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Trump launches fresh attack on Merz after threatening US troop reduction in Germany – Europe live

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! US president Donald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of German chancellor Friedrich Merz, telling him to “spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken country” after Merz’s criticism of the US war against Iran (15:46). Trump’s latest outburst comes a day after he suggested the US military presence in Germany was being reviewed with a “possible reduction” under consideration and a decision expected to be made shortly (10:01). The falling out between the two leaders appears to have been caused by Merz’s unusually blunt comments earlier this week in which he said the US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership, and criticised the US for no exit strategy from the war. Without offering a direct response to Trump’s comments, the German chancellor sought to strike a notably different and more conciliatory tone at a visit to a German military base in Munster, stressing the importance of ties with Nato and the US, and criticising Iran for refusing to take part in peace negotiations (12:44). Trump’s renewed attack on Merz’s record in government comes just days before his first anniversary in office (15:46). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

UK stole 25m years of life and labour through slavery in Barbados, says report

Britain stole 25 million years of life and labour through slavery in Barbados, according to research by a team of international experts. Their report concludes that Barbados’s population of African descent have suffered damages estimated at up to $2tn (£1.5tn) from 200 years of chattel slavery. The head of the research team, Coleman Bazelon, said the total reflected the magnitude of the damage done, but he emphasised that the figure was not a bill for damages but the factual foundation for dialogue. “This research is not creating an invoice for anybody to pay,” said Bazelon. “It is an accounting of the harm that was done … a recognition of the harm that was done that is the starting point for reconciliation.” Barbados was the first major British colony to force enslaved people to work on its plantations from the early 1600s. It is also a founding nation of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) which advocates for reparations. Bazelon was the lead co-author of the 2023 Brattle analysis, which was included in the report on reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. The analysis estimated that chattel slavery affected 19.9 million people, including those who were captured, those who lost their lives while being transported from Africa, and those who worked on plantations and their descendants. After Britain abolished slavery on 1 August 1834, £20m was paid in compensation to enslavers for loss of their “property”. The enslaved people themselves received nothing. Bazelon conducted this new research through the non-profit organisation Public Interest Experts. “What they asked me to focus on was: what was the value of the labour stolen through slavery in Barbados,” Bazelon said. Speaking at an event in Barbados to preview the research earlier this month, Barbados’s minister for pan-African affairs and heritage, Trevor Prescod, said: “You can’t erase history … My job is to give an Afrocentric redress to the imbalances that occurred during the period of slavery.” The minister said that the report will eventually go to the cabinet for ratification. “I feel the public must walk with us to our destination … Many areas of progress that we were denied will be at the heart of our call and claims for reparations and reparatory justice,” he said. Bazelon has given a detailed breakdown of the methodology and figures: “The value of the labour that was provided but not compensated, it’s somewhere between$500bn and $700bn. But of course, an enslaved person working in Barbados had much of their life stolen from them as well. So, I think it’s very proper to include the short lifespan of people who were enslaved in Barbados. And the short lifespan estimate is anywhere from about $1.1tn to $1.3tn. So if you add them together you end up with a range of about $1.6tn to $2tn as the value of the labour and life directly stolen from people in enslaved Barbados.” He added: “The important contextual point is that there were [about] 379,000 people who got off the boat from Africa in Barbados … There were another 78,000 people who got on the boats but didn’t get off, who died during the middle passage. And then we estimate another 335,000 people who were born into slavery in Barbados.” The findings provide an understanding of the significant size of the harm done. Prof Alan Lester, from the University of Sussex, a leading expert on the British empire, said: “It’s not surprising that – when you add up the value of lives appropriated to make money in Barbados, Britain’s oldest slave plantation colony – you get such an enormous figure. “The inequalities entrenched by slavery have only been exacerbated since, as compensation was paid to slave owners rather than the enslaved and independence left Caribbean islands drained of capital and indebted to western institutions.” The 2023 Brattle analysis estimated that the value of harms from transatlantic chattel slavery in 31 territories in the Americas and the Caribbean amounted to $100–131tn in total, of which $77-108tn represented harms during the period of enslavement, and $23tn the continuing harms since. The analysis was commissioned after an international symposium on reparations and international law concluded that transatlantic slavery was unlawful. Last month 123 nations at the UN general assembly voted that chattel slavery was the gravest crime against humanity. The US, Israel and Argentina voted against the resolution, while 52 countries, including the UK and other many European countries abstained. Previously, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, ruled out direct monetary payments for reparations. David Lascelles, the co-founder of Heirs of Slavery, a group of descendants of British enslavers who encourage others to acknowledge and discuss reparative justice, said: “My distant ancestor Henry Lascelles made his fortune in Barbados in the 18th century. Now, 300 years later, it’s high time we all recognise there is a debt to pay, a debt that is of course about money, but not just about money.” Alex Renton, another co-founder of the group, added that “addressing the legacies of this most terrible event in Britain’s modern history is the right thing for the nation to do, morally and practically”.

