Israelis and others have ­welcomed the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the ­master­mind of the 7 October 2023 attacks, as an “Osama bin Laden moment”. This reflects how many in Israel feel about the death of a man responsible for the ­murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians and their compatriots, but ­terrorism experts have long debated the ­efficacy of eliminating the ­leaders of violent extremist groups, with some suggesting the strategy is counter-productive.

The truth is that no one is sure.

There are some cases where the elimination of a leader has brought definitive success. When the Mossad killed Wadie Haddad, leader of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and responsible for a string of ­spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1970s, probably with poisoned ­chocolates, his group disintegrated. Hijackings and bombings ­continued, but were carried out by others.

Velupillai Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka, died in 2009 in a skirmish with government forces after a brutal campaign with ­many civilian casualties – though far fewer than the tens of –thousands in Gaza. This decisively closed a bloody decades-long civil war with complex social, ethnic, religious and economic roots.

Targeted killings were a mainstay of US strategy during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the work of Bin Laden and his al-Qaida. The advent of drones was one reason, but so was the growing reluctance to risk western soldiers’ lives in combat.

In Afghanistan, the killing of a series of Taliban leaders was lauded at the time but did ­nothing to change the circumstances, regional and local, that ultimately lent the movement its strength. “Hunting man is a difficult game,” one British brigadier blithely said in Kabul in 2006. It was also a futile one. The Taliban were ­undoubtedly hurt by their losses, and some ­studies show their capabilities ­suffered, but they were still able to retake power in 2021.

In Iraq, the US killed successive leaders of Sunni extremist ­jihadist groups. The elimination in 2006 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the first prominent leader of al-Qaida’s ­affiliate there, merely cleared the way for competent, low-­profile local men to rebuild. These too were killed, eventually allowing the ­little known but ruthlessly effective Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to take over. He unleashed Islamic State on the region and eventually western Europe too.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, but the IS leaders who followed have been lacklustre – when they have stayed alive. The ­current head is thought to be a minor preacher and faction leader in a remote part of east Africa. So that could be counted as a win for those who support assassination as a strategy.

Then there’s Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah became leader of the Lebanon-based organisation in 1992 after his predecessor was killed by Israel, then ruled ­skilfully and ­effectively for 32 years, ­evading multiple efforts to end his life. Last month Israel killed not just Nasrallah but the entire top leadership echelon. This combination of “decapitation” and straightforward attrition is virtually unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah is reeling.

The US had its literal “Bin Laden moment” in 2011 when the founder and leader of al-Qaida was tracked to a Pakistani hide-out and killed by US special forces. Subsequently, under Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida gave up international attacks and entrenched itself in local communities. Al-Zawahiri was killed in 2022 and we still don’t really know who al-Qaida’s current leader is, not least because there is no one who has the profile of either predecessor.

Al-Qaida is still around, though it does not pose much of an ­international threat at the moment. This is less true of IS, which is gaining ground in Africa, active in Afghanistan and continues to inspire attacks elsewhere.

Israel has of course already killed many of the leaders and most ­capable operatives of Hamas in the past 20 years. Each death has forced change, but rarely that anticipated.

If the chequered history of ­decapitation strategies tells us ­anything, it is that it is almost impossible to predict what effect killing a leader will have. This may not matter to those who order the killings or to those who rejoice at the news of a successful assassination. Politics and entirely ­understandable desire for retribution and justice are important factors.

But any jubilation in Israel or elsewhere at the death of Sinwar should be tempered with an awareness that no one can know what will come next. It may indeed be the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza, as Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested. But the history of such killings ­suggests that, in the long term, any decisive victory will remain elusive.

Israelis and others have ­welcomed the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the ­master­mind of the 7 October 2023 attacks, as an “Osama bin Laden moment”. This reflects how many in Israel feel about the death of a man responsible for the ­murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians and their compatriots, but ­terrorism experts have long debated the ­efficacy of eliminating the ­leaders of violent extremist groups, with some suggesting the strategy is counter-productive.

The truth is that no one is sure.

There are some cases where the elimination of a leader has brought definitive success. When the Mossad killed Wadie Haddad, leader of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and responsible for a string of ­spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1970s, probably with poisoned ­chocolates, his group disintegrated. Hijackings and bombings ­continued, but were carried out by others.

