Category: Trending Now

MI5 lied to three courts while defending its handling of a misogynistic neo-Nazi state agent who attacked his girlfriend with a machete, the BBC can reveal.

Arguing for secrecy, the Security Service told judges it had stuck to its policy of not confirming or denying informants’ identities.

In fact, MI5 had disclosed the man’s status in phone calls to me, as it tried to persuade me not to investigate the man – known publicly only as agent X.

The service aggressively maintained its position until I produced evidence proving it was untrue, including a recording of one of the calls.

The BBC can reveal:

• MI5 first lied in a court case where the government attempted to block the BBC from reporting on agent X’s wrongdoing – and succeeded in banning us from naming the foreign national
• The Security Service then repeated the lie to a specialist court, where the woman attacked with a machete – known by the alias Beth – is seeking answers about MI5’s handling of its agent
• It repeated the lie again to a judicial review, where Beth was challenging the specialist court’s decision
• A senior officer said he was legally authorised to tell me X was an agent – so MI5 had not stuck to its policy of not confirming or denying agents’ identities

In an unprecedented humiliation, MI5 has now issued an “unreserved apology” to the BBC and all three courts, describing what happened as a “serious error” and saying “MI5 takes full responsibility”.

There will now be pressure on MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum to explain what he knew, given that the officer said he had been legally authorised to disclose X’s role.

It also raises concerns about the reliability of MI5’s evidence in the courts and the sustainability of one of its core secrecy policies.

Beth’s case will now head back to the specialist court, which is investigating if the Security Service breached her human rights by failing to protect her from X’s abusive and coercive behaviour.

It will reconsider whether it was right to rule that the evidence should be heard in closed sessions which she would not be able to attend.

Beth’s lawyer, Kate Ellis from the Centre for Women’s Justice, told the BBC: “I think this raises real concerns about MI5’s transparency, about whether we can trust MI5’s evidence to courts.”

MI5’s lie can be revealed after the BBC applied to the High Court to report false evidence in a corporate witness statement by a deputy director in the Security Service, known as Witness A.

His statement said the service had maintained its long-standing approach to neither confirm nor deny the identity of agents – a policy known by the initials NCND – and gave a false account of the MI5 officer’s calls with me.

During a short hearing granting permission on Wednesday at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Mr Justice Chamberlain said the relevant MI5 evidence had been “false”.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has appointed Sir Jonathan Jones KC, former head of the government legal service, as an “independent external reviewer” to investigate how MI5 came to provide false evidence to the courts.

He has also been asked to recommend any changes needed to ensure that courts are provided with accurate information in future by the Security Service.

After we reported in 2022 how X terrorised his partner, Ms Cooper – then shadow home secretary – had called for an “independent assessment” of the case, looking at the way concerns about “the appalling and dangerous crime of domestic abuse” were handled by MI5.

MI5 says it is conducting an internal investigation into the false evidence which may result in disciplinary action.

Sir James Eadie KC, representing the government at court on Wednesday, said the internal MI5 disciplinary process “indicates the seriousness with which this is being taken”. He said the court will be updated in April.

The BBC has called into question the lack of explanation from MI5. In legal submissions today, the BBC invited the court to take further steps to ensure that this “serious breach is properly investigated” and that the results of any investigation are brought into the public domain.

Exposure of MI5’s false testimony will also damage its credibility in other court proceedings, where judges are obliged to give enormous weight and deference to the Security Service’s evidence.

These often involve secret hearings which are closed even to those most affected – including Beth, people whose relatives have been killed in attacks and people whose UK citizenship has been stripped from them.

MI5 has acknowledged the issue, saying in legal submissions on Wednesday that it is “acutely conscious of the particular responsibilities that MI5 bears” and that courts must be able to “trust completely any evidence it provides”.

The Security Service maintains that the NCND policy is essential to maintain national security and keep agents safe. But the BBC revelations will add to concerns about the way the policy is being used, including that it may stand in the way of agents being held accountable when they abuse their positions or commit crimes.

Because the senior MI5 officer told me disclosure of the agent’s status had been legally authorised, it means it had been signed off by lawyers and other senior figures in MI5. The Home Office and Cabinet Office should also have been informed, according to the policy for departures from NCND.

In a new witness statement, the MI5 deputy director Witness A said he “sincerely” apologised for giving incorrect evidence.

He said the false information “reflected my honestly held belief at that time, and which accurately reflected the information I was given”.

If you have information about this story or a similar one that you would like to share with the BBC News Investigations team please get in touch. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can contact us in the following ways:

Email: security.investigations@bbc.co.uk

Signal: +447811921399

Click here to learn how to use SecureDrop, an anonymous whistleblowing tool that works only in the Tor browser and follow the advice to stay secure.

A teacher has fatally stabbed an eight-year-old girl at an elementary school in South Korea, in an incident that has shocked the nation.

The female teacher, who is in her 40s, confessed to stabbing the student in the central city of Daejeon, police said.

The girl was found with stab wounds on the second floor of a school building at 18:00 local time (09:00 GMT) Monday and was pronounced dead at the hospital. The teacher was found beside her with stab wounds that police said might be self-inflicted.

South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok on Tuesday ordered an investigation into the case and urged authorities to “implement necessary measures to ensure such incidents never happen again”.

Some locals laid flowers and a stuffed doll at the gate of the school, which was closed on Tuesday.

In a police briefing on Tuesday, Yook Jong-myung, the head of the Dajeon Western Police Station said the teacher was currently recovering in hospital, adding that she had a wound on her neck that had been stitched.

The Daejeon education office earlier said the teacher had requested a six-month leave of absence citing depression on 9 December, but had returned to school just 20 days later after a doctor assessed her as being fit to work.

During her time off work, she had suicidal thoughts, said Mr Yook, citing a testimony that the teacher had provided to police.

Days before the stabbing, the teacher had displayed violent behaviour, including putting another teacher in a headlock, said the education office.

Two officials from the education office visited the school on Monday, the morning of the stabbing, to investigate that altercation.

After the attack on the co-worker, the education office recommended that the teacher be put on leave and be separated physically from the other teacher.

She was made to sit beside the vice principal’s desk so that she could be kept under close watch.

She had also not been teaching any classes since her leave in December, and did not have any contact with the eight-year-old student, the official said.

According to the testimony given by the teacher to police, she had purchased a weapon on the day of the attack and brought it to school – adding that she had planned to kill herself along with a child.

The testimony went on to say that the teacher did not “care which child it was”, and targeted the last to leave – she managed to “lure the child into the media room” before attacking them.

The student was reported missing on Monday evening after the bus driver informed the school that she had not arrived to be picked up that day.

South Korea is a generally safe country with strict gun control laws. But in recent years, it has grappled with several high-profile crimes, including stabbings.

“It pains me to see such incidents because a school should be our safest space,” said acting president Choi. “I offer my deep condolences to the victim’s family who suffered great shock and agony.”

When a prominent Saudi trans woman posted her suicide note on X, her friends and followers were devastated. The note, viewed by millions, said a lawyer in the US – where she had been trying to claim asylum – had persuaded her into returning home to a family and country that would not accept her identity.