Curfews, conspiracy theories … and a cancelled concert: Mali’s capital tries to shrug off violence on its doorstep

“The Grand Ball of Bamako”, as organisers tagged the Saturday evening soiree at the Hotel de l’Amitié in the Malian capital, was meant to provide one of the west African country’s biggest headlines last weekend. Many sponsors including Orange Mali, the local subsidiary of the French telecoms company, had bankrolled the show, which organisers hoped would demonstrate Mali’s capacity to put on big cultural events in the teeth of a security crisis raging on multiple fronts. On the eve of the concert, a convoy of cars picked up the main attraction, Grammy award-winning Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, from the Modibo Keita international airport. In the end though, N’Dour, one of the continent’s most famous voices, did not get to perform. Halfway into the concert, guests stood up from the tables draped in white and left the venue, after news reached organisers that the ruling junta had imposed a 72-hour citywide curfew. “We have been faced with a situation beyond our control,” the main organiser Abdoulaye Guitteye said on stage. “We really did our best, we tried.” The curfew was announced in response to a coordinated attack on a number of Malian cities and towns by an unlikely alliance of jihadists and separatists. In Bamako, people had woken up at dawn on Saturday to the sounds of gunfire as the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and al-Qaida-linked group JNIM targeted the same airport N’Dour had come in through. Sources claim the junta granted special permission for the airport to briefly reopen later on so he could fly back to his base in Dakar. In the high-security garrison town of Kati, only 9 miles outside Bamako, a fierce fight broke out between insurgents and security forces at the residence of defence minister Sadio Camara. Then a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the property, killing Camara along with several relatives. Since 2012, Mali has faced a profound security crisis fuelled in particular by violence from groups affiliated with al-Qaida and Islamic State, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups. JNIM imposed a punishing fuel blockade of Bamako last year, but it had eased in the period leading up to Saturday’s attacks. Camara was a key junta figure and Russian speaker seen as the mastermind behind the junta’s pivot to Russia, specifically its deal with mercenary group Wagner – which later morphed into the Kremlin-controlled Africa Corps – to provide regime protection and counterinsurgency support. Along with its neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger, Mali had expelled French and American forces after the coup that brought its junta to power. Conspiracy theories have been spreading freely: some claim the jihadists had sources near Camara who helped them breach his heavily guarded compound. “The military themselves say there had to be accomplices,” a Bamako-based consultant who did not want to give their name told the Guardian. Simultaneous attacks took place on cities and towns around the country, including Gao, Mopti, Sévaré and Bourem. In the former separatist stronghold of Kidal near the border with southern Algeria, the Malian military and Africa Corps were overwhelmed by the militants. Algerian authorities reportedly helped the troops negotiate an exit from the city. *** The attacks – the largest assault on the country in nearly 15 years – were a fresh escalation of a conflict that began in 2012 when men from the Tuareg ethnic minority who had felt sidelined since Mali’s independence from France in 1960 launched an offensive aided by weapons from the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Extremists in the north then hijacked the uprising and scaled it up to such an extent that interventions by the French military and a UN peacekeeping force failed to bring the situation under control. The conflict also triggered three successful coups, including the one in May 2021 that installed Assimi Goïta as head of state. A few years later he pulled Mali out of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) alongside his fellow junta leaders in Burkina Faso and Niger. Goïta was neither seen nor heard from at the weekend, prompting speculation that the rebels had outsmarted the Turkish private military contractors protecting him, or that he had been deposed by his fellow putschists in the junta. On Tuesday afternoon, Goïta proved the rumours wrong, resurfacing in a photo of him meeting the Russian ambassador that was posted by the Malian presidency to X. Goïta later addressed the nation, saying the “enemy’s deadly plan has been thwarted”. “These attacks are not isolated incidents, but are part of a vast destabilisation plan conceived and carried out by terrorist groups and external and internal sponsors who provide them with intelligence and logistical support,” he said, toeing the same narrative as Moscow’s defence ministry, which claimed without evidence to have thwarted a coup backed by western forces. Authorities in Bamako and Moscow have confirmed that there were civilian and military losses, but have not given casualty figures. The military also said it had killed more than 200 terrorists. Analysts say the Russians will now focus on safeguarding the capital and the presidency. The Bamako-based consultant doubts the militants can take Bamako due to superior military numbers but knows the threat is ever-present. The jihadists and separatists “know the mountains and the trails” better than the army, and travel on motorcycles, he said. “They are in control. They have prepared for this.” As people go about their daily lives, the city has remained on high alert. “Even this morning, the children went to school but there’s panic and many people are staying at home,” said the consultant, who lives in a suburb on the outskirts of Bamako and has not left his house since Saturday. On social media, videos are circulating from the jihadists telling people in Bambara, the most widely spoken language in the country, not to leave the capital. One video with an upbeat musical soundtrack appears to show a militant spray-painting over the government’s signage in downtown Kidal while flashing a peace sign at the camera. The Guardian could not independently verify the footage. *** Throughout the day on Saturday, the concert’s organisers resisted calls to cancel the event in light of the fast-moving security situation in part because the venue, a few blocks from the French embassy, is seen as one of the safest places in the capital. The attempt to keep the show on the road reflected a desire among many people living in Bamako to try to lead as normal and spirited a life as possible. This attitude is encouraged by the junta, which has long sought to project an image of stability. In December, even as the fuel blockade upended daily life for millions of ordinary people, a biennale was held in the ancient city of Timbuktu. And last weekend couples went ahead with weddings across Bamako despite the violence. A woman from Bamako who attended the Timbuktu festival said this week: “This is what I tell people: ‘Either we decide to live, or we decide to remain terrorised’ … what a lot of people have also written on their [social media] pages is: ‘We won’t give in, we have to resist, we have to keep living.’”

