A Hong Kong court has sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to jail terms ranging from four to 10 years in the territory’s largest national security trial, following a prosecution that was widely criticised as politically motivated.

Benny Tai, a legal academic and activist, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Tuesday over his role as an organiser of pre-election primaries that the court found were an attempt to cause a constitutional crisis.

Tai’s is the longest sentence handed out so far under the city’s national security law, which was passed in mid- 2020.

Joshua Wong, one of the most public faces of the 2019 protest movement, was sentenced to four years and eight months after being given a one-third reduction for pleading guilty. The court said he was an “active participant” in the primaries plan.

The judgment also determined he was “not of good character” because of his previous convictions. Wong is already in jail serving sentences for other protest-related charges, but the judges said the additional sentence “would not have a crushing effect on him”.

Australian-Hong Kong dual national Gordon Ng was sentenced to more than seven years. Ng was among 16 of the 47 defendants to plead not guilty but was convicted in May.

The judges said Ng was “an active participant” and had pressured others to support a plan for the pro-democracy camp to win a majority in the election and use it to block bills and force a dissolution and eventual resignation of the city’s chief executive. He did this by placing advertisements in media, the judgment said. His sentence was reduced by three months for “the possibility that [he] might have been misled” by Tai about the plan’s lawfulness.

The men are among 47 people, known as the “Hong Kong 47”, who were charged under the national security law (NSL) over their involvement in a primary election held in 2020 ahead of the Hong Kong general election. They had hoped to win a majority in Hong Kong’s legislature and use it to push for pro-democracy aims.

Most have spent more than three years in jail already, but none were released on Tuesday. Those who pleaded not guilty were given harsher sentences.

The case is the largest by number of defendants since the NSL was passed. The 47 were arrested in early 2021 in a series of dawn raids on homes and offices that shocked the city.

Western governments, human rights organisations and legal groups have criticised the prosecution since its beginning, characterising it as a politically motivated attack on the pro-democracy opposition.

The Hong Kong 47 are some of the most public faces of the Beijing-led crackdown on dissent and political freedom in Hong Kong. They were activists, legislators, campaigners and councillors from the pro-democracy camp of Hong Kong’s previously vibrant political scene.

In 2020 they held a pre-election primary to choose the strongest candidates to take on the Pro-Beijing establishment at the upcoming Hong Kong general election. It had been done before, but this time came just days after the introduction of the NSL, a sweeping piece of legislation imposed by the Chinese government to criminalise acts of dissent, sedition, and foreign collusion.

The group aimed to win a majority in Hong Kong’s parliament, the legislative council or LegCo, and use it to block budgetary bills and force the resignation of the chief executive if she did not agree to the pro-democracy movement’s demands.

Prosecutors said this plan would undermine the Hong Kong government and create a constitutional crisis. The three government-picked judges who sat on the trial agreed.

The judgment said the plan was a violation of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and an act of conspiracy to commit subversion under the NSL.

Some of those convicted, like Wong, are already serving time, or have been previously jailed over protest activity.

There is intense public interest in the trial in Hong Kong and the queue for members of the public to get inside the West Kowloon magistrates court started over the weekend and numbered several hundred people by Tuesday. Some who had been in the line for a day or more were accused by bystanders of being paid to queue and take a seat ticket but not go into court – a practice that has come under increasing public scrutiny for political cases.

On Tuesday morning, vanloads of police patrolled and ushered the crowd into a line that stretched down the block and folded back on itself. Officers were seen searching several people.

Dennis, a former district councillor, lined up at 4am to support the convicted, many of them his friends. Dennis has been able to visit some of his friends in jail over the years.

“I think quite a number of them are quite depressed about their future. So I think I have to come and give a little support.

Further towards the front of the queue, Jerome Lau, 74, said he had visited many of his jailed friends in Stanley prison. “Just for me to wake up early on a rainy day, compared to what they’re suffering inside the prison, it’s nothing at all.”

On Wednesday, the jailed media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai will also testify in his collusion trial, breaking the silence he has kept over five previous trials and almost four years in jail.

The charges against Lai – the founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily – revolve around the newspaper’s articles, which supported the pro-democracy protests and criticised Beijing’s leadership.

China and Hong Kong say the security law restored order after the 2019 protests and have warned against “interference” from other countries.

With Agence France-Presse

The Kremlin has accused Joe Biden’s outgoing US administration of wanting to escalate the conflict in Ukraine by allowing Kyiv to use long-range missiles for strikes inside Russia, vowing an “appropriate and palpable” response.

The decision, first reported on Sunday, to allow Ukraine to conduct strikes with US-made weapons deep into sovereign Russian territory has not been formally announced by the White House, but a German government spokesperson said on Monday that Berlin had been informed.

“It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters. “This decision is reckless, dangerous, aimed at a qualitative change, a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the use of long-range US-supplied missiles against its territory would “represent the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in hostilities against Russia.” It added: “Russia’s response in such a case will be appropriate and palpable.”

Biden, currently in Rio de Janeiro for his final G20 Summit, has yet to comment on the decision, which marks a significant shift in US policy.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had long pushed for authorisation from Washington to use the 190-mile range Army Tactical Missile System, known by its initials Atacms, to hit targets inside Russia.

Peskov said Putin had expressed his position clearly in September when the Russian leader warned that the move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be directly “at war” with Moscow.

Putin had said Moscow would “take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face” and previously suggested Moscow could supply long-range weapons to other countries with the aim of attacking western targets.

“If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply our weapons,” Putin told a press conference in St Petersburg in June.

Russian officials similarly pledged that Moscow would respond to Biden’s decision, though they did not elaborate on what that response might entail.

Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic party of Russia, said the US was now directly participating in the military conflict in Ukraine. “This will inevitably entail the toughest response from Russia, based on the threats that will be posed to our country,” he said.