The BBC World Service has identified this man as Bader Alomair, who has worked at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC, evidence suggests. He is linked to controversial returns from the United States of several other Saudi students – including two later accused of committing murder during their time at university.

Mr Alomair has not responded to the allegations raised in our investigation.

Eden Knight was from one of the Middle Eastern kingdom’s most respected families. After moving to Virginia in 2019 on a Saudi government scholarship to study at George Mason University, Eden made the decision in early 2022 to transition from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman, by wearing feminine clothes and taking female sex hormones.

Eden found a community on X and Discord where she felt accepted and started to grow a following online. In one post, she shared a picture of her Saudi ID photo next to her new feminine look and the post went viral.

Being transgender in Saudi Arabia is not tolerated by society or government – we have spoken to several transgender Saudis, now living outside the kingdom, who told us about the harassment, and in some cases violence, they had experienced.

Returning to Saudi Arabia could therefore have been difficult for Eden. We understand her student visa expired at around the time of her viral tweet so she decided to seek asylum in the US to stay there permanently.

Eden said she was messaged by an old friend who put her in contact with an American private investigator, Michael Pocalyko. He offered to help with her asylum claim, and mend the relationship with her family – according to another friend, Hayden, who Eden was living with in Georgia at the time.

Other friends have shared messages with us from Eden, which say Mr Pocalyko told her she needed to move from Georgia to Washington DC to lodge her claim.

According to the final message she posted on X, in late October 2022, the private investigator met Eden off the train in the US capital. He was accompanied by a Saudi lawyer named Bader, she wrote.

“I genuinely was optimistic and believed this could work,” Eden said in her final post. She said Bader put her up in a nice apartment near Washington DC and took her sightseeing.

But over time it seems she began to question his motives. Eden wrote to friends, in messages shared with the BBC, that Bader was “detransitioning” her. She told them that Bader tried to throw out all of her feminine clothing and told her to stop hormone therapy.

Eden also told friends that Bader advised her she could not apply for asylum in the US and that she must return to Saudi Arabia to do this. A US immigration expert said such advice would be incorrect.

In December 2022, Eden messaged friends to say: “I am going [back to Saudi] with a lawyer and wishing for the best.” Her suicide note on X makes clear that the lawyer in question was someone called “Bader”.

It was not long before Eden was telling friends that returning was a mistake.

She messaged them to say her parents had taken her passport and the government had instructed her to close her X account. Eden told friends she had evidence her parents had hired people to get her back to Saudi Arabia, though she never shared that evidence.

“The lawyer that was helping me with asylum was working with my parents behind my back,” she told one of them.

Over the next few months, Eden’s friends say, she lost any hope of escaping Saudi Arabia.

She worked in a junior position at a tech company and in public assumed her original male identity. Eden messaged a friend to say she was trying to continue taking female hormones, but that her parents repeatedly confiscated them. Eden told friends that she suffered constant verbal abuse, and sent them a video – which we have seen – that she secretly recorded of a family member shouting that she had been brainwashed by Western ideas.

Eden took her own life on 12 March 2023.

We wanted to find “Bader” – the lawyer who Eden accused of detransitioning her and persuading her home, to ask him more about the events running up to her death.

We searched for lawyers of that name in the DC area, and one came up: Bader Alomair. There was limited information about him online, but an outdated directory for professionals working in Riyadh gave his full name in Arabic – which in turn led us to an inactive Facebook account showing a photo of him at Harvard Law School.

In texts Eden sent to friends, she mentioned her lawyer had been Harvard-educated.

Then, a source shared a crucial photo – taken by Eden from the apartment Mr Alomair had installed her in. We were able to geolocate it to a residential block on the outskirts of Washington DC.

One person there told us he had known Eden and had seen her with Mr Alomair.

He said Eden owned feminine clothing, jewellery and make-up, but would have to hide it when Mr Alomair came over. He made her cut her hair and told her not to shave, the witness said.

We repeatedly tried to contact Mr Alomair, but he did not respond. When we visited the address listed on his DC Bar registration, we saw a man matching photos of him get into an SUV and drive away.

We followed, noting the car’s unusual number plate – its code indicated the car was issued by the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC, and that the vehicle’s owner was embassy staff.

Mr Alomair’s role in the embassy was to support Saudi students in the US – a lawyer who previously worked with him told us.

We discovered news articles highlighting instances of Mr Alomair helping those left homeless by a hurricane in Florida, for example. But we also discovered his assistance had extended to more controversial situations.

On 13 October 2018, two Saudi students were questioned by US police over the death of an aspiring rapper in North Carolina – stabbed, reportedly after an altercation with the pair.

Some two months later, Abdullah Hariri and Sultan Alsuhaymi were charged with murder, but by then had left the US.

Just four days after the stabbing, Mr Hariri was on a flight back to Saudi Arabia, an email shared with us suggests. It includes details of the flights home which our source told us Mr Alomair organised for both Mr Hariri and Mr Alsuhaymi.

Neither student has ever commented publicly on the case.

Mr Alomair was sent an invoice for the flights a month later, another email shows, which our source says he would have needed to get reimbursement from the Saudi embassy.

Another source says he has worked with him to represent dozens of other Saudi students in the US against charges ranging from speeding to drink-driving.

“Bader would come to the meetings with an Arabic form headed by the Saudi embassy for students to sign [which] promised to pay back legal fees to the Saudi government once they returned home.”

The source told us the students would appear at their first hearing but vanish before any subsequent hearings, though we do not know if Mr Alomair had any role in this.

In 2019, the FBI warned that Saudi officials likely facilitated the escape of Saudi citizens from US legal proceedings.

“The FBI assesses that Kingdom of Saudi Arabia officials almost certainly assist US-based Saudi citizens to avoid legal issues, undermining the US judicial process. This assessment is made with high confidence.”

People outside the UK can watch the documentary on YouTube

Sources have told us Mr Alomair continues to live and work in the US. He owns multiple commercial properties around Washington DC and in August 2024 appears to have set up a new law firm in Virginia, where he is a named partner.

Michael Pocalyko, Bader Alomair and the Saudi embassy in Washington DC did not respond to our questions.

We contacted Eden’s family to ask if they wanted to take part in this story but they did not respond.

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram and Facebook. Join the conversation using #BBC100Women.

Donald Trump is expected to face fierce resistance from Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House today, in their first meeting since the US president proposed moving Gaza’s population to Jordan.

Jordan, a key US ally, has been treading a tightrope between its military and diplomatic ties, and popular support for the Palestinians at home.

Those fault lines, already tested by the Gaza War, are being pushed to breaking point by Trump’s plans for Gaza’s peace.

He has expanded on his demand that Gazans be moved to Jordan and Egypt, telling a Fox News anchor that they would not have the right to return home – a vision that, if enforced, would contravene international law.

On Monday he said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they did not take in Palestinian refugees.

Some of the fiercest opponents of moving Gazans to Jordan are the Gazans who moved here before.

Some 45,000 people live crammed into the Gaza Camp, near Jordan’s northern town of Jerash, one of several Palestinian refugee camps here.

Sheets of corrugated iron hang over narrow shop doorways, and children rattle along on donkeys between the market stalls.

All the families here trace their roots back to Gaza: to Jabalia, Rafah, Beit Hanoun. Most left after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, seeking temporary shelter. Generations later, they are still here.