Iran supreme leader issues defiant statement on strait of Hormuz

Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes. “Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor. The statement said Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway”, and that “new management of the strait will bring comfort and progress for the benefit of all the nations of the region and economic blessings will bring joy to the hearts of the people”. Iran has sought to extract a price for being attacked by exerting control over the strait, the narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of global oil typically transits. Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would “guard its modern technological capacities – from nano to bio to nuclear and missile – as their national capital and will guard it like their maritime land and air borders”. No recording or visual sighting of Khamenei has been broadcast since he was appointed supreme leader in early March. Reports have suggested that he was severely injured in the bombing that killed his 86-year-old father and predecessor on 28 February. He is said to be in hospital being treated for injuries. His new statement suggests Iran is determined to implement a new fees regime in the strait that it will present as benefiting the entire region as a belated assertion of regional sovereignty. Since 13 April the US has mounted a counter-blockade designed to stop oil tankers moving in or out of Iranian ports, seizing up the Iranian oil industry. With Pakistan-mediated talks at an impasse, there is little sign of either blockade being lifted, pushing the oil price above $120 a barrel. Vessel traffic levels are still extremely low, sometimes as low as three ships a day compared with 120–140 in normal conditions. “Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters,” Khamenei’s statement said. The strait’s closure has put pressure on Trump, as oil and petrol prices have rocketed before crucial midterm elections, as well as on his Gulf allies, which use the waterway to export their oil and gas. Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he knew no short way out of the impasse pushed oil prices close to $125 a barrel – as high as during the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Axios news website reported that the US military was still feeding Trump options to resume strikes. Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, the military adviser to the supreme leader, wrote on his X account: “The siege scenario will fail and Iran will never lose the strait of Hormuz. History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Both the field and diplomacy are moving forward with the coordination of the leader of the revolution and the support of the people.” The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy. Iran has proposed that talks with the US on its nuclear programme be parked while both sides agree terms for allowing ships to resume passage along the strait. In Iran the foreign ministry has urged its parliament to recognise that Iran’s plans being hatched in conjunction with Oman do not require fresh Iranian legislation. It is also urging that Iran avoid terms such as “tolls”, and instead assert its pre-existing right to charge fees for services rendered. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, held talks in Washington on Wednesday about the strait. An email sent by the state department to embassies reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested the US was trying to become involved in largely European-led plans for the oversight of the strait once the conflict ends. The US is offering to coordinate diplomacy and communications between countries using the strait by reviving and broadening a 12 nation International Maritime Security Construct, a pre-existing naval operation set up in after threats to shipping by the Iranian navy.

Canada to create powerful financial crimes agency as US weakens its approach

Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast to the US, where weakened federal investigators have struggled to pursue fraudsters and the White House has pardoned convicted money launderers. A bill to create the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) completed its first reading in parliament this week. The legislation was introduced by the governing Liberals and with their parliamentary majority, the party is likely to move it through both levels of government quickly. The new agency, tasked with investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, is the result of a public inquiry that found Canada lacked a cohesive strategy against money laundering, placing it behind its international peers. Jessica Davis, a former intelligence analyst with Canada’s spy agency who focuses terrorism and illicit financing, said: “The fact