There were further Russian threats issued in state media, with the prominent propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov saying the west was directly entering the war “with all the ensuing consequences for their own territories and those inhabiting them”. Kiselyov said: “The response could be anything. Anything.”

On Monday, the Kremlin rejected a reported peace proposal from the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to be put forward at the G20 summit in Brazil, to freeze hostilities at the current positions of both parties.

“Any option involving the freezing [of the conflict] along the line of engagement is unacceptable for Russia in any case,” Peskov said, adding that Putin had declared Russia’s demands for ending the war in June when he said Ukraine would have to drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw all its troops from all the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.

The US decision is being justified by the presence of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine. Briefings to US journalists said permission to use the missiles would be limited to the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia in the summer.

Several western officials praised the US decision to permit Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles. “Ukraine should be able to use the arms we provide in order not only to stop the arrow but also to be able to hit the archers,” the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, described Biden’s decision as “important” and “essential”. She said in Brussels: “The decision from the American side, and I would like to emphasise that this is not a rethink but an intensification of what has already been delivered by other partners, is so important at this moment.”

A German government spokesperson said, however, that Germany was sticking with its decision not to supply Kyiv with long-range Taurus missiles. The decision by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to withhold its most powerful missile has been a significant point of contention in Germany.

“The chancellor’s decision is unchanged,” the German government spokesperson told a regular news conference in Berlin. Last week, Scholz held a telephone conversation with Putin about the war in Ukraine, in a move that drew criticism from Kyiv.

The UK on Monday refused to say whether its ongoing support for Ukraine would include allowing UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to be fired at targets in Russia.

Meanwhile, France said it was still considering whether to allow Ukraine to use its long-range Scalp missiles inside Russia. Jean-Noël Barrot, the minister for Europe and foreign affairs of France, said: “We openly said this was an option that we would consider if it was to allow to strike a target from where Russia is currently aggressing Ukrainian territory. So nothing new on the other side.”

But there was also criticism in Europe from Hungary, seen as Putin’s closest EU ally.

“The pro-war mainstream has launched its last, desperate attack on the new reality”,” the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, wrote on Facebook, referring to the recent victory of Donald Trump.

“The hawkish politicians ousted from power refuse to take note of the will of the people. This is not only undemocratic, but also extremely dangerous,” Szijjártó added.

Trump’s team are yet to officially comment on Biden’s move. The president-elect’s son Don Jr criticised the decision, writing on X: “The military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get world war three going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $trillions. Life be damned! Imbeciles!”

Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, claimed on his social media platform, X, that Russia would “respond reciprocally” to the US approval.

Some Russian officials openly voiced hopes that the incoming Trump administration would overturn the decision after taking office in late January.

“These guys, Biden’s administration, are trying to escalate the situation to the maximum while they still have power and are still in office,” the Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said. “I have a great hope that Trump will overcome this decision if this has been made because they are seriously risking the start of world war three, which is not in anybody’s interest.”

Britain is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, now that the US president, Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.

The prime minister said that, while he was “not going to get into operational details”, he recognised the need to do more to help Ukraine, whose electricity network was seriously damaged by a wave of Russian bombing on Sunday.

“I’ve been really clear for a long time now, we need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war,” the prime minister said.

Russia, however, accused the west of escalation and said that Biden risked adding “fuel to the fire” in Ukraine, and while Donald Trump remained silent on the issue, his son Don Jr accused the military industrial complex of wanting to get “world war three going”.

Storm Shadow missiles have a range of about 250km (155 miles), similar to the US Atacms, and have in the past been given to Kyiv by the UK and France to strike targets inside Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.

But the US retained an effective veto on their use because it supplies a guidance system and repeated lobbying by the UK had failed to shift the US position, which has only begun to soften after the election victory of Donald Trump earlier this month.

Ukraine wants to be able to strike barracks, fuel and logistics hubs, and airbases deeper inside Russia to blunt Moscow’s relentless attacks on their country. Russia, by contrast, is able to strike targets anywhere in Ukraine.

Biden had refused to allow permission for long-range missiles to be used inside Russia for years but finally relented on Sunday, and said that Ukraine could use Atacms missiles to try to halt an expected counter-offensive by an estimated 50,000 Russian and North Korean forces in Kursk.

Ukraine had also become increasingly exasperated with Britain on the issue of long-range missiles, complaining earlier this month that not only had there been no progress on their use inside Russia but that the UK had stopped supplying them at all.

Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, accused the US of escalation. “It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict.” He added: “This decision is reckless, dangerous, aimed at a qualitative change, a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States.”

Peskov said Putin had expressed his position clearly in September when the Russian leader warned that the move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be directly “at war” with Moscow.

Putin had said Moscow would “take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face” and previously suggested Moscow could supply long-range weapons to other countries with the aim of attacking western targets.

Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s foreign minister, said that the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, had already said Paris was open to consider greenlighting the use of its missiles to strike on Russian soil. Storm Shadow missiles are manufactured by MBDA, a company with UK, French and Italian shareholders.

“We openly said that this was an option that we would consider if it was to allow Ukraine to strike targets from where Russians are currently aggressing Ukrainian territory,” Barrot told reporters in Brussels.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, described Biden’s decision as “important” and “essential”. She said in Brussels: “The decision from the American side, and I would like to emphasise that this is not a rethink but an intensification of what has already been delivered by other partners, is so important at this moment.”

A German government spokesperson said, however, that Germany was sticking with its decision not to supply Kyiv with long-range Taurus missiles. The decision by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to withhold its most powerful missile has been a significant point of contention in Germany.

But there was also criticism in Europe from Hungary, seen as Putin’s closest EU ally.