Velupillai Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka, died in 2009 in a skirmish with government forces after a brutal campaign with ­many civilian casualties – though far fewer than the tens of –thousands in Gaza. This decisively closed a bloody decades-long civil war with complex social, ethnic, religious and economic roots.

Targeted killings were a mainstay of US strategy during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the work of Bin Laden and his al-Qaida. The advent of drones was one reason, but so was the growing reluctance to risk western soldiers’ lives in combat.

In Afghanistan, the killing of a series of Taliban leaders was lauded at the time but did ­nothing to change the circumstances, regional and local, that ultimately lent the movement its strength. “Hunting man is a difficult game,” one British brigadier blithely said in Kabul in 2006. It was also a futile one. The Taliban were ­undoubtedly hurt by their losses, and some ­studies show their capabilities ­suffered, but they were still able to retake power in 2021.

In Iraq, the US killed successive leaders of Sunni extremist ­jihadist groups. The elimination in 2006 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the first prominent leader of al-Qaida’s ­affiliate there, merely cleared the way for competent, low-­profile local men to rebuild. These too were killed, eventually allowing the ­little known but ruthlessly effective Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to take over. He unleashed Islamic State on the region and eventually western Europe too.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, but the IS leaders who followed have been lacklustre – when they have stayed alive. The ­current head is thought to be a minor preacher and faction leader in a remote part of east Africa. So that could be counted as a win for those who support assassination as a strategy.

Then there’s Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah became leader of the Lebanon-based organisation in 1992 after his predecessor was killed by Israel, then ruled ­skilfully and ­effectively for 32 years, ­evading multiple efforts to end his life. Last month Israel killed not just Nasrallah but the entire top leadership echelon. This combination of “decapitation” and straightforward attrition is virtually unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah is reeling.

The US had its literal “Bin Laden moment” in 2011 when the founder and leader of al-Qaida was tracked to a Pakistani hide-out and killed by US special forces. Subsequently, under Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida gave up international attacks and entrenched itself in local communities. Al-Zawahiri was killed in 2022 and we still don’t really know who al-Qaida’s current leader is, not least because there is no one who has the profile of either predecessor.

Al-Qaida is still around, though it does not pose much of an ­international threat at the moment. This is less true of IS, which is gaining ground in Africa, active in Afghanistan and continues to inspire attacks elsewhere.

Israel has of course already killed many of the leaders and most ­capable operatives of Hamas in the past 20 years. Each death has forced change, but rarely that anticipated.

If the chequered history of ­decapitation strategies tells us ­anything, it is that it is almost impossible to predict what effect killing a leader will have. This may not matter to those who order the killings or to those who rejoice at the news of a successful assassination. Politics and entirely ­understandable desire for retribution and justice are important factors.

But any jubilation in Israel or elsewhere at the death of Sinwar should be tempered with an awareness that no one can know what will come next. It may indeed be the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza, as Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested. But the history of such killings ­suggests that, in the long term, any decisive victory will remain elusive.

With just half a month to go, the US presidential election is deadlocked, as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump jockey for any advantage in ways that illuminate their stark political differences; the Democratic nominee most recently announced a plan to campaign with the Obamas, while the Republican nominee doubles down on threatening his enemies.

In the past week, Trump has gone further than ever in branding his political opponents “the enemy within” and talking about deploying the military against them, while Harris herself entered uncharted territory by finally agreeing to label him “fascist”.

The latest polling figures seem to mirror such sharply polarised rhetoric, with the seven crucial swing states almost split down the middle in allegiance.

In a particularly graphic example, a Brookings Institution/Public Religion Research Institute survey published on Friday showed more than a third of voters – 34% – agree with one of Trump’s most incendiary contentions: that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, rhetoric that has drawn comparisons with Hitler and fueled warnings of looming fascism.

Evidence that such warnings are failing to electorally hurt the Republican nominee is displayed in the Guardian’s most recent 10-day poll tracker. As of 16 October, it showed Harris ahead nationwide by just two points, 48% to 46% – figures unchanged from a week ago and a significantly tighter margin than she enjoyed several weeks ago.

The races in the battleground states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona – are, if anything, even more cliffhanging, with numbers within error margins in each.

