A man shot one person to death and wounded two others at a New Hampshire country club as a wedding took place there on Saturday, according to authorities.
A witness to the attack – named as Tom Bartelson of Pepperell, Massachusetts – said his nephew was getting married at the time of the shooting, and he recounted hearing the shooter yell “the children are safe” and “free Palestine” while evidently targeting someone.
Investigators, meanwhile, added that they were still working to determine a motive in the shooting at the Sky Meadow country club in Nashua. Hunter Nadeau, 23, was arrested as the suspect in the shooting, which killed 59-year-old Robert Steven DeCesare, according to New Hampshire attorney general John Formella and Nashua police chief Kevin Rourke.
There was no known connection between Nadeau and DeCesare, investigators added. Nadeau faces a count of second-degree murder in the case.
According to Bartelson, the bride and groom were preparing to dance when “all chaos went off”.
“We heard about six shots and everybody ducked for cover – and next thing you know we’re rushed into safe spots and things like that,” Bartelson remarked.
He said some people dropped to the ground and attempted to get away from the scene. There was a lot of panic, he said.
“We were trying to keep family members safe,” he said. “Keep everybody down and try to find safe spots.”
A statement from Formella and Rourke said “additional charges will likely be brought, including for the additional shooting victims”. Nadeau was tentatively scheduled to be arraigned in state court in Nashua on Monday.
Authorities had initially thought there could be two shooters but later said there was only one.
Information on the two wounded victims’ conditions was not immediately available.
The mother of DeCesare had earlier described not being able to find her son after he was shot.
“He went down. My daughter-in-law and granddaughter escaped,” the mother, Evie O’Rourke of Salem, New Hampshire, said. “They saw my son go down and they saw blood.”
Emily Ernst, who was at the scene, said she saw a gunman in all black.
“He had a mask on. We just saw him raise the gun and then we ran,” Ernst said. “I ran through the kitchen for my life.”
Aerial video from local news outlet WMUR showed multiple emergency responders heading to the scene. Later, Nashua’s mayor, Jim Donchess, said he had faith in police to “get to the bottom of this and bring the perpetrator to justice”.
He added: “I think the message is for every community out there is that no matter how unlikely it seems it can happen where you live.”
Maggie Goodlander, a New Hampshire Democratic US representative, said in a statement that she was “closely monitoring the tragic reports” of the country club shooting and that her heart was with the victims, their families and the community.
Nashua is about 45 miles (70km) north-west of Boston, just across the Massachusetts border.
Artists in Britain have customised St George’s flags with messages celebrating diversity, in response to a campaign in which national banners have been flown from lamp-posts, outside homes and painted on roundabouts.
While for many, flying the flag is a genuine expression of national pride, some flags have been graffitied on businesses and places of worship belonging to minority ethnic Britons, in some cases with slurs, after the launch of the operation “raise the colours”.
The artists’ response will go on display in venues and in the streets later this month. The project originates in Greater Manchester, where hard-right groups have joined protests outside asylum hotels, posting locations where they have “deployed British flags” on social media.
Cloe Gregson, an arts events manager, decided to reclaim the symbol by staging an open day for artists and the public to redesign St George’s flags as emblems of inclusivity.
The Everyone Welcome project took off on the websites Skiddle and GoFundMe, with more than 100 people and dozens of venues volunteering to be part of the project.
Gregson said: “We’ve had a pretty long history standing up for what’s right [in Manchester], led by the movement for women’s rights and the biggest section 28 protests. But I felt like I was driving around and I didn’t recognise it as the Manchester I’ve grown up in – it felt really jarring.”
The project accelerated after Gregson turned to her all-women WhatsApp group of events promoters and creatives in the city, who shared it across their networks.
Campaigners in York have hung international, regional and rainbow flags
Gregson added: “We’d love to see this idea spread to other cities – using creativity as a way of transforming a message that’s been used to divide. We really want to make it so that when people see the England flag in Manchester it’s a symbol of welcome, not exclusion.”
About 70 miles across the Pennines in York, one of the first cities targeted by “raise the colours”, a group called the International Flagging Campaign attracted scores of GoFundMe donations to buy flags from across the world, aiming to create “a cityscape that looks like we are hosting the next Olympics”.
Campaigners set out at night to hang international, regional and rainbow flags on lamp-posts where St George’s flags had already been erected. Their message was one of inclusivity, and when supporters of “raise the colours” began taking the international flags down, the campaigners handed out bunting to local businesses.
A spokesperson said: “Friends who aren’t white have commented that they are starting to feel uncomfortable in the city – not because of the flags but because of the attitude that has come along with it.
“We feel the best way to show our flag can be flown for good reasons is to see it flying alongside a lot of other countries’ flags.”
In Caerphilly, south Wales, this month a road bridge in Pontllanfraith was decorated with flags from countries from across the world, WalesOnline reported.