“The pro-war mainstream has launched its last, desperate attack on the new reality,” the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, wrote on Facebook, referring to the recent victory of Donald Trump.

“The hawkish politicians ousted from power refuse to take note of the will of the people. This is not only undemocratic, but also extremely dangerous,” Szijjártó added.

Trump’s team are yet to officially comment on Biden’s move. The president-elect’s son Don Jr criticised the decision, writing on X: “The military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get world war three going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $trillions. Life be damned! Imbeciles!”

Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, claimed on his social media platform, X, that Russia would “respond reciprocally” to the US approval.

Some Russian officials openly voiced hopes that the incoming Trump administration would overturn the decision after taking office in late January. “These guys, Biden’s administration, are trying to escalate the situation to the maximum while they still have power and are still in office,” the Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said.

Starmer’s spokesperson said that the UK prime minister “wants allies to step up and support Ukraine” and that he intended to reflect that in his conversations with other leaders at the G20 in Rio de Janiero. The prime minister is not expected to have a one-on-one meeting with Biden, though they will see each other on the sidelines of the summit.

Similar language about Storm Shadow was also used by John Healey, the defence secretary, in the Commons on Monday. Giving the clearest hint yet that a positive decision on allowing Ukraine to use Storm Shadow inside Russia was expected, he told MPs: “I will not compromise operational security and comment on long-range systems today,” before adding that the UK recognised Ukraine needs extra help. “The prime minister has made clear, as I do to the House today, that we must double down on the support for Ukraine,” he said.

A protest march estimated to be one of the largest in New Zealand history arrived at parliament on Tuesday, to oppose a controversial bill that could drastically alter the way the country’s founding treaty between Māori and the crown is interpreted.

After midday local time, police said parliament grounds had reached capacity as more than 35,000 people were estimated to be taking part in the march. As the first group of marchers reached parliament, the crowd stretched around 2km through the city.

Earlier, tens of thousands had converged at the waterfront’s Waitangi Park, ahead of the walk to parliament, colouring the skyline with the red, white and black of the tino rangatiratanga flag – the national Māori flag that has become a prominent symbol of Māori sovereignty. Protesters carried placards calling on the government to honour the treaty and “kill the bill”.

The hīkoi mō te Tīriti (march for the treaty) began nine days ago at the northern-most tip of the country at Cape Reinga, and has been winding its way down the North Island towards Wellington.

Hayley Komene was part of the march in Wellington. “There is a real strength and pride,” she said. “There are people from lots of different backgrounds here for the same reason – it’s beautiful.”

Komene condemned the government’s Māori policies, calling them “absolutely ridiculous”.

“Te tiriti is a constitutional document of our country.”

The architect of the bill, Act party leader David Seymour, was confronted with chants of “kill the bill” as walked out of parliament and made a brief appearance before the march, before waving and walking back inside.

Ahead of the march, organisers had said up to 50,0000 were expected to participate in the last stage of the hīkoi, which would dwarf the historic 2004 Foreshore and Seabed march. Wellington city council warned commuters to plan for hours-long travel delays as the march winds its way through the city’s main streets towards parliament.

The Māori Queen, Nga wai hono i te po, was among those protesting.

“The Māori Queen is willing to help lead a conversation about nationhood and national unity but she will not accept a unilateral process that undermines [the treaty],” her spokesperson, Ngira Simmons, said in a statement on Monday.

The hīkoi gathered in opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill, which if passed into law, would radically alter the way the Treaty of Waitangi is interpreted. The treaty is an agreement signed in 1840 between more than 500 Māori chiefs and the crown and is instrumental in upholding Māori rights.

The bill does not have widespread support and is unlikely to become law. However, the bill’s introduction has prompted widespread anger among the public, academics, lawyers and Māori rights groups who believe it is creating division, undermining the treaty, and damaging the relationship between Māori and ruling authorities.

The principles of the treaty have been developed over 50 years by courts, tribunals and successive governments to help guide the relationship between Māori and ruling authorities and iron out differences in interpretations over the English and Māori texts of the original treaty. Many principles have been developed and continue to evolve, but the most recognised are broadly defined as participation, partnership, protection, and redress. The principles have been used in efforts to remedy the significant social and economic inequities Māori face.

The bill is a flagship policy of the minor libertarian Act party – which forms part of the coalition government – and seeks to get rid of the well-established principles in favour of its own, redefined principles.

Act believes the current principles have distorted the original intent of the treaty and created a twin system for New Zealanders, resulting in Māori having different political and legal rights and privileges compared with non-Māori. The party has regularly called for an end to “division by race”.

Critics of the bill believe Act’s proposal fundamentally undermines the treaty and the way it is interpreted, which will strip away Māori rights and drive anti-Māori rhetoric.

The bill passed its first reading on Thursday last week amid scathing speeches from opposition parties, multiple attempts to delay proceedings, and a haka led by the Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who ripped up a copy of the bill – the footage of which has now been viewed hundreds of millions of times on social media.

The introduction of the bill formed part of Act’s coalition agreement with National – the major centre-right part. Both National and the third coalition partner, New Zealand First, have ruled out supporting the bill beyond the first reading, meaning it is likely to be voted down next year.

On the eve of the hīkoi, Seymour told local media he did not believe his bill was causing division.

“I would argue the division is already there – you say my bill is causing division, I would say it is revealing division that’s built up over several decades.”

Since New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government took office a year ago, its policy direction for Māori has dominated headlines, but one proposal in particular has faced strident backlash: the Treaty Principles Bill.

The bill was introduced by the minor libertarian Act party to parliament on Thursday. It seeks to radically alter the way the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document and which upholds Māori rights, is interpreted.

What is the bill proposing and why has it prompted widespread criticism?

What is the Treaty of Waitangi?