The pair are level pegging in Michigan and North Carolina, well within any statistical margins of error. The latter state saw early in-person voting begin at 400 sites on Thursday, as it continues to clear up the devastation left by Hurricane Helene last month, an operation marked by lies and misinformation from Trump and his supporters.

Harris has tiny leads in Pennsylvania and Nevada, while Trump is ahead in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, though the races remain far too close to predict with any certainty.

With Harris scrambling for a vital edge, Barack and Michelle Obama announced on Friday that they would campaign alongside her next week. It will be the former first lady’s first appearance since a widely lauded speech at the Democratic national convention in August, when she skewered Trump.

The lack of clarity over the election’s outcome seems all the more remarkable in a race that has had so many seemingly clarifying moments, not least within the past week.

One came last Saturday when Trump, in a speech in Coachella, California – a state Harris is certain to carry emphatically – talked darkly about “the enemy within”. a description he applied to the Democratic congressman Adam Schiff. He repeated the riff the following day in a Fox News interview with a friendly host, going on to suggest that the armed forces or national guard should be used against agitators causing “chaos” on election day – while stressing that these would not be on his side.

The line seemed to give Harris an opening. Last Monday evening, at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, she took it, labelling Trump “unstable and unhinged” while playing her audience footage of the most extreme rhetoric from the Republican nominee’s public appearances in what was seen as an unusual political innovation.

At almost the same moment, in a scene of disconcerting levity, Trump stood onstage swaying along to some of his favourite songs after a town hall event near Philadelphia had been interrupted by two medical emergencies.

Rather than continue a question-and-answer session, he requested a playlist that included James Brown, Luciano Pavarotti and Guns N’ Roses while importuning the gathering to listen and dance along for the next 40 minutes.

Harris’s campaign attempted to highlight the episode as more evidence of Trump’s unfitness for office and supposed declining mental condition.

The vice-president went further the following day, agreeing with Charlamagne Tha God in an interview for a Black radio station in Detroit that Trump’s vision amounted to “fascism”.

“Yes we can say that,” she said, while still avoiding actually uttering a word that has been applied to Trump by others, including Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, who has called him “a fascist to the core”.

The gaping chasm between the two candidates was further illustrated in contrasting appearances on two Fox News events on Wednesday.

Trump went into one, an all-female town hall gathering, with the stated aim of wooing women voters, among whom polls shows he lags far behind Harris. In a comment that again provided fodder for Democrat mockery, he proclaimed himself to be “the father of IVF”, a form of fertility treatment that Senate Republicans voted against earlier this year. CNN later reported that Republican women’s groups had arranged for the audience to be packed with Trump supporters.

For her part, Harris engaged in a combative interview with one of Fox’s Bret Baier in what was broadly viewed as a successful exercise in entering hostile terrain by going on a rightwing network that has vocally cheerled for Trump.

Yet despite – or perhaps because of – these sharply diverging pictures, surveys show voters remain locked in entrenched positions,with the next couple of weeks likely to feature a desperate trawl on both sides for independent or undecided electors, bolstered by late get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at the less motivated sections of their respective bases.

In many countries around the world, breakfast TV means cele­brity interviews, soap operas and last night’s football highlights. On the German-language channel 3sat this Sunday morning, it means a one-hour philosophical discussion on trauma psychology, followed by a book review programme and a classical concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra.

The collaboration between public broadcasters in Austria, Germany and Switzerland is a unique experi­ment in pan-European broadcasting that has defied doubters for almost four decades: highbrow television.

Yet whether 3sat will get to cele­brate its 40th anniversary this De­cember is in serious doubt. At a summit in Leipzig this week, the heads of Germany’s 16 federal states will consider a proposal to close the world’s most donnish TV station by merging it “partially or completely” into Arte, the Franco-German culture channel that is embarking on a Europe-wide expansion.

Admirers of 3sat’s resolute intellectualism say the merger plans are a sign that authorities are bowing to populist attacks on public service broadcasting, by cutting culture programming that may appear painless but which is also unlikely to save much money. A petition to save the channel has been signed by 140,000 people including the film director Wim Wenders and actor Sandra Hüller.

But the debate over 3sat’s future also raises questions over the reformability of Germany’s public broadcasting system, which has one the biggest budgets in the world but is also one of the most complex and decentralised.