“Donald Trump is an arrogant narcissist,” 60-year-old Maher Azazi tells me. “He has a mentality from the Middle Ages, the mentality of a tradesman.”

Maher left Jabalia as a toddler. Some of his family are still there, now picking through the rubble of their home for the bodies of 18 missing relatives.

Despite the devastation there, Mr Azazi says Gazans today have learned the lessons of previous generations and most “would rather jump into the sea than leave”.

Those who once saw leaving as a temporary bid for refuge, now see it as helping Israel’s far-right nationalists take Palestinian land.

“We Gazans have been through this before,” says Yousef, who was born in the camp. “Back then, they told us it would be temporary, and we would return to our home. The right to return is a red line.”

“When our ancestors left, they had no weapons to fight, like Hamas has now,” another man tells me. “Now the younger generation are fully aware of what happened with our ancestors, and it will never happen again. Now there is resistance.”

Palestinians are not the only ones to seek refuge in Jordan – a tiny superpower of stability surrounded by the Middle East’s many conflicts.

Iraqis arrived here, fleeing war in the early 2000s. A decade later, Syrians came too, prompting Jordan’s king to warn that his country was at “boiling point”.

Many native Jordanians blame the waves of refugees for high unemployment and poverty at home. A food bank by the mosque in central Amman told us it hands out 1,000 meals a day.

Waiting for work outside the mosque, we met Imad Abdallah and his friend Hassan – both day labourers who have not worked in months.

“The situation in Jordan used to be great, but when there was the war in Iraq, things got worse, when there was the war in Syria, it got worse, now there’s a war in Gaza, it’s got a lot worse,” Hassan said. “Any war that happens near us, we become worse off, because we’re a country that helps and takes people in.”

Imad was blunter, worried about feeding his four children.

“The foreigners come, and take our jobs,” he told me. “Now I’m four months without a job. I have no money, no food. If Gazans come, we will die.”

But Jordan is also under pressure from its key military ally. Trump has already suspended to it US aid worth more than $1.5 billion a year. And many here are braced for a growing confrontation between the new US president and their own political leaders, who are pushing back.

Jawad Anani, a former deputy prime minister close to the Jordanian government, says King Abdullah’s message to Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday will be clear: “We consider any attempt by Israel or others to push people out of their own houses in Gaza and the West Bank as a criminal act. But any attempt to push those people into Jordan will be tantamount to a declaration of war.”

Even if Gazans wanted to relocate voluntarily, on a temporary basis, as part of a wider Middle East plan, he said, the trust simply was not there.

“There is no confidence,” he said. “As long as Netanyahu is involved, he and his government, there is no confidence in any promises that anybody makes. Period.”

Trump’s determination to push his vision for Gaza could end up pushing a key US ally into a critical choice.

Last Friday, thousands protested here against Trump’s proposal.

Jordan is home to US military bases, and millions of refugees, and its security co-operation is crucial for Israel, worried about smuggling routes into the occupied West Bank.

Any risks to Jordan’s stability mean risks for its allies too. If stability is Jordan’s superpower, the threat of unrest is its biggest weapon and its best defence.

Additional reporting: Mohamed Madi, BBC News

A “large” sewer blockage caused by “fat, grease and rags” has forced the cancellation of a Bryan Adams concert in Australia on public health grounds.

The Grammy Award winning artist was due to perform at the RAC Arena in Perth on Sunday, but the city’s water corporation said a blocked main risked backing up the venue’s toilets.

Adams apologised to fans on social media – many of whom had lined up for hours only to be turned away – and thanked them for their “patience and support” before promising to try to reschedule the show.

The concert promoter said the cancellation was “bitterly disappointing” and would provide ticketholders with a full refund.

“While every effort was made for the show to proceed, this matter was outside of the control of Bryan Adams, Frontier Touring and RAC Arena,” it wrote in a statement.

Perth’s water corporation said the fatberg responsible for the disruption had already “caused several wastewater overflows” on the main road near the venue and urged the public to avoid direct contact with “pooled water” in the area.

“We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused and will provide further updates as required,” it said in a post on Facebook, advising of the cancellation.

Adams – who is known for his tracks such as Summer of ’69 and Please Forgive Me – made his Australian debut in 1984 and has remained a beloved performer across the country ever since.

“I’m really sorry we couldn’t make this happen tonight — I was so looking forward to seeing you all,” he posted on social media on Sunday.

The Canadian rock star is still due to play in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne later this week.

Found in sewers around the world, fatbergs are formed when fat, oil and grease solidify and bind with items such as rags, or wet wipes.

They are known to cause serious blockages and environmental hazards. Last year, a fatberg weighing roughly the same as three double-decker buses was cleared from an east London sewer. And New York, Denver, Melbourne and Valencia have all found giant fatbergs blocking their waterways in recent years.

The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been told to stop minting one-cent coins, or pennies as they are widely called, by US President Donald Trump in an announcement on his Truth Social media account.

“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump’s post said, describing the move as a cost-cutting measure.

It comes after Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) drew attention to the cost of minting pennies in a post on X last month.

The debate over the cost and usefulness of pennies has been a long-running one in the US.

“This is so wasteful,” Trump’s Truth Social post said.

“I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

According the US Mint’s 2024 annual report, making and distributing a one cent coin costs 3.69 cents.

US government officials and members of Congress have in the past proposed discontinuing the penny without success.

While its detractors have argued that the zinc and copper coin is a waste of money and resources, those who support it say that the coin keeps prices lower and boosts fund-raising for charities.

Other countries have discontinued similar coins. Canada ditched its one-cent coin in 2012 citing the cost of minting it and its falling purchasing power due to higher prices.

The declining use of cash meant the UK did not mint any new coins in 2024, after officials decided there were already enough coins in circulation.

The UK Treasury has said that 1p or 2p coins are not being scrapped, but with more people living cashless lives, there have been several years when no 2p coins were produced. 20p coins have also seen various periods without new minting.

Former patients at Scotland’s biggest children’s psychiatric hospital have spoken out about a culture of cruelty among nursing staff.

Patients who were teenagers when they were admitted to Skye House, a specialist NHS unit in Glasgow, told BBC Disclosure some nurses called them “pathetic” and “disgusting” – and even mocked their suicide attempts.

“It was almost as if I was getting treated like an animal,” one young patient, being treated for anorexia, said.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it was “incredibly sorry” and has launched two inquiries into the allegations uncovered by the BBC’s investigation.

Programme-makers spoke to 28 former patients while making BBC Disclosure’s Kids on The Psychiatric Ward documentary.

One said the 24-bed psychiatric hospital, which sits in the grounds of Glasgow’s Stobhill hospital, was like “hell”.

“I’d say the culture of the nursing team was quite toxic. A lot of them, to be honest, were quite cruel a lot of the time,” she added.

The young people, who were admitted between 2017 and 2024, told the programme that nurses quickly resorted to force, including physical restraint and dragging patients down corridors, leaving them bruised and traumatised.

One said she wanted the police to be called after an alleged assault but was afraid she would be treated worse.

Others reported the over-use of medication and sedative injections so the staff could have a quiet shift, leaving patients like “walking zombies”.