we’re actually seeing the creation [of a] new enforcement agency is a meaningful investment and hopefully signals the understanding of the seriousness of the challenge.” In addition to a new law enforcement agency, Canada will ban cryptocurrency ATMs, which officials say have been used by scammers to defraud victims and by criminals to launder the proceeds of crime. Canada has nearly 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs, the most per capita in the world. For more than a quarter of a century, the financial transactions and reports analysis centre (Fintrac) has functioned as Canada’s financial intelligence unit. Last year, the agency uncovered $45bn in transactions from money laundering, counterterrorist financing, sanctions and evasion disclosures. “It’s a figure that could be too high or far too low – we just don’t fully know the scope of financial crime in this country,” said Davis, who runs the consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence. Fintrac does not track and arrest criminals, instead handing off its investigations to the police and prosecutors. Under the new legislation, the newly formed FCA will investigate and prosecute – a move that lessens the scope and mandate of Fintrac and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country’s federal law-enforcement authority. “The challenge for the is that RCMP has been unable and unwilling to actually investigate and sustain investigations related to financial crimes,” said Davis. “There is a lack of funding, a lack of skills, lack of resources and a lack of political will. But financial crimes investigations are long, complex and require sustained resources, which I’m hopeful we’re now going to see put in place.” A 2024 report on the scale of financial crimes estimated that more than US$3tn in illicit funds had moved through the global financial system in the previous year. Among the largest culprits were money laundering for human and drug trafficking, as well as terrorist financing. A 2024 report from the US treasury department found those efforts had had “devastating economic and social impact” on citizens. The Canadian effort marks a stark contrast to the approach taken by the current US administration to the scourge of financial crime. Donald Trump’s government issued a high-profile pardon of Changpeng Zhao after the self-styled “king” of cryptocurrency pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. His company, Binance, had been ordered to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing. In a January letter to federal watchdogs, senior Democrats called for an investigation into Trump’s decision to shift more than 25,000 personnel away from investigating fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in favour of immigration enforcement. “The Trump administration is letting white-collar criminals off the hook for all kinds of wrongdoing,” senator Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Instead of protecting American families from fraud and predatory behaviour, the administration is diverting resources to pursue its inhumane immigration agenda. Nobody is above the law, and the Trump administration needs to stop treating white-collar criminals with kid gloves.” “Canada and the US are diverging,” said Davis, adding that the US was still “far ahead of us in terms of its ability to prosecute and invest, investigate and prosecute” financial crimes. “We’re still playing quite a bit of catchup now. Hopefully Canada will shore up our own abilities to protect Canada. Because the things that happen in the US do tend to happen in Canada. And so this new agency is a bulwark against that.” The creation of a new law enforcement agency was applauded by anti-corruption groups. Salvator Cusimano, the executive director of Transparency International Canada, said: “The [Canadian] government is proposing an ambitious but realistic mandate for this agency, which bodes well as a much-needed first step in improving our enforcement of financial crimes. “Once established, the agency must coordinate closely with other enforcement and regulatory agencies across the country, and build on their efforts, if it is to achieve its potential.” It is unclear how easily the agency will work alongside the RCMP, where it will be based and whether it will draw key resources from other units. Davis said: “This agency is going to matters to Canadians because when you start to combine things like economic pressures, the cost of living and really difficult sort of existence for everyday people, we start to have less tolerance for people making money off of us. “This is a massive and necessary investment for Canada. But we’ll also have to keep pressuring the government to continue to fund it, continue to prioritise it, to actually get some of those outcomes that we’re looking for.”