3sat was launched in 1984 as an antidote to what the then head of Austria’s public broadcaster bemoaned as the “­feeble-mindedness” of mainstream television. The bulk of its content is provided by the two main German public broadcasting channels, ARD and ZDF, with Austria’s ORF contributing 25% and Switzerland’s SRG supplying 10% of its programming.

“To make a daily feuilleton [arts and ideas] programme for tele­vision was something no one else dared do,” says the journalist and philosopher Gert Scobel, who presents several channel’s flagship shows. “Everyone told us we would last only three weeks.”

Among its mainstays are Scobel’s science programme Nano and the culture news programme Kulturzeit, which go out during mornings and evenings each weekday, as well as themed days on subjects as diverse as the dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Afghan history and genetics. It is the only channel to show all the three countries’ main news programmes, and to live-broadcast the two-week-plus Theatertreffen festival in Berlin and readings from the three-day Bachmannpreis poetry competition in Klagenfurt.

Scobel says: “I tell the guests on my show that each programme only has one aim – to leave viewers smarter than they were before, and that they approach each subject from different directions with the aim of finding a solution.”

3sat’s market share is only about 1% in each of the three collaborating countries, though with 90m German-language households, its viewing figures are considerable. The channel costs German public broadcasters around €92m a year, roughly the same as the German children’s TV channel Kika.

But, as in other countries across Europe, Germany is facing an increasingly acrimonious debate over state-funded public service broadcasting. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland has vowed to shrink the public broadcasters down to a tenth of their current size, scrap the compulsory licence fee and finance the remaining offering with a tax on streaming giants such as Amazon and Netflix.

Where the popu­list right is buoyant, centrist parties have fallen in line: in Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, the Christian Democrat and Social Democrat state premiers have in the past few years tried to block plans for a licence fee rise.

From 2025, people registered in Germany face a monthly licence fee of €18.94 (£15.78), slightly higher than its equivalent in the UK (£14.12) and considerably more than France (£9.64). In multilingual Switzerland, the fee is higher still at SFr27.91 (£24.73) and there is political pressure to cut back spending on public service television.

High-minded 3sat could become the sacrificial lamb on the altar of the populist zeitgeist. Swiss broadcaster SRF said it would not comment on German proposals to close the jointly funded channel. Only Austria’s ORF said it would seek an “intense exchange” with its partners on the station’s future, insisting it was “essential” that its marquee TV productions reach an international audience.

Not all criticism of 3sat is motivated by populist rabble-­rousing. The channel’s budget has been salami-sliced for years and its schedule increasingly includes reruns of period dramas, crime shows and wildlife documentaries.

“A lot of the original programmes produced by 3sat deserved to be protected, but are we sure we need them all in a separate channel?” asks Stefan Niggemeier, a German journalist and media commentator.

Its shortcomings are exposed by comparison with the Franco-German culture broadcaster Arte, which presents itself less and less as a linear TV channel and more and more as an arts-focused streaming platform, a “Netflix for the educated classes”, as the broadsheet Die Zeit has called it.

Established via a treaty between France and Germany in 1990, six years after the birth of 3sat, Arte has gained considerable momentum in recent years after the French president Emmanuel Macron proposed developing it into a “European platform”. Over the past six years, it has added offerings of programmes subtitled or dubbed into Polish, Italian, Spanish and English.

“Because Arte had to straddle a language barrier, it was always under more pressure to develop its own identity and come up with original ideas,” says Niggemeier. “Arte has managed to stay cool, while 3sat feels like a magazine for linear television.”

He doubts that politicians will close the German-speaking world’s most erudite TV channel in the immediate future. “But in the long-term, I think it’s right to ask how we can change it.”

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim they visited a home – could present a serious setback to Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days to an election that increasingly appears set to be determined by turnout.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared to volunteers or campaign staff​.

America Pac denied it was experiencing that level of actual fraud in Arizona and Nevada and declined to comment on reporting for this story.

And a person familiar with the America Pac operation said: “Sidekick was never expected to handle the auditing of America Pac’s door operation. The reason the pac is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures each canvassing firm puts in place and the auditing procedures of the pac writ large.”