Some patients said they were punished for being unwell, including being made to clean up their own blood from self-harm incidents.

Warning: Some readers may find details in this report distressing

Skye House, which opened in 2009, accepts children aged 12 to 18 who are usually at crisis point.

Most are detained under the Mental Health Act, which means they cannot leave until doctors decide they are fit to be discharged.

The BBC began investigating after one young patient reported her treatment at the unit.

Many other cases soon came to light.

Cara spent more than two years in the unit, from the age of 16, being treated for anorexia.

She was restrained more than 400 times over 18 months, medical records reviewed by the BBC showed.

She was often left with bruises and on one occasion a clump of her hair was pulled out.

“It traumatises you. You can’t forget it,” she said.

Up to five nurses could be involved in physically restraining someone to a bed or the floor if they were a danger to others or themselves.

Guidelines say restraints should only ever be used as a last resort, when all other de-escalation tactics have been exhausted.

Cara, now 21, would sometimes have to be restrained to prevent her from self-harming but says most of her restraints could have been avoided if staff had first attempted to speak to her instead of using restraints “as a first port of call”.

She said one restraint in 2021 left her bruised and shaken.

“He held me down by the neck to the floor,” Cara said.

“Quite scary, to have this man hovering over you, holding you down. His handprint was left around my neck.”

On another occasion, Cara’s medical notes reveal, she felt she had been assaulted after being pushed to the floor by the same nurse.

Cara had asked to call the police, only to later change her mind.

She told Disclosure this was because she was scared of the outcome.

“I just thought they might treat me worse than they already were,” she said.

When Jenna, from Inverness, was 16, she was suffering with depression, an eating disorder and had started to self-harm.

The nearest adolescent psychiatric unit was in Dundee but there were no beds and she was sent to Skye House.

“It was hell, like a prison kind of environment,” Jenna said.

Jenna spent about nine months in the unit.

She was treated for anorexia by being fed through a nasogastric (NG) tube, a common but invasive treatment for malnourished people which involves threading a tube through the nose into the stomach.

Sometimes she would be restrained for this but she says the way staff administered this treatment has left her traumatised.

“Sometimes they would just come up to me and grab my arms and take me away,” she said.

“I would just be dragged by however many nurses was needed.”

She said sometimes staff would be so rough with her she’d be left bleeding and bruised.

“It was a kind of subtle punishment to teach me a lesson.”

Self-harm behaviour was a feature in the lives of nearly all the patients who spoke to the BBC.

They claimed nursing staff would often miss mandatory 15-minute checks on patients, providing opportunities to hurt themselves.

Jenna and Cara told Disclosure there were occasions they had self-harmed and would be made to clean up their own blood from walls and floors.

Jenna said: “I remember the staff member kind of saying, ‘You’re disgusting, like that’s disgusting, you need to clean that up’. It made me feel really horrible.”

Cara said staff would sometimes be careless with her NG feeds and deliver the liquid too fast, causing her to vomit.

She said she would be made to clean her sick up herself.

Cara said: “They would give me wipes, and I’d be made to wipe the floor. It felt like a punishment, as if I’d done it on purpose.

“I just felt like I was constantly punished for things.”

Stephanie was in Skye House for several admissions suffering from depression, from 2020 when she was 16.

She said she had been left with trauma from her time there.

“The nurses never really treated you with care or compassion,” she said.

“Instead of asking you what’s wrong, they just put you on the floor and inject you with medication.”

On one occasion Stephanie alleges she was assaulted by a staff member who became frustrated at her refusal to take a shower.

Stephanie said: “The nurse got angry with me.

“She’s then dragged me off the bed by my legs, and turned a shower on, and put me in the shower with my clothes on. And then just walked away and left.

“At the time I just thought it was normal. Everybody else was really getting the same kind of treatment.”

Jane Heslop is a retired NHS chief nurse who spent her career in child and adolescent mental health services and reviewed the BBC’s evidence.

“It’s abusive, it’s completely wrong,” she said.

“If that occurred as that young person described, it’s absolutely and completely unacceptable.”

Ms Heslop said that it appeared “some of these staff have lost some of their boundaries”.

Abby is autistic and was admitted to Skye House at the age of 14 when she was self-harming and suicidal.

She was there for two and half years and says she felt bullied by staff, some of whom could be verbally abusive.

On one occasion, she said she was mocked for self-harming.

“The nurse came up to me and almost chuckled, like a kind of grin, and said ‘You’re being pathetic, like look at yourself’,” Abby said.

“It felt like bullying sometimes. To the point where I just wanted to hurt myself.

“It felt true to me that if other people are seeing me as pathetic, I am pathetic.”

Abby and her family believe she was over-medicated in Skye House.

She said: “A lot of the patients were like walking zombies, me included.

“Like a lot of the time we were just sedated to the point where I guess our personalities were dimmed.”

Jenna said staff would over-use intramuscular sedative injections when patients were in distress.

Emergency medication should only be given as a last resort.

Jenna said: “Without kind of trying to talk to me first, or calm me down, they would just go straight to giving an [injection].

“I think to be honest it was so that they could have an easier shift whilst all their patients were kind of sedated.”

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said a review of medication was carried out in 2023 and this changed the way medication was administered.

Dr Scott Davidson, medical director of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said he found the allegations “very difficult to listen to” and accepted there were instances where care has “been below the level we would expect for our young people”.

“In light of these experiences and of the accounts of other patients, a full review of the quality of care has been launched,” he said.

“We have also asked for an independent review of the unit.”

The health board said it had made a number of improvements to patient care including staff recruitment and training of safe-holds.

It acknowledged that Skye House had faced staffing challenges in the past which meant agency and bank staff worked in the unit.

A statement said: “This was not ideal as they lacked experience in inpatient units and the complexities of the young people being cared for in Skye House.”

It said action has since been taken to address staffing levels.

The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland has visited Skye House six times since 2017.

The main issues raised in the BBC’s investigation do not feature in any of its published reports.

If you’ve been affected by the issues in this story you can find information and support here.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is in turmoil – fighters from the notorious M23 rebel group have been surging through the country’s east, battling the national army and capturing key places as they go.

In just a fortnight, thousands of people are said to have been killed and the fighting has sparked an ominous war of words between DR Congo and its neighbour, Rwanda.

So how did DR Congo – the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa – get here?

The origins of this complex conflict can be understood through the story of one man – M23 leader Sultani Makenga, who is the subject of various war crime allegations.

He is sanctioned by the US of using child soldiers, which he has denied. The UN has accused him of being responsible for sexual violence.

To go back through Makenga’s life so far is to look into decades of warfare, intermittent foreign intervention and the persistent lure of DR Congo’s rich mineral resources.

His life began on Christmas Day in 1973, when he was born in the lush Congolese town of Masisi.

Raised by parents of the Tutsi ethnic group, Makenga quit school at the age of 17 to join a Tutsi rebel outfit across the border in Rwanda.

This group, named the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), were demanding greater Tutsi representation in Rwanda’s government, which at the time was dominated by politicians from the Hutu majority.

They also wanted the hundreds and thousands of Tutsi refugees who had been forced from the country by ethnic violence to be able to return home.