In Manchester one artist, Freya Wysocki, was one of the first to complete an inclusive St George’s flag.
“I have re-envisioned England’s flag as a symbol of community: celebrating the welcoming and open parts of modern Englishness,” Wysocki said. “The legs and feet represent people moving across the world, as people always have, the hands reach out in welcome and solidarity.”
Edward Meziani, an illustrator and gallerist, said his flag, Built on immigration / Birds on Migration, was inspired by “the feathered species that have found themselves settling over here”, adding that it was aimed at celebrating “what different cultures bring to this landscape”.
David Lammy has hinted that the UK government could U-turn to allow Palestinian scholars to bring their children to the UK.
A group of 34 Palestinian students, including Chevening scholars, with places at British universities have been given permission to continue their studies in Britain. But nearly all have been told by the Foreign Office that they are not allowed to bring their children with them.
One Palestinian student, Manar al-Houbi, who had expected to be able to arrive with her husband and three young children, told the BBC: “I was told [I could not bring my children] just days before our evacuation when I received an email from the FCDO [the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office] … It is impossible for me to leave my children behind.”
The Refugee Council and the University of Oxford have raised concerns about the government’s decision to block students from bringing about 20 children to the UK.
Interviewed on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg, Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said: “I don’t want to cut across the decisions that the new foreign secretary, Yvette [Cooper], and the new home secretary are making, but they will have seen that broadcast, they will no doubt have seen what the Refugee Council and Oxford are saying and I know the intent is to bring people to study and not to cause them further pain or hardship.”
The group of students from Gaza with places at British universities have been evacuated and are due to arrive in the UK within days. All 34 have fully funded scholarships and have received support from the UK government to leave Gaza.
The group, which includes at least four medical doctors, were assisted in leaving the territory on Wednesday. They are expected to be brought to the UK early next week to take up their university places.
The group includes students under the Chevening scholarship, a mostly government-funded scheme for international students to study a one-year master’s degree in the UK.
The evacuation follows months of campaigning by politicians, academics and others on behalf of more than 100 Palestinian students holding offers from UK universities this year.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of Refugee Council, said: “It is excessively harsh to tell students fleeing the appalling devastation in Gaza that while they can study safely here, they must leave their loved ones behind. No one should be forced to choose between their education and their family.
“We know from our frontline services that allowing refugees to be with their partner and children not only helps them recover from trauma but also makes it far easier to settle, study and contribute fully to our communities.
“Family reunion is a lifeline, not a luxury – it is one of the most important and humane safe and legal routes we have. The government should urgently reconsider and ensure families can stay together in safety.”
The broadcaster John Stapleton, who had Parkinson’s disease complicated by pneumonia, died peacefully in hospital early on Sunday morning, his agent said. He was 79.
Stapleton presented on programmes including the BBC’s Watchdog and GMTV’s News Hour.
His agent, Jackie Gill, said: “John had Parkinson’s disease, which was complicated by pneumonia. His son Nick and daughter-in-law Lisa have been constantly at his side and John died peacefully in hospital this morning.”
Stapleton revealed his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease in October 2024.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain after announcing his diagnosis, he said: “There’s no point in being miserable … It won’t ever change.
“Parkinson’s is here with me now for the rest of my life. Best I can do is try and control it and take the advice of all the experts.”
Optus failed to immediately respond to at least five calls from customers unable to contact triple zero in the hours before it realised its systems had failed, as the embattled telco confirmed “established processes were not followed”.
The company’s chief executive, Stephen Rue said on Sunday the company had identified at least five calls, routed to an offshore customer call centre, in relation to the emergency line outage that has been linked to at least three deaths.
The revelation comes as pressure mounts on the Albanese government to ensure stiff penalties for Optus over the service outage and the federal minister for emergency management blasted the telco as “absolutely disgraceful”.
A botched firewall update at 12.30am on Thursday blocked hundreds of calls to triple zero in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
A 68-year-old woman died in Adelaide during the fault, along with a 74-year-old man. The death of a 49-year-old Perth man has also now been linked to the outage.
An eight-week-old boy from Gawler West, north of Adelaide, was also among four deaths authorities had linked to the fault.
While the boy’s family was affected, police now believed the outage is “unlikely to have contributed to the death”.
“The deceased boy’s grandmother has told investigating police that she attempted to call [triple zero] using her mobile phone when she was alerted to the fact her grandson was not breathing,” SA police said in a statement on Sunday. Her call did not connect but she immediately used another mobile phone in the house and was successfully connected to emergency services.
The outage is the second time in two years an Optus network failure has blocked access to critical emergency calls.
Federal minister Kristy McBain said this was the second in “only a couple of years” and “not good enough”.
The minister said the last outage in November 2023 prompted a review that delivered 18 recommendations the government has said it would action.
“Optus clearly needs to review its protocols,” she said. “No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial triple zero, it’s going to get through to one of our emergency operators.”