But multiple people familiar with the Campaign Sidekick app, including a recent auditor for Blitz Canvassing and a senior executive at another vendor who signed a non-disclosure agreement with America Pac, agreed the unusual activity logs were an effective tool to detect cheaters.

The unusual activity logs, for instance, showed a canvasser who was marked by GPS as sitting at a “Guayo’s On the Trail” restaurant half a mile away from the doors he was supposedly hitting in Globe, Arizona. Another canvasser was recorded marking voters as “not home” two blocks away from that apartment.

The Guardian also conducted its own test to see whether manually removing instances of “false positives” – doors wrongly marked as fraudulent – would show the unusual activity logs were too sensitive. Using a randomly picked sample of 26 canvassers in Arizona, the rate of suspected fakes was in line with the overall rate.

Suspicious doors

The Trump campaign took a gamble this cycle when it outsourced the bulk of its ground game to political action committees, after the Federal Election Commission​ earlier this year for the first time allowed campaigns to coordinate its voter turnout efforts with ​outside groups.

The campaign initially envisaged multiple pacs helping to drive the Trump vote, but America Pac ultimately became the largest and most ambitious of the outside groups as it poured more than $29.8m into its field operation for Trump and became the only pac with a material presence in every battleground state.

The largest of the other pacs involved with doing field work, such as Turning Point Action and America ​First Works, have a smaller footprint. Turning Point’s team in Wisconsin has also since been subsumed into America Pac’s operation, two people familiar with the matter said.

A​s a result of its heavy investment, America Pac has been able to post impressive numbers of door-knocks in only a matter of months through its network of several vendors and dozens of subcontractors under those vendors in each of the battleground states.

But in the final stretch to the election, as the total door-knocks have increased, so too have suspected fakes, according to the leaked data. On 15 October, 20.1% of doors in Arizona were flagged under the unusual activity logs. On 16 October, it rose to 23.8% and on 17 October, it hit 26.9%.

The uptick was also reflected in Nevada. On 15 October, 21.2% were flagged by the unusual survey log, a figure that rose on 16 October to 23.8% and then jumped dramatically on 17 October to 30.1%.

Under normal circumstances, a canvasser walks up to a door for a home where a Trump voter lives. The canvasser then navigates to a list of questions on the smartphone app and records responses to the survey.

An unusual activity report on the Campaign Sidekick app is auto-generated when a survey is filled out by a canvasser some distance from the location of the target voter’s home.

The app has built-in tolerances and generates an unusual survey report after taking into account several factors, such as how quickly the canvasser at issue is supposedly hitting doors and if the responses are recorded more than 100ft away from the target door.

America Pac has said its auditing is done by its vendors. In Arizona and Nevada, Blitz Canvassing is understood to audit the numbers at least every five days and, when a canvasser is caught cheating, they are immediately fired with their walkbooks reassigned to another canvasser.

“The America Pac field program is the most robust and effective outside canvassing effort ever, knocking on more doors with more people in more isolated terrain than has ever been done before,” America Pac’s vendors Blitz Canvassing, Echo Canyon, Synapse Group, Patriot Grassroots and Campaign Sidekick said in a joint statement.

“We are fully confident in the authenticity of our door counts thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each canvassing firm deploys to supplement Campaign Sidekick’s strong capabilities, and we are on pace to exceed every single one of our door goals,” the statement said.

But that auditing system used in Arizona and Nevada only works if the fraudulent canvassers are caught quickly, which has not always been the case. In one instance, one canvasser was terminated for blatant fraud only after he had worked for five days and supposedly hit 796 doors – with every single one flagged as suspicious.

Part of the problem with paid canvassing, in general, is that canvassing vendors are disincentivized to fire canvassers the more doors they hit because the vendors are paid by the door. If the doors are not hit, the vendor owes money back to the client or owes that many “free” doors.

For America Pac, there is further disincentive for vendors to fire canvassers who might only be frauding one door out of every 10 – effectively someone who just cuts corners – because the labor supply of canvassers is diminished this late in the cycle and hiring a replacement is increasingly difficult, two people familiar with the situation said.

Six former guerrillas, whose trial for a civil war-era murder was criticised by fellow environmentalists as politicised, have been acquitted by a court in El Salvador.

