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Use of Irish airport for US deportation flights to Israel called ‘reprehensible’

Politicians in Ireland have said the use of an airport in County Clare by planes deporting Palestinians from the US to Israel is “reprehensible”. A private jet owned by the Donald Trump donor Gil Dezer was chartered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for two separate flights that took detainees to Israel, a Guardian investigation revealed this week. The flights left the US on 21 January and 1 February. Both made refuelling stops at Shannon airport in the west of Ireland. Dezer’s family property company has built a series of Trump-branded residential towers in Miami. He recently spoke of his “love” for the US president, with whom he claims to have had a 20-year friendship. Some of those onboard the flights on Dezer’s jet said they had their wrists and ankles shackled for the duration of the journey. After arriving in Tel Aviv, they appear to have been taken to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Irish government said in a statement that as the flights stopped in the country for “non-traffic purposes” and were “not picking up or setting down passengers” they did not require prior approval from its transport department. However, on Friday, opposition politicians expressed concern to the Irish Times about the practice. Duncan Smith, foreign affairs spokesperson for the Labour party in Ireland, said: “It is absolutely reprehensible that any ICE deportation flights would be allowed stop and refuel in Shannon. The taoiseach and minister for transport must intervene and ensure this ends.” He added: “Ireland cannot in any way be complicit in these ICE flights.” Roderic O’Gorman, leader of the country’s Green party, said that it was “deeply disturbing” to learn “that Shannon is being used to facilitate the cruel actions of Donald Trump’s ICE”. Patricia Stephenson, foreign affairs spokesperson for the Social Democrats, said the government “must make a statement on whether it knowingly facilitated these flights”. She told the Irish Times that she believed the human rights of those onboard had been violated. Dezer’s aircraft was chartered via Journey Aviation, a company based in Florida that is regularly used by the US authorities to source private jets. It declined to comment on the flights to Israel. According to Human Rights First (HRF), which tracks deportation flights, Dezer’s jet – which he has described as his “favourite toy” – was first chartered for removal flights last October. The organisation said the plane had been used to fly detainees to Kenya, Liberia, Guinea and Eswatini, before its recent trips to Israel. One of those onboard the first flight was Maher Awad, 24. Originally from the West Bank, he has lived in the US for almost a decade. He has a partner and baby in Michigan. “They dropped us off like animals on the side of the road,” Awad said. “We went to a local house, we knocked on the door, we were like: ‘Please help us out’.” In an email, Dezer told the Guardian he was “never privy to the names” of those who travelled onboard his jet when it was privately chartered by Journey, or the purpose of the flight. “The only thing I’m notified about is the dates of use,” he said. He did not respond to further questions about the use of his jet by the Trump administration to deport Palestinians through Israel. Aviation industry sources have estimated the flights would have cost ICE between $400,000 and $500,000. A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not answer questions about the deportation flights to Israel, but said: “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”

Zelenskyy says US has set June deadline for Ukraine-Russia peace deal

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the US has given Ukraine and Russia yet another deadline to reach a peace settlement, and is now proposing the war should end by June. The Ukrainian president also told reporters that both sides had been invited to further talks next week. Zelenskyy said the Trump administration “will probably put pressure” on Ukraine and Russia to end the war by the beginning of the summer. “They say they want to get everything done by June,” he said. “They will do everything to end the war and they want a clear schedule of all events.” He told reporters that if the new deadline of June was not met, Washington would probably put pressure on both sides to meet. Before Donald Trump took office, he promised to “end the war in 24 hours”. Later, his special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, suggested both sides could reach an agreement within 100 days of Trump’s inauguration. After this failed to occur, the US president set a new deadline for a deal in August last year, which also passed without any sign of peace, and in December he said a draft agreement to end the war was nearly “95% done”. Two days of US-led peace talks to end the war took place this week in Abu Dhabi but did not produce a breakthrough, although Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the trilateral negotiations had been “genuinely constructive”. Zelenskyy said on Saturday that the Trump administration was proposing to host the next round of trilateral talks in the US, probably in Miami, in a week’s time. “We confirmed our participation,” he said. He hinted that the new June deadline for peace could be linked to Trump’s midterm elections campaign. “The [midterm] elections are definitely more important for them [the Americans]. Let’s not be naive.” He added: “If the Russians are really ready to end the war, then it is really important to set a deadline.”