The federal communications minister, Anika Wells, said on Sunday the government had enacted 12 of 18 recommendations from a review of that incident.
Wells said the other recommendations were “under way”. The government had initially said it would enact at least two of those outstanding recommendations by April 2025.
Rue addressed reporters on Sunday and said the company had put in new place compulsory escalation processes where triple-zero outages had been reported.
Optus was unaware of the outage for triple-zero calls until being notified by a customer at about 1.30pm on Thursday, Rue, said.
The update was cancelled and access to the emergency line was restored after 13 hours.
He said the company had previously discovered two calls that might have provided earlier warning of the outage.
“Our review of our call logs is continuing and so far as part of that process they have found three further calls in relation to this,” he said.
“As we had not detected the triple-zero failures in our network at the time of the calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre.”
Rue said established processes were not followed, but would not elaborate, saying it would be a matter for an independent investigation.
“In the short term I have put in place an immediate halt to future changes to our network system until we have a broader understanding of the events that have occurred,” Rue said.
“The board is in active discussions as to who gets appointed as the independent [reviewer].”
The outage was understood to have impacted people attempting to access emergency services in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Rue also said the company had also discovered two new cases in New South Wales, close to the South Australian border.
Optus has previously confirmed the service failure that blocked emergency calls was the result of a botched firewall update about 12.30am on Thursday. The update was cancelled and access to triple zero restored about 13 hours later, when a customer made direct contact with Optus.
What does recognition of Palestinian statehood entail practically?
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has done a useful explainer with a section looking at what recognising Palestine would look like in practice. Here is an extract:
Recognition is largely symbolic. When the UK’s position was announced the then foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “It will not change the position on the ground.”
But it allows the UK to enter treaties with Palestine and would mean that the Palestine head of mission becomes a fully recognised ambassador.
Some argue that a greater onus would be placed on the UK to boycott goods imported into the UK by Israel that come from the occupied territories.
But it is seen more as a statement on Palestine’s future, and disapproval of Israel’s refusal to negotiate a Palestinian state…
There are genuine fears that Israel is about to annex the West Bank or make Gaza so uninhabitable that Palestinians are forced over the borders into Jordan or Egypt, so destroying the possibility of a Palestinian homeland.
Recognition that Palestine is a state with the right to self-determination is an attempt to show Israel cannot simply annex land that the international court of justice has declared to be illegally occupied.
Keir Starmer set to announce UK recognition of Palestinian state later today
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics.
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to announce the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state in a statement on Sunday afternoon, despite fierce Israeli opposition and US pressure to reconsider.
Starmer said in July he would recognise Palestinian statehood before the UN general assembly in New York this month if Israel did not meet a series of conditions to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including agreeing to a ceasefire and committing to a long-term peace process leading to a Palestinian state coexisting alongside Israel.
But Israel’s continued restrictions on aid into the devastated territory, causing starvation in parts of the Strip, the IDF’s relentless bombardments, killing a high number of civilians and destroying much of Gaza’s infrastructure, and Israel’s expanded assault on famine-stricken Gaza City, which has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee, has made the government feel like taking stronger action – no matter how symbolic – is necessary.
The UK government is also said to be alarmed at plans to accelerate Israeli settlements in the West Bank which ministers fear will end any hope of a two-state solution.
Keir Starmer is to make the announcement after concluding the humanitarian situation has deteriorated significantly in the past few weeks. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
High-level meetings at the UN summit involving world leaders begin on 23 September. In a rare diplomatic break with Washington, Starmer has found himself at odds with the Trump administration over the move, which is opposed to giving official recognition to the state.
Portugal’s foreign ministry said on Friday that it would also formally declare its recognition for Palestinian statehood on Sunday.
Lisbon had already announced in July that it intended to do so, citing the “extremely worrying evolution of the conflict”. Similar moves have been made by Australia, Canada, Luxembourg and France. The Israeli government says that recognition rewards Hamas’ terrorism.
Labour has sought to stress that recognition of a Palestinian state is not a reward for Hamas, and emphasised that it would have no role in the future governance of Gaza.
It is expected the government will ratchet up sanctions on Hamas in due course, and it has stepped up demands for the release of hostages.
Family members of some of the hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on southern Israel in October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, urged Starmer to hold off from recognition until the 48 still in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed to still be alive, had been returned safely.
The letter said:
Your regrettable announcement of the UK’s intention to recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations general assembly has dramatically complicated efforts to bring home our loved ones.
Hamas has already celebrated the UK’s decision as a victory and reneged on a ceasefire deal. We write to you with a simple plea – do not take this step until our loved ones are home and in our arms.
The former City minister Tulip Siddiq has said she fears prosecutors could be planning to use “fake” documents to secure her conviction in her trial in Bangladesh on corruption charges.
