplier”, ARM-BG Ltd., and an Emirati “importer”, International Golden Group PJSC. The manufacturer, Dunarit, isn’t mentioned.

Our team was able to corroborate this information with a second document, which we obtained from a separate source with access to information supplied by the Emirati Army on the arms sale. This subsequent document, called an end-user certificate, is a guarantee to the manufacturer and regulators in the country where the armaments came from that the final user of the weapons has been verified.

This certificate also allows the end user to make a number of binding commitments, including whether or not they are permitted to re-export weapons.

In this case, the certificate was issued by the Emirati Army, who is also listed as the end user. It features the same contract number, supplier and importer as the first one.

“It is a reasonable assumption that these two documents are part of the same transaction,” says Nicholas Marsh, a researcher specialised in arms exports at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
'The end user did not let us know that there would be any kind of re-exportation. I don’t know what happened afterwards.'

On the end-user certificate, dated October 2019, the Emirati Army agrees that it will use the weapons for its own needs and that they “will never be transferred, re-exported, lent, rented out or handed to third parties or countries without written consent of the authorised bodies of Bulgaria…”

Our team asked the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control if they had agreed that the weapons be re-exported to Sudan or elsewhere. They reiterated that they “had not issued a permit to export the weapons to Sudan.”

The CEO of Dunarit, Petar Petrov, went into further detail during a phone call with our team:


On the documents, you see the destination country, but also the company [Editor’s note: International Golden Group], it’s a public company. We don’t have restrictions on exports to the United Arab Emirates and that is what our commission looked into. By law, if the end user decides to re-export the weapons, they need to let all parties involved in the transaction know — the manufacturer, the commission, everyone. In this case, they didn’t do that. I don’t know what happened afterwards.

The end user certificate also refers to a much larger quantity of bombs than the first document: 105,000 mortar bombs versus a little less than 60,000 listed in the first document.

Expert Nicholas Marsh says that there is nothing unusual about this. “That's to make it easier for them if they have other deliveries. That way, they don't have to go back and ask for a new licence,” he said. “We can't be sure that the difference between the number on the delivery verification certificate and the number on the end-user certificate [Editor’s note: a little over 45,000 mortar bombs] was effectively delivered.”
A contract worth around 50 million euros

Marsh estimated that the total price for these 105,000 mortar bombs would be around 50 million euros.


This kind of shipment would be consistent with a large non-state armed group. This is a serious amount of ammunition for this type of group. However, for a national government involved in a war, it would be pretty small.

Our team was able to run Marsh’s estimates by the Omega Research Foundation, a network of researchers specialising in identifying and exposing human rights abuses committed across the world by people using police, security, and military equipment. They agreed that this number was verifiable.

An arms sale of 50 million euros would be a big deal for Bulgaria. According to data collected by the European network against arms trade, Bulgarian exports to the United Arab Emirates was valued at between 10 and 30 million euros annually from 2015 to 2020.

In 2019, the year of the transaction, this figure leapt to 83 million euros. In this year, the sale of 105,000 mortar bombs likely represented more than half of the value of Bulgarian exports to the UAE.
ARM-BG, the Bulgarian intermediary

The Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control maintained in numerous exchanges with our team that Bulgaria respects all agreements on export control and has a responsible national policy.

However, the profiles of the parties involved in this sale raise serious questions. There is very little information available about ARM-BG, the Bulgarian exporter, though this company does indeed have an official licence to export and import arms.

According to information available on the specialist website Orbis, the company only has four employees and seems to have made most of its profits during the two years when the Dunarit arms sale was taking place. Its revenue rose to more than 78 million US dollars in 2019, then 106 million in 2020, before dropping sharply to 6 million dollars in 2021, the year when ARM-BG went into severe deficit. It seems to have lost nearly 3.5 million dollars.

This information about the company ARM-BG’s finances was taken from the specialised platform Orbis. You can see that the company’s revenue rises sharply from more than a million US dollars in 2018 to more than 78 million dollars in 2019. That’s the year when the Emirati Army provided Bulgarian authorities with documents concerning the export of the mortar bombs manufactured by Dunarit. ARM-BG’s revenues continued to go up in 2020 - the year when the two mortar bomb shipments recorded in the documents viewed by the FRANCE 24 Observers team took place, reaching 100 million dollars. The numbers dropped brutally after that, leaving the company in a nearly four million dollar deficit. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

We spoke to Arsen Nazaria, a manager at ARM-BG, who insisted that the transaction his company undertook was legal:


The application for the export permit issuance for the UAE End user was submitted by ARM-BG Ltd. to the Interministerial Commission for Export Control [...] and contained all the data and documentation mandated by Bulgarian and European legislation and UN regulations.

Speaking with our team on the phone, he added: “We are a brokerage company. We don’t export or import ourselves, nor do we deal with the goods.” However, in the documents provided by the Emiratis to the Bulgarian authorities, ARM-BG is listed as the “exporter” or “supplier”.