Prosecutors had sought up to 36 years in prison for the former rebels of the hard-left Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

But the judges acquitted them “due to the statute of limitations” and ordered their immediate release, the defence lawyer Carolina Herrador said after the hearing in the city of Sensuntepeque. The court upheld arrest warrants for two other fugitive suspects, Herrador said.

Prosecutors accused the eight former guerrillas, who were arrested in January 2023, of killing a woman in 1989 because they suspected she was an army informant. Five of them had also been part of an environmental campaign for a ban on metal mining that was introduced in 2017, which activists fear the president, Nayib Bukele, wants to reverse.

“We never had any doubt about our innocence. Today we have come out with our heads held high. We were not mistaken about our innocence,” Pedro Rivas, one of the environmentalists, said. Supporters outside the court shouted “Freedom!” and greeted the activists with hugs.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders and other experts expressed concern in a letter to Bukele’s government after the 2023 arrests that the case was an attempt to intimidate environmentalists.

The activists’ supporters argued that the speed of the trial contrasted with the lack of an investigation into massacres the military has been accused of carrying out during the 1979-1992 civil war.

The case was motivated by “powerful political and economic interests” targeting opponents of mining, David Morales, of the nongovernmental organisation Cristosal, said.

Six former guerrillas, whose trial for a civil war-era murder was criticised by fellow environmentalists as politicised, have been acquitted by a court in El Salvador.

Prosecutors had sought up to 36 years in prison for the former rebels of the hard-left Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

But the judges acquitted them “due to the statute of limitations” and ordered their immediate release, the defence lawyer Carolina Herrador said after the hearing in the city of Sensuntepeque. The court upheld arrest warrants for two other fugitive suspects, Herrador said.

Prosecutors accused the eight former guerrillas, who were arrested in January 2023, of killing a woman in 1989 because they suspected she was an army informant. Five of them had also been part of an environmental campaign for a ban on metal mining that was introduced in 2017, which activists fear the president, Nayib Bukele, wants to reverse.

“We never had any doubt about our innocence. Today we have come out with our heads held high. We were not mistaken about our innocence,” Pedro Rivas, one of the environmentalists, said. Supporters outside the court shouted “Freedom!” and greeted the activists with hugs.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders and other experts expressed concern in a letter to Bukele’s government after the 2023 arrests that the case was an attempt to intimidate environmentalists.

The activists’ supporters argued that the speed of the trial contrasted with the lack of an investigation into massacres the military has been accused of carrying out during the 1979-1992 civil war.

The case was motivated by “powerful political and economic interests” targeting opponents of mining, David Morales, of the nongovernmental organisation Cristosal, said.

Liam Payne’s former partner Cheryl Tweedy has described media coverage of his death as “abhorrent”.

The singer’s father, Geoff Payne, travelled to Buenos Aires in Argentina on Friday to organise the repatriation of his 31-year-old son’s body. He was seen exiting the CasaSur Palermo hotel, where the singer died after falling from a third-floor balcony on Wednesday.

In a video shared on the BBC, Payne was seen visiting tributes left by fans outside the hotel, reading letters and pausing around flowers, photographs and candles.

Tweedy, the former Girls Aloud singer, voiced concerns on Friday over protecting their seven-year-old son, Bear, and criticised the “media exploitation” since the star’s death.

In an Instagram post, she said: “As I try to navigate this earth-shattering event, and work through my own grief at this indescribably painful time, I’d like to kindly remind everyone that we have lost a human being.

“Liam was not only a pop star and celebrity, he was a son, a brother, an uncle, a dear friend and a father to our 7-year-old son.

“A son that now has to face the reality of never seeing his father again. What is troubling my spirit the most is that one day Bear will have access to the abhorrent reports and media exploitation we have seen in the past two days. It is breaking my heart further that I cannot protect him from that in his future.”

The post was made alongside a black-and-white photo of Payne, with whom she had a relationship between 2016 and 2018, and their son.

Cheryl added: “I am begging you to consider what use some of these reports are serving, other than to cause further harm to everyone left behind picking up the pieces.

“Before you leave comments or make videos, ask yourself if you would like your own child or family to read them. Please give Liam the little dignity he has left in the wake of his death to rest in some peace at last.”

Payne’s girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, said she was at a “complete loss” following his death. “Nothing about the past few days have felt real,” she said in a post on her own Instagram story.