The Labour MP, who is being tried in absentia, spoke out after images of a Bangladeshi national identity card and a passport said to be in her name were published in newspapers in the UK and in Bangladesh.
Siddiq said the documents that appeared in the Times and Prothom Alo, a prominent Bangladeshi newspaper, were forgeries. She said: “I’ve struggled with fake news for one year now about all my crimes. No evidence has been produced. So now fake documentation. And I guess the next step is fake evidence.”
Siddiq and 20 other individuals, including her aunt, her mother, her brother and her sister, have been on trial in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, since the start of August. She is accused of influencing her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted as Bangladesh’s prime minister last year, to secure a plot of land in a suburb of Dhaka for her family members.
She denies the allegations, which she says are politically motivated.
Keir Starmer’s independent adviser on the ministerial code cleared her in January after a series of allegations emerged from Bangladesh, but he had added that it was “regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks” that arose from her familial ties and her Treasury role.
She resigned from her roles as economic secretary to the treasury and city minister, claiming the allegations from Bangladesh were proving a distraction for the government.
The identity documents published last week were said by the newspapers to contradict Siddiq’s previous claims that she had never had a national ID card and that a Bangladeshi passport in her name had expired around two and half decades ago.
Siddiq said that she stood by these declarations and that her concern now was that the allegedly forged documents could be the start of more “fake news” from Dhaka, adding that she had never denied being a Bangladeshi citizen as well as a British national, and that she had informed the Treasury of this on becoming a minister.
The Guardian has seen her declaration to the Treasury proving this to be the case.
Siddiq, who was born in London, has Bangladeshi citizenship due to both parents being born there. She said she also had a Bangladesh passport as a child but that it expired when she was about 18 years old and it was not renewed.
She said she did not understand why the allegedly fake documents had been produced, but that it filled her with concern about what was to come, adding: “One thing they could be doing is that they’re fabricating these things to see how well it lands, because then they’re going to fabricate evidence, maybe just to see how much the British press swallow it. It could be something like that.”
It was claimed that records show that a passport for Siddiq was issued in London in September 2001, when Siddiq was 19, and a national identity card issued in January 2011.
It was further claimed that she applied to renew her passport in January 2011 at the Agargaon passport office in Dhaka and that she has a voter registration number.
Siddiq said that none of the claims were true.
A broadcast interview in 2017 has also been cited as evidence that Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate, has not been honest about her citizenship.
She had been asked by Channel 4 whether she would intervene in the case of Ahmad bin Quasem, a Bangladeshi lawyer trained in the UK who had allegedly been abducted in Bangladesh.
She responded: “Are you aware I am a British MP? I was born in London. Are you implying that I am a Bangladeshi politician? Because I don’t think that’s the right thing to imply.
“Are you calling me Bangladeshi? Because I am British, be very careful what you’re saying because I’m a British MP from Hampstead and Kilburn.”
Siddiq said that the conversation had been taken out of context by those seeking to traduce her. She said: “I basically said: ‘Sorry, I’m not Bangladeshi. I’m British, meaning, I’m not a Bangladeshi MP, I’m not taking on casework from a Bangladeshi.’ There’s nothing about citizenship.”
The anti-corruption commission prosecuting Siddiq has claimed that a summons was sent to an address listed on Siddiq’s Bangladesh passport, national identity card and in the voter roll.
Siddiq said she had never lived at the address said to be contained on what she described as “fake documents”.
The anti-corruption commission and the Times have been contacted for comment.
On Pont Street in Belgravia in central London, on the first floor of a handsome Edwardian townhouse, sitting above the royal green awning of the Jeroboams wine shop, is an office. There are no obvious signs for it beyond a little note next to the intercom. When buzzed this week, no one appeared at the door.
This is the registered office of Hunnewell Partners, which describes itself as an “entrepreneurial private equity and litigation funding practice”.
The company is also the ultimate owner of Imedi TV, a broadcaster described by the disinformation monitoring arm of the EU’s foreign affairs service as the “propaganda megaphone undermining Georgia’s EU aspirations”, or the “ruling party’s most powerful propaganda machine, relentlessly pushing anti-western rhetoric and echoing Kremlin-style disinformation”.
Hunnewell Partners said Imedi TV, Georgia’s most popular broadcaster, was a small part of its holdings and that it had editorial independence. Imedi TV accused the EU’s disinformation body of factual inaccuracies and misunderstanding the channel’s editorial line. It denies being pro-Russian and anti-western.
There are strong and opposing views on both sides, but there can be little doubt that Georgia’s future is in the balance, and this London company is part of the debate.
The country seceded from the USSR in 1991 and there is a constitutional obligation on its governments to seek accession to the EU, but in recent years its politics has been transformed.
The governing party, Georgian Dream, led by its honorary chair, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest man in the country, has been accused by western governments, the EU and civil society groups of moving Georgia back into Russia’s sphere of influence and corrupting its democratic institutions.