Where’s Evo? Missing Morales mystery as Bolivia’s ex-president goes to ground

For more than a year, he stayed hidden in plain sight: despite an arrest warrant for human trafficking charges, former president Evo Morales moved freely in at least one region of Bolivia, attended rallies, received foreign journalists and went to the polls to cast his vote in the 2025 presidential election. But shortly after the United States attack onVenezuela – and the detention of Nicolás Maduro – Morales disappeared from view; a month later his whereabouts remain a mystery. Bolivia’s first Indigenous president immediately criticised the attack on Caracas as “brutal imperial aggression”, both on social media and, the day after the strike, on his Sunday radio programme broadcast from the heart of the Chapare, a coca-producing region in central Bolivia. Since then, however, the man who was once one of the most recognisable faces in Latin America has not been seen either on his programme – missing four editions – or at the public events he used to attend. His disappearance has fuelled a flurry of theories, including claims by a conservative MP that he has fled the country. The disappearance comes as the centre-right president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, tightens ties with the US in search of support for the battered economy and an acute dollar shortage. One of Paz Pereira’s main aims is to bring back the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which, after violent incursions in Chapare that led to clashes and dozens of coca growers’ deaths, was expelled by Morales in 2008. Although the coca leaf has widespread legal and cultural uses in Bolivia as a stimulant, digestive aid or treatment for altitude sickness, it is known that part of the crop grown in Chapare is diverted for cocaine production. The official version – put forward by political allies and the coca growers’ unions – is that Morales has not fled but is instead ill. On the first edition of his radio show without Morales, the presenter said the former president had “caught dengue”, a mosquito-borne viral illness common in Latin America. The following Sunday, the former evista senator Leonardo Loza fuelled the rumours already gaining traction and declined to disclose his whereabouts, saying only that he was “in some little corner of our Patria Grande”, a term used by some to refer to Hispanic America. His supporters made fun of the mystery, wearing masks of his face and even producing a song, Where Is Evo?, which lists his achievements as Bolivia’s longest-serving president and concludes that he is “with the people. The swirl of theories intensified in late January, when the conservative MP Edgar Zegarra Bernal said the former president was in Mexico – something that would not be unprecedented: after Morales was accused of rigging elections in 2019, he fled to Mexico before later moving on to Argentina. But Bernal gave no details or evidence and instead demanded that the government prove otherwise. “Why has the arrest warrant against Evo Morales not been enforced so far?” he said. Since October 2024, Morales had been entrenched in a small village deep within the Bolivian jungle, where hundreds of coca farmers prevented police from executing an arrest warrant against him over allegations that he fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl during his presidency in 2016. Morales has always denied the accusations, saying they amount to political persecution orchestrated by the then president, his former protege Luis Arce, with whom he broke after returning to Bolivia in 2020. Deeply unpopular amid Bolivia’s worst economic crisis in four decades, Arce did not seek re-election. Paz Pereira won but did not move against Morales. Instead, he had Arce arrested on accusations that he had “enabled illicit enrichment” while serving as Morales’s finance minister. Paz Pereira has not commented on Morales’s whereabouts, but his government minister, Marco Antonio Oviedo, said that “the information available” suggested Morales remained in the Chapare. A coca growers’ leader who requested anonymity told the Guardian that “Comrade Evo is already in full recovery and will soon resume his public agenda,” without offering a timeline or location, adding only: “There will be a surprise soon; he has already overcome dengue.” The former president has also resumed posting on social media, criticising Paz Pereira’s government. “But that is no guarantee that he is here or elsewhere, because it’s well known that he does not usually write his own tweets,” said the political analyst José Orlando Peralta. As dengue symptoms, at least in milder cases, do not usually last more than a week, Peralta believes that “either Morales has fled or he is more seriously ill – it is not typical of him to disappear from the media agenda for this long”. Given the relationship Paz Pereira has sought to establish with the White House – this week, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, praised the US “friend Bolivia” – and the emphasis Trump has placed on a so-called “war on drugs”, Peralta believes that “it’s surely only a matter of time before the DEA returns to Bolivia, and that will obviously complicate Evo Morales’s political and private life.” Additional reporting by Thomas Graham in Mexico City