“Liam, my angel, you are everything. I want you to know I loved you unconditionally and completely. I will continue to love you for the rest of my life. I love you Liam.”

On Saturday, Payne’s sister Ruth Gibbins paid tribute to the “best brother and friend I’ll ever have”.

“My brain is struggling to catch up with what’s happening and I don’t understand where you’ve gone,” she wrote. “I don’t feel this world was good enough or kind enough to you, and quite often over the last few years, you’ve had to really try hard to overcome all that was being aimed at you.

“You just wanted to be loved and to make people happy with your music. You never believed you were good enough, I hope you can now see this outpouring of love that you never received in your time.

“Thank you for changing my life, thank you for the incredible memories, thank you for being the best brother and friend I’ll ever have.”

The music mogul Simon Cowell said he was “truly devastated” after the death of the singer, adding that he felt “heartbroken” and “empty”. “Every tear I have shed is a memory of you,” he wrote in a statement on Instagram.

Payne found fame alongside Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles when Cowell put them together to form One Direction on the ITV talent show The X Factor in 2010.

A joint statement from the band said they were “completely devastated” and would miss the singer “terribly”, adding the “memories we shared with him will be treasured forever”.

Payne died of multiple traumas and “internal and external haemorrhage”, a postmortem report said. Argentina’s national criminal and correctional prosecutor’s office No 16 said it was investigating the incident as an “inconclusive death” after the report.

Cuba was plunged into blackout for a second time on Saturday after its electrical grid collapsed again hours after authorities announced they had begun re-establishing service.

CubaDebate, a state-run media outlet, said the grid operator, UNE, had reported the “total disconnection of the national electro-energetic system” and was working on re-establishing it.

The electrical grid first collapsed at about midday on Friday after one of the island’s largest power plants failed, leaving more than 10 million people without power.

Even before the collapse, an electricity shortfall on Friday had forced Cuba’s communist-run government to send nonessential state workers home and cancel school classes as it sought to conserve fuel for generation. But lights began to flicker on in scattered pockets across the island early in the evening on Friday, offering some hope that power would be restored. UNE has not yet provided any details on what caused the grid to collapse again on Saturday, or how long it would take to re-establish service.

There have been weeks of worsening blackouts, often lasting 10-20 hours, across much of the island, which Cuba’s government has blamed on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand. Strong winds that began with Hurricane Milton last week had also made it harder to deliver scarce fuel from boats offshore, officials have said.

Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped off significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once leading suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba. Venezuela slashed its deliveries of subsidised fuel by half this year, forcing the island to search for far more expensive oil on the spot market.

Cuba’s government also blames the US trade embargo, as well as sanctions imposed under the former US president Donald Trump, for its difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants. On Friday, the US denied any role in the grid collapse in Cuba.

A record number of Nigerians and Ghanaians were deported to their home countries on one flight, with 44 forcibly removed on Friday, the Home Office has confirmed.

The news came as it emerged that any asylum seekers who arrive in Diego Garcia before a treaty between the UK and Mauritius to hand back the Chagos Islands is finalised will be sent to Saint Helena, a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean described as one of the most remote places on Earth.

The Chagos Islands deal is expected to be signed next year. About 60 Tamils who have been stranded on Diego Garcia since 2021 and who have mounted a legal challenge claiming they have been unlawfully detained on the island will not be included in the Saint Helena deal. Judgment in their unlawful detention claim is expected soon.

Numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Diego Garcia since 2021 are in the hundreds, not comparable to the tens of thousands crossing the Channel in small boats from northern France to the UK in recent years.

The Home Office told the Guardian on Friday evening that the Nigeria and Ghana deportations were part of a “major surge” in immigration enforcement and returns.

Since Labour came to power in July, 3,600 people have been returned to various countries, including about 200 to Brazil and 46 on a flight to Vietnam and Timor-Leste. There are also regular deportation flights to Albania, Lithuania and Romania.

Deportation flights to Nigeria and Ghana are relatively rare, with just four recorded since 2020, according to data released under freedom of information rules. The previous flights had far fewer people onboard, with six, seven, 16 and 21 respectively. Friday’s flight had more than double that number removed on a single flight.

The Guardian spoke to four Nigerians while they were held at Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick before their deportation. One man due to fly tried to kill himself. His cellmate, who witnessed the attempt, said he was “very traumatised” by what he had seen.