A series of opposition leaders have been imprisoned in recent weeks and months.
In October, Georgia will hold important municipal elections. Last week, the UK and 36 other countries raised concerns about the lack of an invitation into the country for election monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at a time of growing “repression” of civil society and independent journalists.
At a crucial moment in Georgia’s history, Imedi TV is said to be a malign player, helping to prop up what NGOs and western governments – including the US, which has imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili – claim is an increasingly authoritarian regime.
It seems the UK government’s public shows of concern have not gone unnoticed in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. This week alone, the broadcaster’s cameras “accidentally” filmed what the channel described as evidence of a “secret meeting” between two “radical opposition representatives” as they left the British embassy.
In August, Imedi reported on claims from Archil Gorduladze, the chair of the Georgian parliament’s legal affairs committee, that the British embassy had attempted to fund individuals connected to the opposition United National Movement party (UNM).
Last December, the Georgian parliament passed a “family values and the protection of minors” law that provides a legal basis for authorities to outlaw Pride events and public displays of the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag, and to impose censorship of films and books.
Before that, Imedi and other government-supporting media outlets “amplified stories with limited relevance to Georgia’s context, such as the marriage of UK armed forces minister Luke Pollard to his male partner”, according to a report by the Media Development Foundation, an NGO, entitled Sexist Hate Speech and Homophobia.
“Identical texts were shared across various government-aligned Facebook pages, featuring a wedding photo of the politician, accompanied by the caption: ‘British MP got married’ and the quote: ‘I’m a happy man because I get to call him my husband,’” the report said.
A spokesperson for Imedi TV said: “Although Imedi TV respects and often reflects the cultural conservatism of its viewers, it rejects any accusation of homophobia. The channel believes in individuals’ right to choose their own lifestyle.
“Imedi reported that the British embassy in Georgia attempted to fund media outlets and NGOs associated with opposition party leaders. That is a perfectly valid story to report. There was also information circulating about the embassy financing their trainings; we raised questions about this, but the British embassy left our inquiries unanswered.”
On the recent report from the embassy, the spokesperson said: “A meeting between any politician and an ambassador is important, especially when it comes to an opposition politician who is often supported by some ambassadors through their statements. If Nigel Farage was caught having an undeclared meeting with the US embassy in London to discuss the flag march, that would be all over the news.”
Imedi TV claims that while it is opposed to UNM taking back power, it also holds Georgian Dream to account.
It is against this background that a cross-party group of MPs in the UK, including Blair McDougall, a Labour MP who was recently made a minister, have been asking for the government to act.
James MacCleary, a Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, said: “Under Hunnewell’s control, Imedi TV has become a propaganda arm of the Georgian Dream government, parroting pro-Russian lines and attacking the democratic opposition. That is why I have pushed the government for months to bring sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili and his cronies, including Irakli Rukhadze [a co-founder of Hunnewell Partners].”
Hunnewell Partners has a controversial history and one that has been chronicled through the UK’s high court, court of appeal and supreme court. In February 2008, the previous owner of Imedi TV, the Georgian businessman Arkadi Patarkatsishvili, known as Badri, died of a heart attack. He was said to be worth £6bn but his wealth was hidden around the world.
A company called Salford Capital Partners sought to recover the funds for the grieving family, a process made more difficult by the emergence of a secret second wife in Moscow.
Apart from the chief executive of Salford Capital Partners, Eugene Jaffe, three other key individuals involved in the recovery were Rukhadze and Igor Alexeev, who are Georgian, and a British solicitor, Ben Marson.
There was a falling-out with Jaffe. Rukhadze, Alexeev and Marson split off, offering Badri’s family their services “after learning much of the very complex information about the location and nature of Badri’s assets”, according to a supreme court summary of the case.
The three directors of Hunnewell Partners were successfully sued for breach of fiduciary duty, although there was no finding of dishonesty.
Hunnewelll Partners was ordered to pay $134m plus interest. The court of appeal rejected its appeal and in March the supreme court dismissed an attempt to revise the duties and liabilities of fiduciaries.
In her original high court judgment in 2018, Mrs Justice Cockerill said she “formed the view that I have to treat the evidence of Mr Jaffe, Mr Rukhadze and to a slightly lesser extent Mr Alexeev and Mr Marson with considerable caution, because for these reasons even to the extent that the witnesses were honestly trying to assist I could not be confident that I was receiving accurate factual evidence”.
She described Rukhadze, a joint US-Georgian citizen who is also chair of Imedi’s supervisory board, and described by Hunnewell as “actively involved in all strategic decisions”, as an “unusually focused man with a strong sense of self-belief”.
“I received the impression that he would not be overly concerned about lying in what he considered a good cause,” she said, “and indeed, in some respects I have concluded that his evidence was not truthful but constructed (sometimes on the hoof and inconsistently with the case put by his legal team) on the basis that he perceived that this would be most helpful to his case.”