Ukraine war briefing: Russia launches ‘massive attack’ on energy sites, triggering widespread blackouts

A “massive attack” by Russian forces on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Saturday caused power outages across the country, the state grid operator said. Energy minister Denys Shmygal said Kyiv had requested emergency assistance from Poland after Russia hit the Burshtynska and Dobrotvirska power plants in western Ukraine overnight. “Russian criminals carried out another massive attack on Ukraine’s energy facilities. The attack continues,” Shmyhal said on Telegram. “Energy workers are ready to start repair works as soon as the security situation allows.” Due to the damage, emergency outages had been applied in most Ukrainian regions, grid operator Ukrenergo said. Two airports in Poland were suspended from operations as a precaution due to the Russian strikes on nearby Ukraine territory, Polish authorities said on Saturday. “In connection with the need to ensure the possibility of the free operation of military aviation, the airports in Rzeszow and Lublin have temporarily suspended flight operations,” the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency posted on X. Both of the south-eastern cities are close to the Ukrainian border, with Rzeszow being Nato’s main hub for arms supplies to Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier called for faster action in boosting Ukrainian air defences and repairing damage to electricity grids and heating systems after huge Russian air attacks in freezing temperatures. The Ukrainian president said personnel changes would be made in areas where air defences had less than satisfactory results. Kyiv has been hit particularly hard and Zelenskyy said more than 1,110 apartment blocks remained without heat in the aftermath of an assault on the Ukrainian capital last Tuesday. Night-time temperatures have eased somewhat but were still due to hit -8C (18F). “The small-scale air defence component, specifically countering attacks drones, must work more efficiently and prevent the problems that exist,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Friday. Donald Trump has said “very good talks” are ongoing over Russia’s war in Ukraine and that there could be movement as a result. “Very, very good talks today, having to do with Russia-Ukraine,” the US president told reporters on Friday. “Something could be happening.” The Kremlin said earlier that a third round of peace talks should take place “soon”, although there was no fixed date yet. The latest round of talks this week resulted in the two agreeing to a major prisoner swap but failed to yield a breakthrough on the thorny issue of territory. A top Russian military official who plays a major role in the country’s intelligence services has been shot in Moscow and hospitalised, Pjotr Sauer reports state media as saying. Lt Gen Vladimir Alekseyev, 64, was shot several times on the stairwell of his apartment on Friday by an unknown gunman in the city’s north-west and was in critical condition, according to reports. Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian figure close to Alekseyev, said the general had undergone surgery and remained in a coma. No party has claimed responsibility for shooting Alekseyev but Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind it, while Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine had nothing to do with the shooting. The European Commission has proposed a sweeping ban on any services that support Russia’s seaborne crude oil exports, going far beyond previous piecemeal EU sanctions in its effort to stunt Moscow’s key source of income for its war on Ukraine. Russia exports over a third of its oil in western tankers – mostly from Greece, Cyprus and Malta – with the help of western shipping services. The ban would end that practice, which mostly supplies India and China, and render obsolete a price cap on purchases of Russian crude oil that the Group of Seven western powers have tried to enforce with mixed success. EC president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday the ban would be “in coordination with like-minded partners” and that Russian LNG tankers and icebreakers would encounter “sweeping bans” on maintenance and other services.