A second man said: “I’ve been in the UK for 15 years as an asylum seeker. I have no criminal record but the Home Office has refused my claim.”

A third man said he had been groomed into exploitation as a child and had torture scars on his body. “I told the Home Office I was a victim of trafficking. They rejected my claim.”

A fourth said he had desperately searched for a solicitor to challenge his removal directions, but had been unable to find anyone to represent him.

Fizza Qureshi, the chief executive of Migrants’ Rights Network, who was in contact with some of the people on the Nigeria/Ghana deportation flight before they left the UK, said: “We are extremely shocked at the cruelty of these deportations, especially with the speed, secrecy and the lack of access to legal support. In the words of one detainee we spoke to before he was put on the flight: ‘The Home Office is playing politics with people’s lives. We have not done anything wrong other than cry for help.’”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We have already begun delivering a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity to remove people with no right to be in the UK and ensure the rules are respected and enforced, with over 3,600 returned in the first two months of the new government.”

More than 600 people crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday, according to Home Office figures.

A total of 647 people made the crossing in 10 boats, pushing the total for the year above 28,000.

Friday’s crossings came after French authorities announced the death of a baby off the coast of Wissant in the Pas-de-Calais region on Thursday evening.

A funeral home in Poland has apologised after a body that it was transporting fell out of a hearse and into traffic.

Polish media reported that a man was driving down a street on Friday in Stalowa Wola, a city in south-eastern Poland, when he saw a sheet on his car window. When the sheet slid down, he saw a body lying on the road. For a moment the driver feared that he had hit the person.

Local media published an image of the body lying on a white-striped pedestrian crossing, where it had tumbled out of the hearse.

The company transporting the body, Hades funeral services, issued a statement on Saturday taking responsibility for the incident and blaming a technical failure of the hearse.

“It is with deep regret that we inform you that as a result of an unexpected technical failure of the electric tailgate lock in the hearse during the transport of the body of the deceased, an unfortunate event occurred which does not reflect the high standards of our company, our deep empathy towards the families of the deceased, and the respect we always show to the deceased,” the company wrote in a statement posted on its website.

It apologised to “all those who were disappointed and upset by this event”.

A book borrowed from a school library before the first world war has finally been returned – more than a century overdue.

A copy of Poetry of Byron was found by a man in Carmarthenshire, south Wales, who felt it should be returned to St Bees School, near Whitehaven, Cumbria, where it had been lent out to a schoolboy.

Inside the blue clothbound book the name Leonard Ewbank is written, along with the date 25 September 1911. Ewbank, who was born in 1893, was a pupil of St Bees between 1902 and 1911, before going on to study at Queen’s College, Oxford.

Records show that, despite his poor eyesight, he was recruited to the 15th Border Regiment in 1915 to fight in the first world war. He was killed in battle on 23 February 1916 by a bullet to the head and is buried at the Railway Dugouts burial ground in Ypres, Belgium, a cemetery that contains the graves of 2,463 troops.

Ewbank is commemorated on the school’s roll of honour as “an Englishman, brave, honest and loyal”.

The school was “honoured” to have the book returned, said the headteacher, Andrew Keep. Keep told the BBC: “It’s incredible to think that a piece of St Bees’ history has found its way back to us after all these years.”

St Bees is a 430-year-old co-educational boarding and day school costing £16,000-£40,000 a year. Rowan Atkinson is a former pupil, along with two vice-chancellors of the University of Cambridge, a number of professors and three Victoria Cross recipients.

The book, featuring the work of Lord Byron, a Romantic poet famously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, is not the first to be returned to a library after spending a lifetime elsewhere, but it could be one of the most overdue library books of all time.

In May, a book borrowed from a library in Helsinki was returned 84 years overdue. A Finnish translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novel The Refugees had been due on 26 December 1939, a month after the Soviet invasion of Finland, so it “might not have been the first thing on the borrower’s mind”, said Heini Strand, a librarian at Helsinki’s Oodi central library.

In July, Canoe Building in Glass-Reinforced Plastic by Alan Byde was returned to Orkney Library more than 47 years late, after being found during a house clearance. The library’s John Peterson said: “Fortunately we don’t charge overdue fines.”