Of Marson, who recently changed his name to Marson-Knight, the judge said his demeanour suggested he was “trying to assist the court” but “at points it appeared to me that he had persuaded himself of a position which was not, looked at objectively, credible”.
She went on: “At others I was regretfully persuaded that despite his professional status he was prepared to be less than candid during his evidence. I also note that his casual approach to the erroneous use of statements of truth on the defences indicated that his conduct fell below the levels that one would expect for a qualified solicitor.”
Marsons’s claims in court in relation to the status of his employment before the founding of Hunnewell Partners was described as “little short of incredible and drives a conclusion that his evidence in this respect was not honest”.
A spokesperson for Hunnewell said: “Your extracts above are very narrow quotes from hundreds of pages of findings and seek to unfairly paint the Hunnewell Partners in a negative light.”
Badri’s family transferred Imedi TV to Hunnewell Partners 2021 and in March this year a young British journalist, Will Neal, had an article published in the Byline Times examining the company’s ownership and past client list.
Imedi TV and other pro-government channels subsequently aired claims that suggested Neal was part of the “deep state”, apparently on the basis that he had been given a grant from the Civil Society Foundation, a Georgian NGO that was formerly part of the Open Society group, founded by the the financier George Soros.
After leaving the country for personal and business meetings, Neal was blocked at the border as he sought to return. He is appealing against the decision but has as yet not been given a reason for this treatment. There is no suggestion that Hunnewell Partners played a role.
“I know for a fact that the issue was raised by the UK ambassador with the Georgian foreign minister, but I don’t know that any … sort of reason was given diplomatically behind the scenes,” he said.
A spokesperson for Hunnewell Partners said: “Hunnewell Partners had no involvement whatsoever in Georgia’s decision to deny Will Neal entry into Georgia. This action also occurred without our prior knowledge. The first we learned of the incident was through media reporting.
“We have neither the desire nor the power to inconvenience a journalist in that way. Nor does any of Hunnewell’s affiliates. We actively support and promote the principle of a free and independent press in every jurisdiction, and are perfectly happy to accept scrutiny that is unbiased and based on the facts.”
Georgia’s foreign affairs ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The British government has enacted sanctions against some Georgian politicians, businessmen and officials, including the country’s general prosecutor, but civil society groups and opposition figures want more.
The UK’s position as a safe haven for wealthy people is said by opposition figures to give it greater leverage over the Georgian government, including Ivanishvili, who the Pandora Papers leak in 2021 showed had registered 12 companies in the British Virgin Islands between 1998 and 2016.
Hunnewell Partners is a co-investor with a private equity fund founded by Ivanishvili in a Georgian cement company. Rukhadze has already been put under sanctions by Ukraine and Lithuania.
A Hunnewell spokesperson said: “These measures are not based on any proper assessment of the facts and stem from a smear campaign launched by figures in the Georgian opposition and the previous president Mikheil Saakashvili, who seized Imedi TV and put it under state control during his reign.
“They are targeting Irakli Rukhadze in an attempt to suppress the most popular TV station in Georgia because it opposes their return to power.”
Of the business link, the spokesperson added: “There’s an indirect business relationship with Ivanishvili via one investment, the cement company. Nothing very unusual, given [Ivanishvili’s] prominence in Georgian business.”
He added that Hunnewell’s directors had taken precautions to not violate sanctions imposed on Russia with Rukhadze having resigned from the board of Rissa, a Russian bottled water company where he’d been a director for 20 years.
For some, the case of Hunnewell Partners is a test as to the British government’s resolve over Georgia’s future as a democracy. Sandro Kevkhishvili, the anti-corruption programme manager at Transparency International Georgia, said: “Rukhadze is not formally a member of Georgian Dream but he is, as he says, a supporter. It is a political actor. So what is the British government’s position on this? That is the question. And using a sanctions mechanism of some kind is definitely one way of dealing with it.”
Giorgi Kandelaki, a former member of parliament and now a researcher at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory, said Georgia’s transformation mattered.
“What is unfolding in Georgia is not just another instance of democratic backsliding in a distant country,” he said. “Georgia’s trajectory carries a profound geopolitical weight: a nation once counted among the west’s most committed allies is now being taken over by the enemies of freedom.”
In the emotionally and politically charged days since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative youth activist who was a close ally of Donald Trump, one statement has loomed large. On Monday, the US attorney general – the official in charge of the rule of law in America – said that the Trump administration would “absolutely target” those who espouse “hate speech” about Kirk.
Unlike in many other countries, hate speech is protected by US law unless it incites imminent violence or constitutes a true threat. But that did not deter the nation’s top law enforcement officer, who also suggested that – for example – a print shop employee who refused to print flyers memorializing Kirk could be “prosecuted”.