UK threatens to seize Russia-linked shadow fleet tanker in escalatory move

The UK is threatening to seize a Russia-linked shadow fleet tanker in an escalatory move that could lead to the opening up of a new front against Moscow at a time when the country’s oil revenues are tumbling. British defence sources confirmed that military options to capture a rogue ship had been identified in discussions involving Nato allies – though a month has gone by since the US-led seizure of a Russian tanker in the Atlantic. In January, 23 shadow fleet ships using false or fraudulent flags were spotted in the Channel or Baltic Sea, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. Many are linked to the export of Russian oil, largely by water to China, India and Turkey. A joint statement signed by the UK, Germany, France and other Nato countries bordering the Baltic and North seas late last month said all vessels sailing through either region should “strictly comply with applicable international law”. But despite setting conditions for a seizure, nothing has followed. “The Royal Navy could challenge any number of ships under maritime law because they are in fact stateless,” said Richard Meade, the editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, a specialist shipping title. “But they haven’t, because there are escalatory risks.” Last month the Royal Marines held a briefing for British MPs and peers, covering the threat from Russia and the situation in the Arctic and the high north. One of those present said the Marines were “champing at the bit” to be given the order to seize a ship. A month ago, the US chased the Marinera tanker from the Caribbean to the north Atlantic, seizing it between Scotland and Iceland with British help. Though it was falsely flagged when it was first approached, it had been re-registered as Russian while it was being pursued in a failed attempt to evade capture. Russian complaints in the aftermath were muted, but a UK or European-led operation would be potentially more fraught “because Moscow would probably respond more robustly”, Meade said. The risks could be reduced if a seizure took place away from the Baltic or Arctic waters, he added. On 22 January, before the signing of the joint statement, France detained the Grinch, an oil tanker off the coast of Spain. It had departed from Murmansk in Russia, under the flag of Comoros, a country in east Africa – but a week later the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told his Ukrainian counterpart it would have to be released because of French law. In late January, John Healey, the UK defence secretary, said Britain would host a meeting of Baltic and Nordic countries to discuss “military options that we might use”. Any oil seized, he suggested, could be sold “and put into Ukraine in order to fight Putin’s invasion”. Russia produces about 10m barrels of oil a day, according to Craig Kennedy, an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Though some of its 7m daily exports are exported by pipeline, approximately 5-6m a day travel by sea, of which 60% goes to China and India. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the west gradually began implementing economic sanctions to target the Kremlin’s ability to wage war. A price cap was set on Russian seaborne crude exports, which led Moscow to respond by spending an estimated $15bn on buying 400 ageing tankers, often more than 20 years old, to create its own “shadow fleet”. “It’s a collection of old, poorly maintained ships that are opaquely owned, often underinsured and flying flags from jurisdictions either with weak controls or enforcement efforts, increasingly taking up false flags,” said Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, from the Royal United Services Institute, a UK thinktank. The idea was taken from Iran and Venezuela, already subject to sanctions, but the Russian shadow fleet is, Kennedy says, essentially separate. The evasion of regulations that makes the shadow fleet idea attractive to Moscow has also made it vulnerable. A ship’s flag is, in effect, its own jurisdiction – but if a ship is using a false or even multiple flags, it is effectively stateless and can therefore in theory be seized, though in European countries the exact legal interpretation differs. It is uncertain how far a capture of one or two shadow fleet vessels would hurt Moscow’s economy. Since the end of November, seven shadow fleet tankers have been struck by drones, with Ukraine claiming responsibility for four, including the Qendil, attacked in the Mediterranean. Data on oil export volumes assembled by Kennedy does not suggest there has been a significant drop-off in response, with the Russian export figure holding at more than 5m barrels of oil a day, though volumes are down from a 6m-a-day autumn peak. There are also signs that Moscow is reacting to western threats by re-registering shadow fleet tankers under the Russian flag to prevent seizure. The Marinera was one of 10 shadow fleet vessels in the Caribbean that had reflagged to Russia in December and January, part of a failed effort to break the US oil blockade of Venezuela. There remain more than 200 Russia-linked shadow fleet vessels still in operation, though Russia’s mainstream, own-flagged fleet is expanding. It now accounts for 51% of volumes, with the price cap to which they are subject considered easy to flout. British sabre-rattling comes at a time when Russia’s economy appears more vulnerable than before, with its war boom faded and economic growth faltering. Falling global oil prices, helped partly by greater supply from Venezuela, are hurting the Russian treasury. Yuliia Pavytska, a sanctions specialist at Kyiv School of Economics Institute, said oil and gas revenues for the Kremlin “fell by 24% in 2025” to 8.5tn rubles. They accounted for 22% of state income in 2025 – down from 41% in 2022. The economist said the EU was considering a total ban on providing maritime services such as insurance to Russian ships which, she argued, would be “very painful” for Moscow, particularly if it was accompanied by military action.