For four years, Makenga and the RPF fought the Hutu-dominated army in Rwanda. Their battle was enmeshed with the 1994 genocide, when Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

When looking back at this time in a rare 2013 interview, Makenga stated: “My life is war, my education is war, and my language is war… but I do respect peace.”

The RPF gradually seized more and more land before marching into Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and overthrowing the extremist Hutu government – many of whom fled into what is now DR Congo.

With the RPF in power, Makenga was absorbed into the official Rwandan army and rose to the rank of sergeant and deputy platoon commander.

“He was very good at setting up ambushes,” one of Makenga’s fellow RPF fighters told the Rift Valley Institute non-profit research organisation.

His progress in the Rwandan army hit a ceiling however. The fact that he only had a basic education and spoke broken French and English was “an obstacle to his military career”, the Rift Valley Institute said.

Makenga is also said – to this day – to be very reserved and to struggle with public speaking.

In 1997, he was part of the Rwanda-backed forces who ended up seizing power in DR Congo, ousting long-serving ruler Mobutu Sese Seko. In his place they installed veteran Congolese rebel leader Laurent Kabila.

However, Makenga began to clash with his superiors – he was arrested by the Rwandan authorities after refusing orders to return to Rwanda, a UN Security Council report said.

He was therefore imprisoned for several years on the island of Iwawa.

Meanwhile, relations between Kabila and Rwanda’s new leaders deteriorated.

Rwanda had sought to crush the Hutu militiamen who were responsible for the genocide but had fled across the border in 1994. Rwanda’s fear was that they could return and upset the country’s hard-won stability.

But Kabila had failed to stop the militants from organising and he also started to force out Rwandan troops.

As a result, Rwanda invaded DR Congo in 1998. When Makenga was released from prison, he was appointed to serve as a commander on the front line with a Rwanda-backed rebel group.

Over the years, he gained a reputation for being highly strategic and skilled at commanding large groups of soldiers into battle.

After Rwandan troops crossed into DR Congo, there was a surge in discrimination against the Tutsi community. Kabila alleged that Tutsis supported the invasion, while other officials incited the public to attack members of the ethnic group.

Makenga – still in DR Congo – accused the Congolese leader of betraying Tutsi fighters, saying: “Kabila was a politician, while I am not. I am a soldier, and the language that I know is that of the gun.”

Several neighbouring countries had been drawn into the conflict and a large UN military force was deployed to try to maintain order.

More than five million people are believed to have died in the war and its aftermath – mostly from starvation or disease.

The fighting officially ended in 2003 but Makenga continued to serve in armed groups opposed to the Congolese government.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Tutsi rebels like Makenga were eventually amalgamated into the Congolese government’s armed forces, in a process called “mixage”.

But the political sands in DR Congo are ever shifting – Makenga eventually defected from the army to join the rising M23 rebellion.

The M23 had become increasingly active in DR Congo’s east, stating that they were fighting to protect Tutsi rights, and that the government had failed to honour a peace deal signed in 2009.

Makenga was elevated to the rank of an M23 general, then soon after, the top position.

In November 2012 he led the rebels in a brutal uprising, in which they captured the city of Goma, a major eastern city with a population of more than a million.

DR Congo and the UN accused Rwanda’s Tutsi-dominated government of backing the M23 – an allegation which Kigali has persistently denied. But recently, the official response has shifted, with government spokespeople stating that fighting near its border is a security threat.

By 2012, Makenga and others in the M23 were facing serious war crimes allegations. The US imposed sanctions on him, saying he was responsible for “the recruitment of child soldiers, and campaigns of violence against civilians”. Makenga said allegations that the M23 used child soldiers were “baseless”.

Elsewhere, the UN said he had committed, and was responsible for, acts such as killing and maiming, sexual violence and abduction.

Along with asset freezes, Makenga was facing a bitter split within the M23. One side backed him as leader while the other backed his rival, Gen Bosco Ntaganda.

The Enough Project, a non-profit group working in DR Congo, said the two factions descended into a “full-fledged war” in 2013 and as a result, three soldiers and eight civilians died.

Makenga’s side triumphed and Gen Ntaganda fled to Rwanda, where he surrendered to the US embassy.

Nicknamed the “Terminator” for his ruthlessness, Gen Ntaganda was eventually sentenced by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to 30 years for war crimes.

However, months after Makenga’s triumph, another, larger threat appeared. The UN had deployed a 3,000-strong force with a mandate to support the Congolese military in reclaiming Goma, prompting the M23 to withdraw.

The rebel group was expelled from the country and Makenga fled to Uganda, a country which has also been accused of supporting the M23 – an allegation it denies.

Uganda received an extradition request for Makenga from DR Congo, but did not act on it.

Eight years passed. Dozens of other armed groups roamed the mineral-rich east, wreaking havoc, but the Congolese authorities were free of the most notorious militants.

That is, until 2021.

Makenga and his rebels took up arms again, capturing territory in North Kivu province.

Several ceasefires between the M23 and the Congolese authorities have failed, and last year a judge sentencing Makenga to death in absentia.

During the M23’s latest advance, in which the rebels are said to be supported by thousands of Rwandan troops, Makenga has barely been seen in public.

He instead leaves the public speeches and statements to his spokesperson, and Corneille Nangaa, who heads an alliance of rebel groups including the M23.

But Makenga remains a key player, appearing to focus on strategy behind the scenes.

He has said his relentless fighting has been for his three children, “so that one day they will have a better future in this country”.

“I shouldn’t be seen as a man who doesn’t want peace. I have a heart, a family, and people I care about,” he said.

But millions of ordinary people are paying the price of this conflict and if he is captured by the Congolese forces, Makenga faces the death penalty.

Yet he is undeterred.

“I am willing to sacrifice everything, ” he said.

One of the biggest sporting events in the world took place in New Orleans as the Philadelphia Eagles clinched this year’s Super Bowl with an emphatic 40-22 victory over defending champions the Kansas City Chiefs.

The event did not just bring out the best the NFL has had to offer this season – but plenty of Hollywood A-listers, musicians and US President Donald Trump were spotted in the stands of the Superdome.

Before the match started, actor Jon Hamm introduced the Chiefs while Bradley Cooper brought the hype for the Eagles.

Below are a selection of images of celebrities at this year’s Super Bowl.

“I want to play their favourite song… but you know they love to sue,” said Kendrick Lamar, a couple of minutes into his Super Bowl half-time show.

Everyone knew what he was referring to. Not Like Us, his brutal takedown of rap rival Drake, was one of last year’s breakout hits, earning one billion streams on Spotify and five Grammy Awards, including song of the year.

But there were questions over whether Lamar would play it – or even could play it – at the Super Bowl, after Drake filed a defamation lawsuit for lyrics that branded him a sexual predator, which he denies.

Lamar leaned into the dilemma, teasing the song over and over during his set, before finally giving the audience what they wanted.

When the song finally played, Kendrick self-censored the most contentious lyric, in which he calls Drake a “certified paedophile”.

But he looked directly into the camera with a mischievous grin as he called out Drake’s name; and left intact the song’s notorious double-entendre: “Tryin’ to strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”

That lyric echoed around the Caesars Superdome in Louisiana, indicating that no amount of legal action could ever hope to diminish the song’s popularity.