We contacted ARM-BG a second time, but they declined to comment further. The Interministerial Commission for Export Control said that they had “no proof of Arm BG Ltd.’s involvement in shipments to illegitimate final users or in illegal plans to re-export.”
International Golden Group, the Emirati buyer linked to diverting weapons

The other company listed on the documents is International Golden Group. It is listed as the “importer” of these weapons into the United Arab Emirates. Helen Close, a researcher specialising in armaments at Omega Research Foundation, was able to gather information about the company through its activities in the weapons market in the UAE.


International Golden Group was created in 2002 and we think that it was a private or semi-private company, but it definitely had links to the [Emirati] government. In 2017, it stated that it was a leading supplier to the UAE Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior.

There are no sanctions or embargoes on the sale of European weapons to the United Arab Emirates. But International Golden Group isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill company: aside from supplying the Emirati Army, it is known for illegally diverting weapons to war zones, said several specialists who spoke to the FRANCE 24 Observers team.

Tony Fortin at the Lyon-based Observatory for Armament, an organisation that specialises in monitoring arms sales and companies in the sector, says:


International Golden Group has a very bad reputation, it is well known, including among manufacturers in the sector. It is a company that has a reputation for functioning as sort of a state within the Emirate state, and is used to manage arms movements without regard for transparency.

Indications of illicit activity appeared in reports by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, a country which has been subject to a total arms embargo by the United Nations Security Council since 2011.

Every year, the panel completes a general report on the situation in Libya and tries to identify the countries, companies, and individuals who violate this embargo.

In its report from 2013, International Golden Group was identified as a key party in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of Albanian-made weapons' cartridges to Benghazi, in eastern Libya.

“International Golden Group represented the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates in the deal,” the report states.

International Golden Group was mentioned all the way back in a 2013 report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. The report stated that the company (whose name is visible in the orange box) represented the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates in the purchase of Albanian cartridges, which were actually then illegally re-exported to Benghazi, in eastern Libya. UN Panel of Experts on Libya

International Golden Group is identified in several other reports by the panel. Reports from 2016, 2022 and 2023 all mention that the group has acted in violation of the UN embargo on exporting weapons to Libya.

The report from 2022 mentions Serbian-made 120 mm mortar bombs. One of these bombs was used to booby-trap a civilian home in Tripoli in November 2020 when General Khalifa Haftar, the military leader of eastern Libya, led a massive incursion on the Tripoli region, which was then under the control of the UN-recognised Libyan government. Haftar had support in this offensive from the UAE as well as the Russian paramilitary Wagner group.

Reports by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya mention the name International Golden Group and its links to illegal arms exports to parts of Libya under the control of General Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the United Arab Emirates. The 2022 report also delves into the origins of a Serbian 120 mm mortar bomb used to booby-trap a civilian home in Tripoli that had been previously occupied by Haftar’s forces. The bomb is shown here attached to a stuffed toy. It was purchased by the International Golden Group in 2018, using documents that listed the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates as the end user of the weapons. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

In the same report, the panel goes into further detail on the 2013 case: “Although the end user was falsely declared as the United Arab Emirates [Editor’s note: on the document provided by International Golden Group], the ammunition was shipped by air directly to Benghazi, Libya" from the Albanese territory.

The flight that carried the weapons was chartered by an intermediary and while the flight plan showed the United Arab Emirates as the final destination, it was changed at the last minute to Libya.

The 2016 report details how the panel demanded Bulgaria trace how rifles manufactured in their country ended up in Libya.

“The Bulgarian authorities informed the Panel that the International Golden Group originally imported the weapons and that the end user was the UAE Armed Forces,” the Panel says.

The Bulgarian authorities have known since at least 2016 that weapons sold to International Golden Group, supposedly on behalf of the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates, might be illegally re-exported — that’s a full three years before the UAE sent the Bulgarian authorities the first documents on the purchase of mortar bombs manufactured by Dunarit.

"What should happen [in this kind of situation] is as soon as Bulgaria knows about this, they should share the information with other European governments,” Marsh said.


And then they should stop using IGG. They should also be very careful about exporting anything to the United Arab Emirates. But that isn't happening nearly as much as it should.

Our team asked the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission for Export Control if, when they authorised the export of Dunarit bombs to the UAE in 2019, they were aware of the many cases documented by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya and its findings that International Golden Group was illegally diverting weapons. They did not respond to our questions.

Our team was not able to trace the final leg of the Bulgarian weapons’ journey to the battlefield in Sudan — if, indeed, they were exported by International Golden Group to zones in eastern Libya under the control of General Haftar. We put these questions to both the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control and International Golden Group. Neither responded to our questions.

But that wasn’t the end of the road. We were able to learn more about the weapons transfer by tracing the path of one of the men who was part of the weapons' convoy that brought the Bulgarian armaments to Sudan. His Colombian passport can be seen in the videos from November 21, 2024.

Two passports, belonging to two Colombian nationals, Christian L. and Miguel P., are visible in the videos filmed by the Sudanese fighters on November 21, 2024. The Colombians are thought to have been part of the arms convoy. © The FRANCE 24 Observers

This is the second article of a five-part investigation.

Julia Rougié also contributed to this article.

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