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by the British Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs to establish a nation state. The treaty covers issues including land and cultural rights and Māori relations with ruling authorities. While not a legal document, some treaty principles have been developed and included in legislation.

There is an English and a Māori version of the treaty. These documents contain fundamental differences that have long plagued the application of the treaty and how it is interpreted. To help address this, over the past 50 years, lawmakers, courts and the Waitangi Tribunal – an institution that investigates breaches of the treaty – have looked to the wider intention, or spirit, of the treaty, in order to define its principles. The treaty principles are not set in stone and are flexible.

The principles can act as a mechanism to help the government fulfil its obligations to Māori under the treaty, says Carwyn Jones, a lead academic in Māori law at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, an Indigenous tertiary education provider.

The principles were used in efforts to revitalise the Māori language, including making it an official language, and were used to establish a Māori Health Authority to reverse poor health outcomes for Māori, which the coalition government dismantled this year, he says.

“If those principles are redefined – and significantly weakened – [there] will be fewer legal mechanisms for Māori to have their rights recognised,” Jones says, adding that that will lead to social disruption.

What does the Treaty Principles Bill propose to do?

The bill is one of Act’s flagship policies, and seeks to get rid of the well-established principles in favour of its own, redefined principles.

The party believes the current principles have distorted the original intent of the treaty and created a twin system for New Zealanders, resulting in Māori having different political and legal rights and privileges compared with non-Māori. The party has regularly called for an end to “division by race”.

Act’s leader, David Seymour, has cited co-governance (shared decision-making power between Māori and the Crown) and the establishment of quotas, designed to remedy under-representation of Māori in public institutions, as “contrary to the principle of equal rights”.

Seymour says the bill “provides an opportunity for parliament, rather than the courts, to define the principles of the treaty, including establishing that every person is equal before the law.”

Why has this stirred controversy?

Critics of the bill believe Act’s proposal fundamentally undermines the treaty and the way it is interpreted, which will have grave effects on Māori rights and drive anti-Māori rhetoric.

There has been significant public backlash to Act’s proposal, including protests and nationwide meetings of Māori leaders. A hīkoi (protest march) against the bill is scheduled to descend on parliament on 19 November – a day after the bill was originally set to be introduced. The bill was unexpectedly brought forward this week.

A Waitangi Tribunal report, provided to the Guardian, said “if this bill were to be enacted, it would be the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty … in modern times”.

“If the bill remained on the statute book for a considerable time or was never repealed, it could mean the end of the Treaty.”

The Tribunal said the redefined principles would limit Māori rights and Crown obligations, hinder Māori access to justice, undermine social cohesion, reduce the constitutional status of the treaty, and was in breach of the current principles.

The bill was based on flawed policy rationales, was “novel” in its interpretations and was fashioned on a disingenuous historical narrative, it said.

Is the bill likely to pass?

Act negotiated the inclusion of the bill into its coalition agreement with the major centre-right National Party, however, National committed only to supporting it through its first reading and the select committee process.

The third coalition partner, the populist New Zealand First party, has also ruled out supporting it beyond these stages.

In a joint statement on Thursday, the Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori (the Māori Party) opposition parties, called on prime minister Christopher Luxon to block what they called a “divisive” bill that was “pandering to a dangerous, reactionary fringe”.

Seymour has called on his coalition colleagues to respect the democratic process and make up their minds once the public has had its say, but at this stage, the bill will probably be voted down.

Despite that, many are angered over how the bill has reignited debate over the treaty, Jones says, adding that he believes it has stirred up anti-Māori views and eroded the Māori/Crown relationship.

• This article was amended on 15 November 2024 to remove a reference to David Seymour being the deputy prime minister. Winston Peters is the deputy prime minister.

Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

Through personnel announcements, the president-elect has put together a team of loyalists and hardliners to implement a second-term immigration crackdown.

Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his first administration, was named “border czar” with a wide-ranging remit. In a short social media post announcing the position, Trump said Homan would be “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.

Also returning for a second term is Stephen Miller, a chief defender of the last administration’s most controversial immigration policies, including the use of family separation as a means of deterrence. Miller was named White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, giving him far-reaching influence over immigration policy.

Rounding out the team, he nominated the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, a loyalist with a long record as an immigration hardliner, to be his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Experts and advocates say a deportation campaign on the scale Trump has outlined would raise legal and logistical challenges, not to mention the soaring costs and infrastructure needed to detail and deport millions of people, many of whom have lived in the country for at least a decade, contribute to the workforce and share a household with US citizen family members.

Trump and Miller have described plans to federalize state national guard personnel and deploy them for immigration enforcement, including sending troops from friendly Republican-governed states into neighboring states with governors who decline to participate. Miller has also advocated for building large-scale detention “camps” and tents.

In his first post-election interview, Trump told NBC News that he had “no choice” but to implement a mass deportation plan, regardless of cost.

“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he said. “It’s not – really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, deporting 1 million people a year would cost more than $960bn over a decade.

Trump at various points claimed he would deport at least 15 million – and even as many as 20 million – people who are in the US illegally, but the figure is unverified.

There were an estimated 11 million people living in the United States without authorization as of 2022, according to an analysis by Pew Research. Migration to the US border reached record levels in 2022 and 2023 before dropping dramatically in 2024, following stepped-up enforcement by Mexico and an asylum clampdown by the Biden administration.

It is unclear who the Trump administration would target for deportation. His campaign trail rhetoric often failed to distinguish between immigrants who have lawful status and those in the country illegally. And throughout the campaign, Trump claimed that immigrants crossing the US southern border in recent years were driving up crime, even though violent crime is down across the country and studies show immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than US citizens.

During the campaign, Trump’s team repeatedly refused to rule out deporting Dreamers, young adults brought to the US as children, hundreds of thousands of whom are allowed to live and work in the US under an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca).