Storm-battered Portugal heads to polls as rivals unite to keep out far right

Portuguese voters will return to the polls on Sunday for the final round of a presidential election that has been marked by a push to keep the far-right candidate at bay and overshadowed by deadly storms that have lashed the country in recent days. The moderate leftwing candidate António José Seguro won the first round of the election, which was held on 18 January, taking 31.1% of the vote. André Ventura, the leader of the far-right party Chega – now the second-largest party in parliament – took 23.5% of the vote, while João Cotrim de Figueiredo, of the conservative pro-business Liberal Initiative party, came third among the 11 candidates, winning about 16% of the vote. Luis Marques Mendes, the candidate for Portugal’s ruling Social Democratic party (PSD), came fifth with 11.3% of the vote. Before the campaign was all but officially interrupted by two deadly and destructive storms, some conservative figures in the country had staged a rare display of apparent unity by declaring their support for Seguro in an attempt to head off the possibility of a far-right presidency. Others, including Portugal’s centre-right prime minister, Luís Montenegro, have refused to throw their weight behind the socialist. Opinion polls suggest that voters are also rallying around Seguro. According to a survey by Católica University pollsters released late on Tuesday, the socialist candidate is on 67% to Ventura’s 33%. Should the polls prove accurate, Seguro will secure the highest result for a first-term presidential contestant in the five decades since Portugal overturned its authoritarian regime. But if Ventura clinches more than 32% of the vote, Chega will have achieved a larger share of the vote than the governing PSD did in the last general election. Analysts say that in itself could herald another political watershed. “The ongoing problem is André Ventura’s percentage and his capacity to mobilise the rightwing electorate,” said António Costa Pinto, a political scientist at Lisbon University’s Institute of Social Sciences. “What’s going to be important to watch on Sunday night is whether Chega’s leader manages to exceed Montenegro’s share of the vote. If so – and polls suggest as much – Ventura will reinforce his project to cannibalise the rightwing space in Portugal.” Among the first to declare their support for Seguro were two centre-right politicians – the former president and prime minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, and the former deputy prime minister Paulo Portas. Politicians, former ministers, public intellectuals, and other figures identifying themselves as “non-socialists” are among more than 6,600 signatories of an open letter endorsing Seguro. Other conservative figures to have expressed their support for Seguro have done so reluctantly. Carlos Moedas, the centre-right mayor of Lisbon, told the Portuguese publication Expresso he would cast his vote for Seguro because the socialist candidate “was capable of being non-divisive”. But he added that his support was “unenthusiastic”. Mariana Leitão, the leader of the Liberal Initiative party, also said Seguro would get her vote albeit “unenthusiastically”. Montenegro, who leads the PSD, said he would not endorse any of the candidates for the runoff, declaring his party to be out of the campaign. Cotrim de Figueiredo, whose first-round performance exceeded expectations, has also refrained from explicitly backing the centre-left candidate, but has said he will not be voting for Ventura, abstaining, or casting a blank ballot. Montenegro’s refusal to pick a side has been criticised by several political figures and commentators in Portugal. “The prime minister’s position is seen as cowardly by some social-democratic sectors in the face of the threat Ventura poses to the foundations of the regime,” said Miguel Carvalho, a journalist and author of the book Por Dentro do Chega (Inside Chega) He said the prime minister’s neutrality, which is associated with his government’s legislative concessions to Chega, would come back to haunt him: “Montenegro’s decision will remain in the dark memory of the PSD, and opens the door for Ventura’s consolidation as the leader of the right in Portugal.” But, as Carvalho also pointed out, Montenegro and Cotrim de Figueiredo may have positioned themselves as they have because they are mindful that the “apparent unity” of the conservatives around Seguro could actually benefit Ventura. “It reinforces Ventura’s claim that he’s the anti-establishment candidate,” he said. For all the media attention that the conservatives’ support for Seguro has drawn, experts believe it may not prove to be hugely consequential. “The truth is that most of those conservative names are no longer that important,” said Costa Pinto. “The current elite of the Social Democratic and the Liberal Initiative parties know better, and they know reality has changed. Chega virtually decapitated those historically notable figures.” The campaign for the second round of the election was curtailed by two major storms that prompted the declaration of a state of calamity that has been extended to 15 February. Ventura called for the vote to be delayed by a week, calling it “a matter of equality among all Portuguese”. The national electoral authority said the vote would go ahead as scheduled: “A state of calamity, weather alerts or overall unfavourable situations are not in themselves a sufficient reason to postpone voting in a town or region.” Electoral law does, however, allow individual municipalities to postpone voting. Montenegro said that while the storms had caused a “devastating crisis”, barriers to to voting could be overcome.