In playing it, Lamar was expected to have reached more than 120 million TV viewers who had tuned in to see the game in which the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 to deny them an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl.

The performance was further heightened by the surprise appearance of tennis star Serena Williams, who performed the Crip Walk – a notorious Los Angeles dance move – as Lamar prowled the stage.

Drake’s lawyers are suing Lamar’s record label Universal Music Group over the track, accusing it of trying to “create a viral hit” out of a song that made “false factual allegations” about the star.

Sunday marked the first time that a solo rapper had headlined the Super Bowl, and Lamar brought an elaborate stage show, full of dancers, fireworks and special guests.

But the rapper’s lyrics have always explored the contradictions between ego and self-doubt, and his Super Bowl set put that conflict in the spotlight.

He performed on a giant noughts and crosses board, flipping between introspective deep cuts (typically staged inside the Xs) and crowd-pleasing chart hits (which took place in the Os).

Actor Samuel L Jackson, dressed as Uncle Sam, acted as emcee – berating Lamar when he became too self-indulgent, and praising his duets with R&B singer SZA.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jackson said, after the duo performed All The Stars, a ballad from the soundtrack to Marvel’s Black Panther movie.

“That’s what America wants, nice and calm.”

But whatever Lamar performed, the energy was electrifying.

Early highlights included Humble and DNA, both taken from the rapper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN, and whose tectonic beats rattled around the stadium.

The set, which is available to watch on YouTube, also included Squabble Up, Man At The Garden and another Drake diss track, Euphoria.

Unlike most Super Bowl performers, Lamar isn’t much of a mover, but he had a charismatic swagger as he walked in step with his dancers; and clever staging gave the show momentum – especially on nervy, angular tracks like Peekaboo.

SZA also gave the set a lift, with supple vocals and improbably flexible choreography that helped soften Lamar’s edgier instincts.

Not Like Us was the undoubted climax, but Lamar took a victory lap on the bouncy West Coast anthem TV Off, where he boasted, “yeah, somebody gotta do it“.

He was joined on stage by the song’s producer, Mustard, who clutched a football while sporting the world’s baggiest jeans – before Lamar pointed an imaginary remote control at the camera and intoned, “Game Over”.

For fans, it was a powerful performance, full of Easter eggs – including a snippet of the unreleased song Bodies.

Casual viewers might have agreed more with Samuel L Jackson’s plea for Lamar to keep it light; especially as some of his more densely-written lyrics were rendered unintelligible by the stadium’s cavernous echo.

And it was noticeable that Lamar omitted to play his civil rights anthem Alright, in a year where the NFL chose to remove the phrase “end racism” from the end zone of the football field.

The phrase had been present at the Super Bowl since 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protests – for which Alright had become the unofficial soundtrack.

Many had expected Lamar to make a bigger statement, especially with President Donald Trump in attendance, but the star’s performance remained resolutely uncontroversial – unless, of course, your name is Drake.

Nonetheless, Lamar’s show was sleek and streamlined – as many fans had expected, after audio of the backing track leaked on Thursday.

The only interruption came at the climax of the 13-minute set, when a protester climbed on top of Lamar’s black Buick GNX car and unfurled a combined Palestinian and Sudanese flag, before being tackled by security officers.

The NFL later said in a statement that the protester was part of the 400-member cast who took part in the show.

The career-spanning set crammed 11 songs into 13 minutes. Here’s what Kendrick played.

1. Bodies
2. Squabble Up
3. Humble
4. DNA
5. Euphoria
6. Man At The Garden
7. Peekaboo
8. Luther (with SZA)
9. All The Stars (with SZA)
10. Not Like Us
11. TV Off

Before the show, it had been rumoured that Taylor Swift might swoop down from her VIP suite to join Lamar on stage.

The pair duetted on a remix of her single Bad Blood in 2015 – and fans hoped they might perform it live for the first time at the Super Bowl.

In the end, Swift opted just to watch the show, along with other celebrity attendees including Paul McCartney, Stormzy, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Ice Spice, Doechii, Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper and Winnie Harlow.

Maybe it was for the best: Some reports suggested that Swift had been booed at the stadium, where almost 80% of fans supported the Philadelphia Eagles, rather than her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team.

Before kick-off, Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance on Bourbon Street, in the middle of New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.

The star, who played her own Super Bowl half-time show in 2017, played a touching rendition of her song Hold My Hand, honouring the victims of the New Year’s Day terror attack that claimed the lives of 14 people in the city.

Gaga was surrounded by first responders as she played a black baby grand piano in the middle of the road.

“Here on Bourbon Street, always the heart and soul of New Orleans, this year began with a terror attack that tried to shatter its spirit,” said former American footballer Michael Strahan during the pre-filmed segment.

“But the resilience of New Orleans is matched by the resolve of our country.”

Musical performances before the game also included R&B artist Ledisi, who performed Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the Black National anthem, joined by 125 youth choir members.

Musician Troy Andrews, popularly known as Trombone Shorty, and Christian singer-songwriter Lauren Daigle played America the Beautiful – giving the track a feel-good New Orleans vibe.

And just before the game began, New Orleans native Jon Batiste sang the American National Anthem, adding a few jazz flourishes from his multi-coloured grand piano.

It’s a chilly mid-winter afternoon in Segovia, in central Spain, and tourists are gathered at the foot of the city’s Roman aqueduct, gazing up at its famous arches and taking selfies.

Many of the visitors are Spanish, but there are also people from other European countries, Asians and Latin Americans, all drawn by Segovia’s historic charm, gastronomy and dramatic location just beyond the mountains north of Madrid.

“There was a moment during Covid when I thought ‘maybe tourism will never, ever be like it was before’,” says Elena Mirón, a local guide dressed in a fuchsia-coloured beret who is about to lead a group across the city.

“But now things are very good and I feel this year is going to be a good year, like 2023 and 2024. I’m happy, because I can live off this job I love.”

Spain received a record 94 million visitors in 2024 and is now vying with France, which saw 100 million, to be the world’s biggest foreign tourist hub.

And the tourism industry’s post-Covid expansion is a major reason why the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy has been easily outgrowing the likes of Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, posting an increase in GDP of 3.2% last year.

By contrast, the German economy contracted by 0.2% in 2024, while France grew by 1.1%, Italy by 0.5%, and the UK by an expected 0.9%.

This all helps explain why the Economist magazine has ranked Spain as the world’s best-performing economy.

“The Spanish model is successful because it is a balanced model, and this is what guarantees the sustainability of growth,” says Carlos Cuerpo, the business minister in the Socialist-led coalition government. He points out that Spain was responsible for 40% of eurozone growth last year.

Although he underlined the importance of tourism, Mr Cuerpo also pointed to financial services, technology, and investment as factors which have helped Spain bounce back from the depths of the pandemic, when GDP shrank by 11% in one year.

“We are getting out of Covid without scars and by modernising our economy and therefore lifting our potential GDP growth,” he adds.

That modernisation process is being aided by post-pandemic recovery funds from the EU’s Next Generation programme. Spain is due to receive up to €163bn by 2026 ($169bn; £136bn), making it the biggest recipient of these funds alongside Italy.