Since Kirk was shot to death while speaking to college students in Utah earlier this month, the US has been gripped by a bitter debate about the relation between political speech and violence. Bondi later walked back some of her remarks, in part because of criticism from other conservatives worried about the reframing of “free speech” as “hate speech”. But Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, White House adviser Stephen Miller and other top Republicans have framed Kirk’s death as the consequence of what they claim is unchecked and violent rhetoric, which they blame on the left wing alone.
It is a remarkable turn from prominent American conservatives, who until Trump’s return to power in January had long complained of a censorious leftwing “cancel culture” but now seem happy to reframe that, too, as “consequence culture”. Nancy Mace, a House representative, sounded a lot like the progressives she has often decried for their political correctness when she declared last week, during an effort to censure one of her opponents in Congress, that “free speech isn’t free from consequences”.
Many conservatives are also now championing a public campaign to get fired from their jobs any Americans who made light of Kirk’s death or disparaged him or his politics in death. Meanwhile, administration officials are proceeding with drafting an executive order for Trump aiming to “combat political violence and hate speech”, the New York Times recently reported.
Kirk’s assassination was a “despicable act of political violence, an attack on a figure who built his brand around campus debating, and the outrage, grief, and anger is understandable”, Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), said.
But instead of recommitting to free speech as a “fundamental value”, the response from many public officials “has been the opposite. They are using the tragedy to justify a broad crackdown on speech,” he said.
“They are openly collapsing the distinction between political dissent and political violence, and it sounds like they are laying the foundation for mass censorship and surveillance of political critics.”
The pressure campaign’s biggest trophy so far is the talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. After an episode of his show in which Kimmel seemed to suggest (wrongly, according to reports) that Kirk’s assassin had Maga sympathies, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the government agency that regulates broadcasting, urged TV networks to drop Kimmel’s show. On Wednesday, ABC announced that it was suspending the program indefinitely.
The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, applauded ABC’s surrender – even though just two years ago he said that free speech is a crucial “check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”
“It’s an overreaction,” Katie Fallow, an attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, said, “and it is an example of the kind of ‘cancel culture’ that major figures on the right have been criticizing for so many years. Now they’re just doing a complete about-face and engaging in it themselves.”
Bondi’s rhetoric is a particularly “alarming threat” given her status overseeing American law enforcement, Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the general counsel of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said. It is also “a signal that not only does this administration not care about the first amendment, they don’t seem to really understand it.”
Although Kimmel is the most prominent media figure to have been punished so far, in recent days a number of journalists have faced the loss of their jobs or other disciplinary measures, either at the direct instigation of conservative pressure or in seeming preemption of it. Earlier in the week the Washington Post – under Jeff Bezos, who has cosied up to Trump and whose ownership has seen the opinion section move closer to the political right – terminated the columnist Karen Attiah for, she said, her unflattering writing about Kirk’s political views.
Academics, too, are under threat, with three professors at Clemson University in South Carolina recently fired for making allegedly inappropriate social media posts about Kirk’s death. Dubal is concerned by this aggressive campaign to get professors fired or disciplined for their “extramural” speech, particularly when academics are often contractually entitled to rigorous processes before they can be terminated.
It seems as though many employers have decided that it is worth violating principles of academic freedom and contractual obligation, she said, rather than “displease the president, or displease rightwing donors. And that’s a political calculation, it’s a legal calculation. But it’s dangerous.”
Indeed, Fallow finds the attempt to suppress speech after Kirk’s death disturbing because she sees it as part of a larger and “unprecedented” attempt by the second Trump administration to use “every available lever of power to try and suppress dissent and chill speech” – including but not limited to threatening universities with investigations or financial penalties because of protests on campus; targeting law firms with executive orders for their legal work; deporting international students for participating in protests or writing op-eds; kicking reporters out of White House press conferences based on their publications’ coverage; and bringing frivolous defamation lawsuits against media outlets.
The general message, Fallow said, is that if you disagree with Trump or his allies “you’re going to be in the administration’s crosshairs”.
Although some people have defended the suspension of Kimmel or the firings of professors on the grounds that these are private employer decisions, and not matters of first amendment-protected public speech, Dubal and other experts feel that the government’s increasingly naked involvement makes it difficult for that argument to carry water.
“Here … you have a vice-president [Vance] who’s calling for employers [and] third-party vigilante organizations and individuals to force employers to terminate their employees and others based on speech,” Dubal said. “Coercive government speech is very different than the creation of political cultures where it’s not okay to say certain things based on social response. I think what we’re seeing is really, at least for my own lifetime, unprecedented.”
Conservatives are making arguments similar to the ones that some progressives used to make about cancel culture, Terr noted, particularly during the wave of firings, de-platformings, and social-media shamings that occurred during the national “reckoning” after George Floyd’s murder. “And conservatives at the time, I think rightly, argued that we should think of free speech not just as a legal right, but as a broader cultural value.”