Questions remain about how the raids would be conducted and where people would be detained. Civil liberties advocates have already raised concerns about people with lawful status or even US citizens being swept up in a sprawling dragnet.

Meanwhile, advocates have pushed back against Trump’s assertion that he enters office with a mandate to carry out mass raids. They point to data that has found most people do not support mass deportations, especially when respondents are informed about the potential impacts on the economy, the workforce and American families.

“The term strategy is clear, foment fear, panic and chaos into our communities, because as bullies, this is what they thrive on,” Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream Action, a network of groups that advocate for Dreamers said during a post-election debrief. She added: “Trump may be re-elected, but he does not have a mandate to come into and rip apart our communities.”

Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

Through personnel announcements, the president-elect has put together a team of loyalists and hardliners to implement a second-term immigration crackdown.

Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his first administration, was named “border czar” with a wide-ranging remit. In a short social media post announcing the position, Trump said Homan would be “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.

Also returning for a second term is Stephen Miller, a chief defender of the last administration’s most controversial immigration policies, including the use of family separation as a means of deterrence. Miller was named White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, giving him far-reaching influence over immigration policy.

Rounding out the team, he nominated the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, a loyalist with a long record as an immigration hardliner, to be his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Experts and advocates say a deportation campaign on the scale Trump has outlined would raise legal and logistical challenges, not to mention the soaring costs and infrastructure needed to detail and deport millions of people, many of whom have lived in the country for at least a decade, contribute to the workforce and share a household with US citizen family members.

Trump and Miller have described plans to federalize state national guard personnel and deploy them for immigration enforcement, including sending troops from friendly Republican-governed states into neighboring states with governors who decline to participate. Miller has also advocated for building large-scale detention “camps” and tents.

In his first post-election interview, Trump told NBC News that he had “no choice” but to implement a mass deportation plan, regardless of cost.

“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he said. “It’s not – really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, deporting 1 million people a year would cost more than $960bn over a decade.

Trump at various points claimed he would deport at least 15 million – and even as many as 20 million – people who are in the US illegally, but the figure is unverified.

There were an estimated 11 million people living in the United States without authorization as of 2022, according to an analysis by Pew Research. Migration to the US border reached record levels in 2022 and 2023 before dropping dramatically in 2024, following stepped-up enforcement by Mexico and an asylum clampdown by the Biden administration.

It is unclear who the Trump administration would target for deportation. His campaign trail rhetoric often failed to distinguish between immigrants who have lawful status and those in the country illegally. And throughout the campaign, Trump claimed that immigrants crossing the US southern border in recent years were driving up crime, even though violent crime is down across the country and studies show immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than US citizens.

During the campaign, Trump’s team repeatedly refused to rule out deporting Dreamers, young adults brought to the US as children, hundreds of thousands of whom are allowed to live and work in the US under an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca).

Questions remain about how the raids would be conducted and where people would be detained. Civil liberties advocates have already raised concerns about people with lawful status or even US citizens being swept up in a sprawling dragnet.

Meanwhile, advocates have pushed back against Trump’s assertion that he enters office with a mandate to carry out mass raids. They point to data that has found most people do not support mass deportations, especially when respondents are informed about the potential impacts on the economy, the workforce and American families.

“The term strategy is clear, foment fear, panic and chaos into our communities, because as bullies, this is what they thrive on,” Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream Action, a network of groups that advocate for Dreamers said during a post-election debrief. She added: “Trump may be re-elected, but he does not have a mandate to come into and rip apart our communities.”

An attorney representing two women who he says testified before the House ethics committee has claimed that the former congressman Matt Gaetz paid both women for sex and that one of the women alleged she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a minor.

The new allegations were revealed by the attorney Joel Leppard during an interview with ABC News on Monday – less than a week after Gaetz resigned from Congress following his nomination by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in his second administration.

In the interview, Leppard claimed that his clients were paid by Gaetz using Venmo and said that one of the women testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz at a house party in 2017 having sex with a 17-year-old girl.

“She testified that in July of 2017 at his house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.

Ahead of the Senate’s consideration of Gaetz’s nomination, Leppard said that he believed “several questions demand answers”, adding: “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”

In a statement sent to ABC News, Alex Pfeiffer, Trump’s transition spokesperson, called the allegations against Gaetz “baseless”, adding that they are “intended to derail the second Trump administration”.

“The Biden justice department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing,” Pfeiffer added.

Gaetz was investigated by the justice department on suspicion of child sex trafficking, but the department decided not to bring charges. The House ethics committee then launched its own inquiry into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations against him and insisted that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.

The House ethics committee had reportedly put together a report on the findings of its investigation into Gaetz and, according to the New York Times, were planning on voting last week on whether to release it, but his resignation halted that process and in effect ended the ethics committee investigation.

It was reported on Monday that the committee is now scheduled to meet this Wednesday to discuss the report and may potentially vote on whether to release it. In recent days, an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they want to review and see the report the committee compiled as they consider and weigh Gaetz’s nomination.

The committee chair, Michael Guest, a Republican, told Politico on Monday that the panel would decide on its own whether to release the report, regardless of Speaker Mike Johnson’s desire to keep it under wraps.

The attorney John Clune, who, according to ABC News, represents the former minor, called for the release of the committee’s report last week.

“Mr Gaetz’s likely nomination as attorney general is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” Clune said. “We would support the House ethics committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”

Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry has said that at least 20 people have been killed in an operation targeting “gangs” accused of looting trucks bringing aid into the war-torn territory which is facing the threat of famine.

Gunmen attacked and looted about 100 trucks carrying desperately needed supplies over the weekend, the biggest such attack during 13 months of war in the territory and new evidence of the growing power of Gaza’s criminal gangs.