Bomb meant for ‘Butcher of Bucha’ kills subordinate in remote Russian town, sources say

An explosion killed an army officer in a closed-off military town in Russia’s far east this week, in what appeared to be an attempt to target a more senior commander known as the “Butcher of Bucha”. Three sources familiar with the incident said the bomb detonated at about 9am on Tuesday in a residential block in Knyaze-Volkonskoye-1, the home of Maj Gen Azatbek Omurbekov, who commanded Russian troops during the occupation of Bucha. Two sources said the assailant had placed the bomb in a mailbox between the first and second floors and installed a camera. The attacker targeted the wrong entrance, however: a subordinate was killed in the blast, but Omurbekov was not injured, the sources said. The EU has placed sanctions on Omurbekov over his role in the massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, where Russian troops are accused of killing more than 400 civilians. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has commented on the incident. Ukrainian intelligence agencies have targeted dozens of senior Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials since the start of the war, accusing them of involvement in war crimes. VChK-OGPU, an anonymous Telegram channel with reported links to Russia’s security services, stated on Tuesday evening that the blast had been intended to target Omurbekov, adding that it killed a lieutenant colonel identified only by his surname, Kuzmenko. Omurbekov’s apartment block, which was primarily used by military officials, had been cordoned off, sources said, and the garrison was being patrolled by troops. Knyaze-Volkonskoye-1 is a small military settlement on the outskirts of Khabarovsk, in Russia’s remote far east, close to the Chinese border. Unlike a typical civilian town, it is a garrison community built around a nearby army base: access is controlled at checkpoints and non-residents require permission to enter. Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian cells behind assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure inside Russia and in Russian-controlled territories. Ukraine is believed to be responsible for the attempted assassination in February of Lt Gen Vladimir Alekseyev, a senior Russian military official who has a central role in the country’s intelligence services. Alekseyev was shot several times in the stairwell of his apartment block by an unknown gunman but survived the attack. Omurbekov’s profile would make him a high-value target for Ukraine’s intelligence services. He commanded the 64th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, an elite infantry unit, during the occupation of Bucha in 2022 – and is believed to be one of the bloodiest commanders to have served there. The British sanctions list accuses him of being in “direct command” of troops involved in the killing of civilians. In an interview with the Russian outlet iStories, one of Omurbekov’s subordinates in Bucha said the commander routinely ordered the killing of civilians, including attacks on vehicles carrying noncombatants. Despite overwhelming evidence, Russian officials have denied their troops killed civilians in Bucha, and at a secret ceremony Vladimir Putin awarded Omurbekov the title of hero of the Russian Federation, the country’s highest honour. He was later transferred to the 392nd District Training Centre in Knyaze-Volkonskoye-1. While the bombing appeared not to have reached its intended target, the fact it took place in a far-flung military town represented the latest security failure by Russia’s FSB, said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence services. “Given the massive resources military counterintelligence has at its disposal to protect personnel, this is a security lapse,” he said. “The protection of military personnel has long been a priority for the FSB. Officers are assigned within military districts specifically to oversee their security.”