BBC Persian journalists say Iran monitoring them and targeting their families

Exiled Iranian journalists working for the BBC have been warned their movements are being closely monitored by the state, as they said their families in Iran were being interrogated and persecuted for their reporting. Journalists said family members had been threatened with arrest and the seizure of their assets unless their loved ones stopped reporting on Iranian unrest. The Guardian has been told of instances in which the parents of journalists had been warned that Iran’s security forces knew where and when they worked, as well as the position of their desk in the newsroom. Staff working for BBC Persian, which reaches 30 million people a week, said the pressure had continued following the unrest that led to tens of thousands of deaths. There are calls for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed. Journalists have been told they remain targets for the Iranian security services, despite being on UK soil. Some are taking extra security measures after receiving credible death and kidnapping threats. Others have already been forced to quit because of the financial pressures placed on their relatives. One journalist, who spoke anonymously out of fear that being named would place “more pressure on my family”, said their father had been detained and warned by security forces that they were monitoring overseas journalists. “They knew everything about me somehow,” the journalist said. “They said they know where I live. They even gave my father the address, the telephone number, where I’m sitting exactly in the newsroom. “They knew which programme exactly that I was with and they said ‘we are not really happy with this programme’.” They said their family had been warned that London was not safe. There have been credible threats to Iranian journalists in the UK, including the stabbing of a reporter outside his London home. Last year, three Iranians appeared in court charged with targeting UK-based journalists. They deny the charges. The situation became even more critical following Iran’s internet shutdown, which began on 8 January and followed nearly two weeks of anti-government protests. State authorities appear to have relaxed internet restrictions more recently, but not removed them, after the violent suppression of protests by the security forces. Behrang Tajdin, BBC Persian TV’s economics correspondent, said his mother was detained and asked about his work. He said he did not hear from her for three weeks during the internet blackout imposed by the government. “Some of the threats look very serious and are made by people who may not be based in Iran, so they may have the means to affect what they are saying,” he said. “Since 2022, it seems like the Iranian regime is hiring third-party criminals to try to harm Iranian journalists and activists based on UK soil. “I and many other BBC journalists may work in the same building, but we don’t lead the same sort of life in terms of being confident that we are completely safe. We have to take the situation seriously and that hasn’t abated. We need to be very, very careful.” Tajdin said family members of his colleagues had been threatened with having business licences removed or forced into early retirement. Another BBC journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had to be careful when calling family members. “After these protests, they didn’t leave us,” the journalist said. “It’s not safe at all after this protest to talk very clearly. “Many of my colleagues, their families already had their assets frozen. Some have been obliged to leave the BBC. I know at least two of them left because their families have been under really big [financial] pressure and they needed the money.” The journalist said the tactic was designed to pressure them out of journalism and it left them feeling guilty. “They know how to push mental pressure,” they said. “[My family] have no choice because it’s my choice to be a journalist and be out of Iran – the pressure is on them. “This is something that I can’t really forgive myself for. Even sometimes when I’m happy, and I want to go [out] with friends to have a normal life, you feel a little bit of shame inside because you feel, OK, the family are under pressure, anything can happen to them, but I’m freely living here.” Tajdin said: “I cannot count the number of times that a colleague has come to me with teary eyes, saying: ‘My dad passed away, my mom passed away, and I couldn’t be there to say goodbye. I couldn’t be at their funeral’. Or worse than that – they’ve got a terrible terminal illness and they can’t be with them. “I can’t stress this enough – every single one of us knows that our family members in Iran are being punished on our behalf.”