In a statement late on Monday, the Gaza interior ministry said that more than 20 people had been killed “in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees”.

The statement said that thefts had “severely affected society and led to signs of famine in southern Gaza”, and warned that the operation was the start of a broader campaign to tackle the problem.

An interior ministry source told AFP the 20 were killed in connection with the looting on Saturday of a convoy which was transporting thousands of tonnes of food provided by the UN agencies Unrwa and the World Food Programme (WFP). It was attacked shortly after entering Gaza on Saturday, UN officials and local community leaders said.

Ninety-eight trucks of the 109-truck convoy were looted and some transporters were injured during the incident, said Louise Wateridge, Unrwa’s senior emergency officer.

The incident “highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza”, she told Reuters.

“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over 2 million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Community leaders in central Gaza said local people had fought back against the looters of the convoy, who were armed with automatic rifles, and managed to retrieve some of the stolen trucks which were then returned to the WFP.

A spokesperson for the Internally Displaced Civilians Association (IDCA) in Deir al-Balah said the attack meant that two bakeries serving roughly 1 million people in central Gaza had announced they would not be able to provide any bread until they receive new supplies.

The IDCA, one of a number of informal groups that have sprung up to represent the interests of Gaza’s 1.8 million displaced people, said Israeli authorities had been repeatedly warned that armed gangs were operating along roads leading into Gaza from specific entry points.

“A better route for aid was repeatedly proposed, but [the Israelis] have refused all these requests,” the spokesperson said.

UN officials said the convoy had been instructed by Israel to depart at short notice through an unfamiliar route from the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

Gaza is facing deepening anarchy as the last remnants of civil order break down, leaving a vacuum increasingly filled by armed gangs, clans, powerful families and criminals.

In April, aid officials said they feared Gaza would become “Mogadishu on the Mediterranean”.

The 13-month Israeli military offensive has removed Hamas from power in most of Gaza but the Islamist militant group has not been replaced by any other form of governance.

Systematic targeting of Gaza’s police force, which Israel considers part of Hamas, and the release of hundreds of prisoners from jails by the group early in the conflict have exacerbated the chaos.

Waterbridge did not identify the attackers but UN officials have said that powerful families in the south of Gaza long known for their involvement in looting had been behind a series of attacks on convoys in recent weeks.

“This isn’t desperate people looking to feed themselves or their families. It is pure organised crime, by people who are heavily armed and making a lot of money. They are taking supplies paid for by member states. It’s a disgrace,” one senior aid official said earlier this month.

Aid officials in Gaza describe the situation in much of the territory, where more than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced and more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged in 13 months of war, as “apocalyptic”.

An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of the war, but blame aid organisations and the UN for failing to distribute aid that is cleared for entry to Gaza.

A WFP spokesperson confirmed the looting and said that many routes in Gaza were currently unpassable because of security issues.

A UN aid official said on Friday that delivering aid across Gaza was now more difficult than ever before, with parts of the besieged north of the territory almost impossible to reach. Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel last year.

Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, have been severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors.

The episode on Monday recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines.

The 1,200km (745-mile) cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working at about 0200 GMT on Monday, Finnish state-controlled cybersecurity and telecoms company Cinia said.

A 218km (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania’s Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia Company group.

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.

Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors”, the joint statement said, without naming the actors.

“Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies,” Germany and Finland said.

A spokesperson for Telia Lietuva, Audrius Stasiulaitis, said the other cable was severed as well. It is owned and operated by Sweden’s Arelion to carry Telia Lietuva’s internet traffic, the Telia spokesperson said.

Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister of civil defence, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that it was “absolutely central that it is clarified why we currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not working”.

Located in northern Europe, the Baltic Sea is an active commercial shipping route and is ringed by nine countries including Russia.

The damage to the Finland-Germany cable occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Öland island and could require five to 15 days to repair, Cinia’s chief executive, Ari-Jussi Knaapila, told a news conference.

Last year, a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged in an incident raising alarm bells in the region.

Investigators of the 2023 cases in Finland and Estonia have named a Chinese container ship that they believe dragged its anchor and caused the damage. But they have not said whether the damage was accidental or intentional.

In 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities.

Two days shy of the second anniversary of a hate-fueled mass shooting at a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, victims and mothers of those killed have filed lawsuits against the club for lax security and against the sheriff’s office for failing to trigger the state’s red flag law to disarm the shooter and ensure they could not purchase any more weapons.

“Club Q advertised itself as a ‘safe place’ for LGBTQIA+ individuals. But that was a facade,” read the two complaints, which contain allegations of negligence.

The suits were filed on Sunday and allege that the 19 November 2022 murders of five people could have been prevented if the El Paso county sheriff’s office used the state’s red-flag law after clear warning signs that the gunman intended to commit violence.

A central focus of both lawsuits was the El Paso county commissioners’ and the then sheriff’s refusal to enforce Colorado’s red-flag law, passed in 2019, which allows officers to temporarily take someone’s firearm if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others.

The same year the law was passed, El Paso county became one of the first in the state to declare itself a “second amendment sanctuary” in protest against the policy. The county passed a Second Amendment Preservation Resolution with the county board of commissioners, arguing that the red-flag bill did not address mental health issues and imposed on people’s gun rights.

This designation has no real legal teeth and it is unclear whether the designation stopped the sheriff from using the state’s red flag law. The shooter hinted at plans to carry out violent attacks at least a year before the Club Q shooting.

In 2021, the shooter was arrested for allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill their grandparents, reportedly saying he would become the “next mass killer” and then proceeding to collect ammunition, bomb-making materials, firearms and body armor, according to court documents. Their grandparents told authorities they were warned not to stand in the way of the plan.