Spain is investing the money in the national rail system, low-emissions zones in towns and cities, as well as in the electric vehicle industry and subsidies for small businesses.

“Public spending has been high, and is responsible for approximately half our growth since the pandemic,” says María Jesús Valdemoros, lecturer in economics at Spain’s IESE Business School.

Other major European economies have seen their growth stymied by their greater reliance than Spain on industry, which, she says, “is suffering a lot at the moment due to factors such as the high cost of energy, competition from China and other Asian countries, the cost of the transition to a more sustainable environmental model and trade protectionism”.

Since Covid, the other major economic challenge for Spain has been the cost-of-living crisis triggered by supply-chain bottlenecks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 11% in July of that year, with energy prices hitting Spaniards particularly hard, but by the end of 2024 it had fallen back to 2.8%.

Madrid believes that subsidies it introduced to cut the cost of fuel consumption and encourage public transport use were key in mitigating the impact of the energy price rises, as well as several increases to the minimum wage.

At the height of the European energy crisis, Spain and Portugal also negotiated with Brussels a so-called “Iberian exception”, allowing them to cap the price of gas used to generate electricity in order to reduce consumers’ bills.

Mr Cuerpo argues that such measures have helped counter Spain’s traditional vulnerability to economic turmoil.

“Spain is proving to be more resilient to successive shocks – including the inflation shock that came with the war in Ukraine,” he said. “And I think this is part of the overall protective shield that we have put in place for our consumers and for our firms.”

The country’s green energy output is seen as another favourable factor, not just in guaranteeing electricity, but also spurring investment. Spain has the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure in the EU.

The latter is a boon for a country that is Europe’s second-biggest car producer, according to Wayne Griffiths, the British-born CEO of Seat and Cupra. Although Spanish electric vehicle production is lagging behind the rest of Europe, he sees enormous potential in that area.

“[In Spain] we have all the factors you need to be successful: competitive, well-trained people and also an energy policy behind that,” he says. “There’s no point in making zero-emission cars if you’re using dirty energy.”

Despite these positives, a longstanding weakness of Spain’s economy has been a chronically high jobless rate, which is the biggest in the EU and almost double the block’s average. However, the situation did improve in the last quarter of 2024, when the Spanish jobless unemployment rate declined to 10.6%, its lowest level since 2008.

Meanwhile the number of people in employment in Spain now stands at 22 million, a record high. A labour reform, encouraging job stability, is seen as a key reason for this.

This reform increased restrictions on the use of temporary contracts by companies, favouring greater flexibility in the use of permanent contracts. It has reduced the number of workers in temporary employment without hindering job creation.

Also, although the arrival of immigrants has driven a fierce political debate, their absorption into the labour market is seen by many as crucial for a country with a rapidly ageing population.

The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been outspoken in underlining the need for immigrants, describing their contribution to the economy as “fundamental”.

The European Commission has forecast that Spain will continue to lead growth among the bloc’s big economies this year and remain ahead of the EU average. However, challenges are looming on the horizon.

The heavy reliance on tourism – and a growing backlash against the industry by local people – is one concern.

Another is Spain’s vast public debt, which is higher than the country’s annual economic output.

María Jesús Valdemoros warns that this is “an imbalance that we need to correct, not just because the EU’s new fiscal norms demand it, but because it could cause financial instability”.

In addition, a housing crisis has erupted across the country, leaving millions of Spaniards struggling to find affordable accommodation.

With an uncertain and deeply polarised political landscape, it is difficult for Sánchez’s minority government to tackle such problems. But, while it attempts to resolve these conundrums, Spain is enjoying its status as the motor of European growth.

“What my parents taught me is that they used to live in peace and calm, without having to have any fear in their own country,” says 19-year-old Nick. “I would like to live in a country where I don’t have to be afraid.”

I meet him in a small bar on a street corner in the ex-mining town of Freiberg, Saxony – where he is playing darts.

It’s a cold, foggy night in February with just over two weeks to go until Germany’s national election.

Nick and his friend Dominic, who is 30, are backers or sympathetic to Alternative für Deutschland – a party that has been consistently polling second in Germany for more than a year and a half, as the far right here and elsewhere in Europe attracts an increasing number of young people, particularly men, into its orbit.

One particular reason why Nick – and many other young German men – say they are afraid is the number of attacks in Germany involving suspects who were asylum seekers – most recently, the fatal stabbing of a toddler and a man in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg. Immigration is now Nick and Dominic’s main concern, although they don’t oppose it in all forms.

“The people who integrate, who learn, who study here, do their work – I have no problems with them,” says Dominic, though he is critical of anyone he sees as taking advantage of the asylum system.

“But these days such statements are seen as hostile,” says Dominic. “You’re called a Nazi because of Germany’s past.”

The AfD – which has long been accused of anti-migrant rhetoric – is celebrating endorsements from tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who owns the social media site X. He has hosted a live discussion with party leader Alice Weidel on the platform and dialled into a party rally.

Now, as Germany waits to see just how well the far right does in the upcoming election, the question is why so many young men in particular are being drawn to the far right and what the consequences could be for a country that’s deeply conscious of its Nazi past.

Pew research in 2024 found that 26% of German men had positive views of the AfD compared to 11% of women, and the share of men holding this opinion has risen 10 points since 2022.

In the elections for the European Parliament in 2024, according to German exit polls the number of under 24-year-olds, both male and female, who voted for the AfD in Germany rose to 16 per cent, up by 11 points from 2019.

This comes at a time of rising general anxiety among young people according to a recent study by the German Institute for Generational Research.

In a sample size of 1,000 Germans aged 16 to 25, anxiety levels were the highest amongst respondents who class themselves as far-right while they were the lowest amongst people who put themselves in the middle of the political spectrum.

Women were more likely to be concerned for their rights and those of minority groups while men were found to be more worried about conservative values that are less based around rights.

Dr Rüdiger Maas, from the German think tank the Institute for Generational Research, says parties on the left often focus on themes such as feminism, equality and women’s rights.

“Overall, men don’t see themselves in these themes,” he tells us. “That is why they have a tendency to vote further right.”

Hard, populist right parties have also done well in countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Italy.

“Sixty per cent of young men under 30 would consider voting for the far right in EU countries and this is much higher than the share among women,” says Prof Abou-Chadi, in analysis drawn from a subset of the 2024 European Election Study.

As well as gender, migration and economic issues, social media is playing a part. Platforms like TikTok allow political groups to bypass mainstream, traditional media, which the far right regard as hostile.

It’s clear that AfD “dominates” TikTok when compared to other German parties, says Mauritius Dorn from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). It has 539,000 followers on its parliamentary account, compared to 158,000 for the SPD who currently have the most seats in the German parliament.

And it isn’t just official accounts but a “considerable number of unofficial fan accounts also help to disseminate the party’s content”, says Mr Dorn.

Through setting up 10 “persona-based” accounts with different user profiles, they found, “those users who are more on the right-wing spectrum… see a lot of AfD content whereas users from the leftist spectrum see a more diverse set of political content.”

TikTok has said it doesn’t “differentiate” between the right, left or centre of politics and works to stay at the “forefront” of tackling misinformation.