Mexico’s cartel crackdown hits top ranks – but will it fuel Jalisco violence?

The golden coffin of “El Mencho”, the late leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), had barely been lowered into the ground when the Mexican military dealt a second blow to the very top of the organisation this week. As special forces descended on a ranch in the state of Nayarit, grainy drone footage showed El Mencho’s possible successor, Audias Flores, alias “El Jardinero”, being hauled from a drainage pipe he had tried to hide in, all without a shot being fired. With two strikes in two months, the Mexican state is apparently intensifying its operations against high-profile targets just as Mexico prepares to welcome fans for the World Cup – and it has so far avoided the violent infighting that previous operations against such kingpins have triggered. “We’re yet to see any fractures in the CJNG,” said Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for the Insight Crime thinktank. “But that is not to say they won’t happen.” “With the World Cup coming up, I want to believe that the Mexican authorities have a plan and are confident that this is not going to cause chaos.” Since becoming president in 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum has pursued a more aggressive security policy than her predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with official figures showing a leap in drug seizures and arrests, and much talk about using intelligence to dismantle criminal structures. But as Donald Trump has piled pressure on Mexico to do more, threatening tariffs and unilateral military action, the government has increasingly turned to the old method of targeting kingpins – even if it remains unclear that the removal of any individual can much affect the flow of drugs or other illicit activities. “These blows will change the perception of the action by the Mexican state,” said Armando Vargas, coordinator of the security programme at México Evalua, a thinktank. “But they will not necessarily affect the operations of the CJNG.” In Mexico, the fear is that removing such kingpins can fragment criminal organisations, which can in turn lead successor groups to fight among themselves for territory and business. Experience has conditioned Mexicans to expect such violence. The latest example is the ongoing war between factions of the Sinaloa cartel, triggered by the betrayal and delivery of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to the US by one of the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, his former partner at the top of the cartel. But while the killing of El Mencho in February did lead to an immediate surge of violence as cartel gunmen lashed out at security forces, this quickly subsided, and no succession battle has yet broken out. El Jardinero, who controlled CJNG activities in the state of Nayarit and the tourist town of Puerto Vallarta, was among the few considered as a possible next leader of the cartel. It has since been reported that Juan Carlos Valencia González, the California-born stepson of El Mencho, might have already taken over – but in the press conference after El Jardinero’s arrest, Mexican authorities said their intelligence indicated he had been gathering the men and firepower to take power himself. Cartel power politics are obscure, making it difficult to predict how El Jardinero’s sudden removal will affect the stability of the CJNG. But it would run against their economic interests to disrupt the World Cup. “Criminal groups are businesses,” said Vargas. “I don’t think they are thinking about destabilising the country so much as how they’re going to fill their coffers with all the visitors.” US authorities celebrated the arrest of El Jardinero, which was made with the help of American intelligence and may result in his extradition to face charges in the US – but they are already preparing their next demands. Days before, Ronald Johnson, the US ambassador to Mexico, delivered a speech in Sinaloa in which he implied corrupt politicians could be the next target. Then on Wednesday, the US justice department accused the governor of Sinaloa and nine other high-level state officials of drug trafficking and weapons offences, requesting their detention and extradition. “I think the idea is that after they finish with the kingpins on their wanted list, they’re going after politicians,” said Dittmar. “It’s part of this dynamic where, no matter how many operations you do – who you capture, who you kill – it’s never going to be enough for the US government.”