Authorities did not attempt to remove the shooter’s weapons after the 2021 incident, the lawsuits allege, saying: “This deliberate inaction allowed the shooter continued access to firearms, directly enabling the attack on Club Q.”

Charges against Anderson Aldrich, the shooter, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, were thrown out in July 2022 after their mother and grandparents refused to cooperate with prosecutors, evading efforts to serve them with subpoenas to testify, according to court documents unsealed after the shooting.

Other relatives told a judge they feared the shooter would hurt their grandparents if released, painting a picture of an isolated, violent person who did not have a job and was given $30,000 that was spent largely on the purchase of 3D printers to make guns, the records showed.

The plaintiffs in the two lawsuits include survivor Barrett Hudson, who still has three bullets in his body from that night, and other victims and relatives. They are scheduled to speak about the legal action at a news conference Tuesday – which is the second anniversary of the shooting.

Families and victims also accuse the nightclub’s owners in the lawsuit of winnowing Club Q’s security detail from five or more people to just one in the years leading up to the shooting, prioritizing profits over the safety.

A spokesperson for El Paso county told the Guardian the office does not comment on pending litigation.

Those killed in the shooting were Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh.

The shooter, now 24, pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to a life in prison in 2023 in state court. A year later, Aldrich pleaded guilty in a federal court to hate crimes and was sentenced to an additional 55 life terms in prison.

Two days shy of the second anniversary of a hate-fueled mass shooting at a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, victims and mothers of those killed have filed lawsuits against the club for lax security and against the sheriff’s office for failing to trigger the state’s red flag law to disarm the shooter and ensure they could not purchase any more weapons.

“Club Q advertised itself as a ‘safe place’ for LGBTQIA+ individuals. But that was a facade,” read the two complaints, which contain allegations of negligence.

The suits were filed on Sunday and allege that the 19 November 2022 murders of five people could have been prevented if the El Paso county sheriff’s office used the state’s red-flag law after clear warning signs that the gunman intended to commit violence.

A central focus of both lawsuits was the El Paso county commissioners’ and the then sheriff’s refusal to enforce Colorado’s red-flag law, passed in 2019, which allows officers to temporarily take someone’s firearm if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others.

The same year the law was passed, El Paso county became one of the first in the state to declare itself a “second amendment sanctuary” in protest against the policy. The county passed a Second Amendment Preservation Resolution with the county board of commissioners, arguing that the red-flag bill did not address mental health issues and imposed on people’s gun rights.

This designation has no real legal teeth and it is unclear whether the designation stopped the sheriff from using the state’s red flag law. The shooter hinted at plans to carry out violent attacks at least a year before the Club Q shooting.

In 2021, the shooter was arrested for allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill their grandparents, reportedly saying he would become the “next mass killer” and then proceeding to collect ammunition, bomb-making materials, firearms and body armor, according to court documents. Their grandparents told authorities they were warned not to stand in the way of the plan.

Authorities did not attempt to remove the shooter’s weapons after the 2021 incident, the lawsuits allege, saying: “This deliberate inaction allowed the shooter continued access to firearms, directly enabling the attack on Club Q.”

Charges against Anderson Aldrich, the shooter, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, were thrown out in July 2022 after their mother and grandparents refused to cooperate with prosecutors, evading efforts to serve them with subpoenas to testify, according to court documents unsealed after the shooting.

Other relatives told a judge they feared the shooter would hurt their grandparents if released, painting a picture of an isolated, violent person who did not have a job and was given $30,000 that was spent largely on the purchase of 3D printers to make guns, the records showed.

The plaintiffs in the two lawsuits include survivor Barrett Hudson, who still has three bullets in his body from that night, and other victims and relatives. They are scheduled to speak about the legal action at a news conference Tuesday – which is the second anniversary of the shooting.

Families and victims also accuse the nightclub’s owners in the lawsuit of winnowing Club Q’s security detail from five or more people to just one in the years leading up to the shooting, prioritizing profits over the safety.

A spokesperson for El Paso county told the Guardian the office does not comment on pending litigation.

Those killed in the shooting were Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh.

The shooter, now 24, pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to a life in prison in 2023 in state court. A year later, Aldrich pleaded guilty in a federal court to hate crimes and was sentenced to an additional 55 life terms in prison.

The White House on Monday condemned a march of neo-Nazis in Columbus, Ohio, over the weekend, saying it was “hostile to everything the United States stands for”.

Joe Biden “abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, antisemitism, and racism – which are hostile to everything the United States stands for, including protecting the dignity of all our citizens and the freedom to worship”, Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the president, said in a statement sent to several news outlets on Monday. “Hate directed against any of us is a threat to every single one of us.”

Biden’s comments came after a small group of masked people dressed in all black marched through Columbus’s Short North neighborhood. Video aired by the local CBS affiliate WBNS showed about 10 people parading through the streets, some of whom were carrying flags with swastikas on them. The group was reportedly yelling racial slurs at people on the street and shouting about Jewish people and white power, the Columbus Dispatch reported, citing police dispatchers.

Local leaders and Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, condemned the march. “We will not tolerate hate in Ohio,” he said in a statement. “There is no place in this state for hate bigotry, antisemitism, or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it.

Oren Segal, vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism, told the New York Times that a St Louis-based group called Hate Club had claimed responsibility for the event.

The episode in Columbus comes about a week after demonstrators gathered outside a community theater production of The Diary of Anne Frank in Howell, Michigan, holding flags with Nazi and white supremacist symbols.

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime systematically murdered 6 million Jewish people amid the second world war during the Holocaust. Other groups targeted by Hitler before his defeat and suicide included people who were homosexual and living with disabilities.

Gisèle Pelicot’s children have described their “devastation” to learn that their father had drugged their mother and invited dozens of men to rape her, begging him in court to tell the truth about whether he had abused other members of the family.