Now, Terr said, “many of the same politicians who have long railed against cancel culture are leading the loudest calls for censorship – often using, either explicitly or implicitly, rationales that they’ve dismissed when invoked by the left: ‘This is hate speech.’ ‘This is misinformation.’ ‘This will lead to violence.’ ‘Stochastic terrorism.’ ‘This speech makes us unsafe.’ It’s amazing. And I think the lesson here is that once the justification for censorship is put on the table, it’s a loaded gun just waiting to be picked up by the other side.”
Some conservatives have pushed back. Bondi’s remarks, especially, were condemned by rightwing commentators including Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson. Referring to Bondi, Walsh wrote on social media: “Get rid of her. Today. This is insane. Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone … Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason.”
Walsh also argued that a crackdown on speech would come back to haunt the right: “Every Trump supporter right now applauding Trump threatening ABC with consequences unless they suspend Jimmy Kimmel must also applaud when a Democratic president in 4yrs threatens Fox News with consequences unless they suspend Greg Gutfeld. Hey Maga, do you understand?”
Dubal said she thought conservative pundits were right to lambast Bondi. “There are principles of speech in this country that apply broadly … and the idea that they were going to go after businesses and individuals based on protected speech was really kind of shocking.”
The late Kirk was an inconsistent defender of free speech – his organization, Turning Point USA, famously maintains a “watchlist” of professors it describes as dangerously leftwing – but some conservatives have argued that Kirk would not want the right to turn against free expression. “You hope that Charlie Kirk’s death won’t be used by … bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build,” Carlson recently said.
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk wrote on social media last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
Nationals senator Matt Canavan has claimed the Coalition is “on the cusp of walking away from net zero”, urging Sussan Ley to campaign against the emissions reduction target by taking inspiration from Peter Dutton’s opposition to the Indigenous voice referendum.
The conservative political conference Cpac has heaped more pressure on Ley to dump the climate target, with a host of rightwing Liberal and National politicians calling for the 2050 aspiration – agreed by the former Coalition prime minister Scott Morrison – to be scrapped immediately.
“I think we’re on the cusp of the Liberal and National parties walking away from net zero,” Canavan told the Cpac conference, claiming the “the last rites [are] being administered right now.”
“It’s got to go through this process, maybe it’ll take 12 months, but we took two hours to come up and oppose the emission target this week, so that’s good.”
Shadow energy minister Dan Tehan is leading an internal process to set the Coalition’s energy policy, including its position on net zero. That process is ongoing but has no timeline for reporting or finalising policies; Ley last week said the party was “not going to be pinned down on timelines” but “taking the time to get that right”.
“We do take climate action seriously and we do believe that Australia should play its part in reducing emissions, but not at any cost,” she told a press conference.
Some net zero sceptics including Canavan and Abbott have argued that not setting 2030 or 2035 targets would necessitate scrapping the 2050 goal, because not setting shorter-term goals would mean even more drastic reforms would be needed to meet the longer-term aspiration.
Canavan, in a live broadcast at Cpac of the Sky News opinion program Outsiders, called on his colleagues to have “the guts and courage to point out the emperor, the net zero emperor, has no clothes”, and suggested emulating Dutton’s strategy from the Indigenous voice referendum.
“The Australian people didn’t change their mind on the voice until Peter Dutton came out and showed leadership. As soon as he took a position, the polls on the voice went off a cliff. The same thing will happen here,” Canavan said of net zero.
In Cpac speeches on Saturday, Abbott joined recently demoted Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senator Alex Antic and the Cpac chair, Warren Mundine, in urging the dumping of net zero. The Liberal deputy leader, Ted O’Brien, was heckled several times during his speech by audience members calling for the Coalition to scrap the target.
Ley was not on the speaker’s lineup at Cpac. Angus Taylor, who she defeated in a leadership ballot, sent a short video message; Andrew Hastie, another potential leadership aspirant, was mentioned several times in glowing terms by speakers and attenders. Canavan, in a separate speech on Saturday, strongly praised Hastie for his threat to quit the shadow frontbench if the Coalition stuck by net zero, which received a standing ovation and loud applause from many in the audience.
The energy minister, Chris Bowen, told the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday there was “people of bad faith in Australian politics exploiting this issue”. He accused the National party of “betraying regional Australia” by downplaying the alarming projections in this week’s climate risk assessment, voicing alarm about climate “disinformation … from so many on the right of politics.”
Abbott claimed Labor’s 62-70% emissions reduction target by 2035 could be the government’s “political death warrant”, and would be “national economic suicide”, calling on the Liberals to wage an election campaign on climate issues.
“I also want to remind my former colleagues that every time the Coalition has fought an election on climate and energy – in 2010, 2013, and 2019 as well – we have succeeded. And every time we have ‘me too-ed’ Labor, we have done badly.”
“I think this week, an opportunity has opened for us to take back Australia.”
Price labelled the climate target “communism”, saying: “It’s time the Liberals pushed back against this freedom-eroding nonsense.”