‘Can Mette-Marit be queen after this?’: Rape trial and Epstein files bring double crisis for Norway’s royals

There will be little to celebrate when Norway’s King Harald, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, turns 89 later this month. Two multigenerational crises have rocked the institution, causing its popularity to dip in polls of Norwegians and bringing a public glare that far exceeds that of previous scandals. The king’s step-grandson, Marius Borg Høiby, who joined the royal family when his mother Mette-Marit married in 2001, is standing trial in Oslo charged with 38 counts, including the rape of four women. Crown Princess Mette-Marit, meanwhile, has come under intense scrutiny over damaging revelations in the Epstein files about her years-long relationship with the late sex offender. On Tuesday, the first day of his trial that has transfixed Norway, Høiby pleaded not guilty to the most serious charges of rape and domestic violence but acknowledged partial guilt – a plea allowed under Norwegian law – for aggravated assault and reckless behaviour. He also admitted lesser charges, including driving too fast. The crown princess had planned to leave the country for at least some of the trial, but changed her mind after the latest tranche of the Epstein files, released last Friday by the US justice department, appeared to include nearly 1,000 mentions of her. In one exchange from 2012, she asked Epstein in an email if it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?” The Epstein revelations prompted fierce criticism of Mette-Marit, including from the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Stør, who agreed with her own comments that she had shown “poor judgement” and called on her to provide more information. On Friday, Mette-Marit released a statement via the royal household expressing her “deepest regret for my friendship with Jeffrey Epstein” and apologising for “the situation that I have put the royal family in, especially the king and queen.” Her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, speaking to reporters, said there was “a lot happening at once” for his family. “We support Marius in the situation he is in, we look after the other children, they must also be looked after, and I have to look after and take care of the crown princess,” he said. “Fortunately, she takes care of me, too.” Although the king and his wife, Queen Sonja, remain popular among many Norwegians, the standing of the wider royal family has taken a severe hit. A poll this week by the newspaper Aftenposten found that support for Norway having a monarchy has dropped from 72% in 2024 to 54% today. A total of three polls have found that close to half of the population believes Mette-Marit can no longer become queen when Haakon ascends to the throne. As recently as December there was a public outpouring of support for the crown princess, who has pulmonary fibrosis, when she revealed that she will probably have to have a lung transplant. Now, some of the organisations of which she is royal patron have said they are considering ending their association with her. Kjetil B Alstadheim, Aftenposten’s political editor, who wrote an article this week asking the question: “Can Mette-Marit become queen after this?”, said the Epstein revelations posed the biggest threat because unlike Høiby – who is not an official member of the family – Mette-Marit has a central role in the institution and its future. “She is supposed to be queen one day, so that’s more difficult,” he said. “The others are side stories. Difficult stories but side stories. So it hits the family in a more direct way.” Støre’s decision to comment on Mette-Marit’s actions was unprecedented, he said. “I have not found any example from earlier where a prime minister has criticised a member of the royal family in that way.”. He also added that Støre’s instruction to her to provide the public with more answers was highly unusual. “It’s very unique that a prime minister tells a member of the royal family what to do.” The royals are not immune to scandal: Mette-Marit’s entry into the family as a single mother before her marriage to Prince Haakon in 2001 caused a stir, and the business activities of Princess Märtha Louise – the crown prince’s sister – drew unwelcome attention after her marriage to a self-described shaman in 2024. But the developments of recent weeks are of a different order of magnitude. How the royal family handles the Epstein files issue will be crucial to “how they are viewed in the weeks and months and years to come”, said Alstadheim. Despite the apparent rise in republican sentiment and the unusual prime ministerial intervention, the dial hasn’t moved on the status of the monarchy among Norway’s wider political class. In a strange coincidence, a vote that takes places every four years in parliament on making Norway a republic was held on Tuesday. Just 26 MPs voted in favour of getting rid of the monarchy, against 141 who voted to keep it. Support was in fact lower than the last time a vote took place, in June 2022, when 35 voted in favour of a republic. The measure requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Alstadheim attributed the result to a desire on the part of the MPs to “look at this on a longer horizon than the current news cycle”. The Norwegian republican association, Norge Som Republikk, argued that the vote should have been postponed until more information was known about the mother and son’s behaviour. “Now we have to wait at least another four years,” said their leader, Craig Aaen-Stockdale. Vilde Helljesen, a journalist for the state broadcaster NRK, said many Norwegians were waiting for answers from Mette-Marit on the full extent of her relationship with Epstein. “She has said that she regrets her contact with Epstein and that she should have better researched his past and apologised for that,” Helljesen said. “However, the recent files have left new questions unanswered.” In practice, she added, the only person who could give and remove royal titles was the king: “As long as Mette-Marit is the wife of the heir to the throne, she will one day be queen – or the title that the king at the time decides. That is the formality.”