Dorn observes that other parties recognised sites such as TikTok “too late”, which means they’re playing catch-up in establishing a strong footprint on the platform.

We’ve met one AfD influencer, Celina Brychcy – a 25-year-old TikTokker who has more than 167,000 followers – 53% of whom are male, with 76% aged between 18 and 35.

She mainly shares dance, trend and lifestyle videos, but also pro-AfD content.

Ms Brychcy says she doesn’t make money from promoting the AfD but does it because she believes in the cause and wants to “get a message across”.

Her political ideals include wanting the return of military service, more support for mothers who want or need to stay at home and stricter border controls.

When I press her about whether her views amount to a rejection of multiculturalism she replied no, but believes people should “integrate.”

“There are certain people who just don’t fit in with us Germans,” she added but repeatedly insisted she is not racist and doesn’t have “anything against foreigners.”

Ms Brychcy is also against “role reversal” when it comes to the way men and women dress.

A reaction against “gender ideology” is another issue identified by Tarik Abou-Chadi, a professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford, as feeding far-right support amongst the young – something that is echoed by the Institute for Generational Research.

They asked first-time voters whether they found the LGBTQ+ trend “übertrieben”, which literally means “exaggerated” or over the top. The respondents who showed the highest level of agreement with that question were those who planned to support the AfD.

When I challenge Ms Brychcy over whether that could be seen as retrograde, she replied that “biologically speaking, we are men and women” and thinks people should present accordingly.

Ms Brychcy tells me she has lost a couple of friends because of her politics – and now mostly spends time with those of a similar outlook.

She doesn’t agree with those who view the AfD as a dangerous movement – rather one that would offer genuine, radical change.

When I ask Ms Brychcy if she considers herself as far-right, she says that on certain issues – such as border control and crime, “Definitely yes”.

It’s a striking reply, particularly as often, the label of far-right is rejected by supporters of the AfD, including by the party leader, Alice Weidel, who insists she heads a conservative, libertarian movement.

With the horrors of the Nazis further and further in the past, this is a generation that’s grown up with parties like the AfD – whether that’s on TV talk shows or in parliament after the AfD got its first MPs in 2017.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes that the far right, generally, has become more normalised to the point, “They don’t seem so extreme any more.”

That’s despite party scandals such as a talisman of the AfD’s hard right, Björn Höcke, being fined twice last year for using a Nazi slogan, though he denied doing so knowingly.

The AfD, in three German states, is classified as right-wing extremist by authorities – including in Saxony, a designation the party unsuccessfully challenged in court.

It’s a state where the number of “right-wing extremist individuals” had reached a “new high” – according to a report released last year by Saxony’s domestic intelligence service – that showed data back to 2015.

In a shopping mall in the city of Chemnitz in Saxony, we meet a group of young men who – while they won’t go on the record – tell us they’re right wing.

Dressed in black, with uniformly short hair, they express beliefs that homosexuality is wrong and fear that the German “race” is under threat because of the growing migrant community.

They question narratives about their country’s past, seemingly a reference to the Nazi era.

Diana Schwitalla has been teaching history and social studies for eight years. She says she has had to confront a case of Holocaust denial in the classroom and has heard other troubling remarks.

“We hear the Second World War was actually a good thing, and there was a reason people died then – and that this is good. Hitler is described as a good man,” says Ms Schwitalla.

She adds, “Many students… very young students, {who} say it doesn’t matter who I vote for, they’ll do what they want ‘up there’ anyway. The question of who’s ‘up there’, I don’t get an answer to that.”

We met her over the course of two days – including at an adult vocational college in Freiberg that sits on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp. Jewish women, brought from Auschwitz, were used for slave labour here to make parts for aeroplanes.

We did hear some talk of opposition to the levels of immigration into Germany plus a desire for national pride.

The first day we met Ms Schwitalla, she is helping to organise a mock election for the students as a way of engaging them about democracy at another college site in the town of Flöha – about 15 miles away from Freiberg.

We spoke to Cora, Melina and Joey, all 18.

Cora says she has heard men of her age express a desire for women to be in the home harking back to a time “when women took care of the children and when the husband comes home from work, the food is cooked”. She likens it to the so-called “Trad Wife” trend of adhering to traditional gender roles.

Cora and Melina voice fears about a rollback of women’s rights – including on abortion, even – remarkably – the right to vote. “Luckily that’s not being discussed in politics yet,” says Melina, “but I’ve heard discussions about women not being allowed to vote in elections anymore.”

A small group of students line up to vote around lunchtime and we watch as the results come in with “Die Linke” scoring top – the left party that’s relatively popular amongst the young but polling at only around five per cent nationwide.

The AfD came second, reinforcing what Prof Abou-Chadi has found, that, “younger people are much more likely to go for a further left or further right party than a centrist one”.

The AfD, whose signature issues include security, borders and migrant crime, are now even embracing the concept of “remigration” – a buzz-word in Europe’s far right that’s widely understood to mean mass deportations.

Speaking to people in Germany, it is clear that support for the AfD can not just be read as some form of protest vote, even if there is frustration with the parties that have traditionally governed Germany. Celina, Dominic and Nick – and others we spoke to – genuinely hope and believe that the AfD could set Germany on the path of radical change.

It’s still the case that other parties will not go into coalition with the AfD but in January a non-binding motion was passed in the German parliament thanks to AfD votes for the first time.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes in the longer, -term, there could be an even more seismic change.

“And as soon as the more mainstream parties start giving up the ‘firewall’ or cordon sanitaire the far right will start cannibalising the right.

“It’s very likely that, in many or most European countries, the far-right parties will be the main party on the right – or already are,” he says.

Parties like the AfD have worked hard to try and normalise themselves in the eyes of the public.

While there are people in Germany and Europe who view the far right as an extremist, even anti-democratic, force – it appears that the ‘normalisation’ effort is working, not least of all among the young.

Top picture credit: Getty

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

A computer engineer who lost £620m-worth of Bitcoin wants to buy the tip where he believes it was buried.

James Howells, from Newport, claimed his ex-girlfriend mistakenly chucked out a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.

He tried to sue the city council to get access to the site on Newport’s Docks Way, or get £495m in compensation, but his case was dismissed by a judge.

Newport council has been approached for comment.

The authority is planning to close the tip in the 2025-26 financial year.

It has planning permission for a solar farm on the land, expected to power the council’s new bin lorries.

Mr Howells said: “The council planning on closing the landfill so soon is quite a surprise, especially since it claimed at the High Court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.”

The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste.

Mr Howells believes the hard drive is in an area of 100,000 tonnes.

“I would be potentially interested in purchasing the landfill site,” he said.

“I have discussed this option recently with investment partners and it is very much on the table.”

Mr Howells also wants to appeal Judge Keyser’s decision to throw out his case.

The judge said there were no grounds for the claim and “no realistic prospect” of succeeding at trial.

He ruled too much time had passed between the hard drive being lost and the claim being brought.

Bitcoin is often described as a cryptocurrency, a virtual currency or a digital currency and is a type of money that is completely virtual – there are no physical coins or notes.

You can use it to buy products and services, but not many shops accept Bitcoin.

In China it is illegal to trade or mine Bitcoin and its use is restricted in countries including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.