David Pelicot, 50, the couple’s oldest son, told the court in Avignon on Monday that he believed his sister Caroline Darian, 45, when she said she felt certain that she too had been drugged and abused by Dominique Pelicot, after photos were found on his computer of her asleep in bed in underwear that she did not recognise as her own.

Turning to his father who sat looking on, emotionless, in the glass-fronted dock, David Pelicot said: “If you have any little bit of humanity left, tell the truth on what you did to my sister, who is still suffering every day and will suffer all her life.”

Dominique Pelicot shouted that he had never abused his daughter or any of his grandchildren. He asked for forgiveness from his son, who replied: “Never.”

Dominique Pelicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging Gisèle Pelicot by crushing sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drink, then inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence.

The 71-year-old, who kept hundreds of videos of rape on his computer in a file entitled “abuse”, has admitted the charges, telling the court: “I am a rapist.” A total of 51 men are on trial with him. Some admit rape but others have said they did not know Gisèle Pelicot was drugged despite video evidence showing her unconscious and snoring loudly.

Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and the other men be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women. “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she has said.

On Monday David Pelicot, a sales manager from outside Paris, told the court he and his family’s “lives were destroyed” when investigators found video evidence of multiple rapes of his mother following Dominique Pelicot’s arrest for filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket in Carpentras.

He said he felt “the ground was pulled from under my feet” and that he had repeatedly vomited when he was told. He then travelled with his siblings to empty the house where his parents had lived during the abuse, calling it the “house of horror”. He and his siblings, he said, had noticed his mother’s apparent “absences” in conversations and thought she had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour. “I thought I’d lose her,” he said.

Dominique Pelicot is also on trial for taking photographs of his adult daughter, Darian, as well as his son’s wives, when they were naked without their knowledge. The photographs of the sons’ wives, discovered during the investigation, are alleged to have been taken with hidden cameras in bathrooms and other rooms.

David Pelicot said his own wife had been photographed naked, including while pregnant. Turning to his father, he said: “When I discovered that my wife, when pregnant with twins, was photographed – and I don’t know how many photographs – I want to ask: ‘How could you do such a thing?’ I keep asking myself why, what was the aim? I can’t answer that question. But what I understand is that man went up the scale of fantasies with a violence that he always had in him.”

The court heard that an investigation was taking place into whether Dominique Pelicot may have abused any of his grandchildren. Pelicot repeated that he had not done so.

Darian told the court: “I know I was sedated. It’s not a supposition, it’s a reality. I know it.” She said the only difference between her and her mother was that there was “tangible” and “inescapable” evidence in her mother’s abuse. She said she had created a foundation to raise awareness on drugging and rape so that French society could face the issue and victims could have a voice. She said she felt “invisible and forgotten” in the case.

David Pelicot said it was important the trial raised awareness about drugging and abuse in society. He said: “My sister is fighting a battle, the hardest battle of her life, and we’ll always be there for her. I’d like to say to all women who are mothers, and all girls … as they start their life as young women, please, please don’t be afraid to speak out. The omertà is over. We have to speak out.”

Florian Pelicot, 38, the couple’s youngest son, an actor, said in court: “Learning that my father is one of the biggest criminals of the last 20 years – how do you rebuild from that?” Turning to his father, he said: “You always said our mother was a saint, but you were the devil in person.”

He said that, looking back, there had been suspicious moments, for example his father answering his mother’s phone when he called. He said that on one summer holiday, during a dinner with a glass of rosé, “I saw my mother switch off, I felt she was no longer with us – she was completely groggy, staring ahead … I said, ‘Mum are you OK? Dad, is there a problem?’ He got up fast and said ‘I’ll put her to bed’. We went home. But imagine if I had forgotten something and gone back to the house, what I would have found? He had planned to do to her what we now know he did.”

He said he had noticed Dominique Pelicot had been “ill at ease” and “sweating” if he went on his computer to print out colouring pictures for his children.

Florian Pelicot said that when his now ex-wife, Aurore, had heard Dominique Pelicot make a comment to one of his grandchildren about “playing doctors”, he wished he had spoken out about it.

Aurore, who was also photographed naked by Dominique Pelicot using hidden cameras, told the court she had been abused by her grandfather, a gendarme, as a child and understood the importance of this trial. “What I want to say today is to ask the question: how did we get to this situation? How can human beings do such things?”

Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday – only to find they had already taken the picture without him.

Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.

It came during a South American tour during which Biden’s counterparts have been looking past the outgoing US president in political terms – and towards his successor, Donald Trump.

Biden’s swan song on the world stage has seen the 81-year-old try to shore up his legacy before Trump potentially takes a wrecking ball to it with his isolationist “America First” foreign policy.

World leaders including the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and French president, Emmanuel Macron, walked down a red-carpeted ramp at Rio’s stunning bayside Museum of Modern Art to the group photo set-up.

They took to a stage, chatted and joked as they gathered to pose against the backdrop of the Brazilian city’s iconic Sugarloaf Mountain. The snap was over in a second.

Biden and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, then came in from another direction, after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit – but it was too late and the other leaders had already dispersed.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also missed the picture. She, Biden and Trudeau formed a separate huddle.

“Due to logistical issues, they took the photo early before all the leaders had arrived. So a number of the leaders weren’t actually there,” a US official said on condition of anonymity.

US officials denied that Biden missed the photo – officially for the launch of the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s alliance to curb world hunger – to avoid appearing alongside Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Biden had earlier urged the G20 leaders to support Ukraine’s “sovereignty” in the face of Russia’s 2022 invasion.

President Vladimir Putin was conspicuously absent from the Rio summit. His arrest is sought by the international criminal court over the Ukraine war.