标签： Asia

Fresh explosive testimony released from the ongoing Independent Inquiry into UK actions in Afghanistan has laid bare how senior British special forces leadership deliberately suppressed serious war crime allegations against the SAS between 2010 and 2013, choosing an internal whitewash over a mandatory military police investigation to protect operational momentum and force morale.

A retired former chief of staff of UK Special Forces (UKSF), identified only by the inquiry cipher N2252, told the closed-door investigation that top commanders made the fateful 2011 decision not to refer allegations of extrajudicial killings, falsified operational reports and the deaths of unarmed civilians and children to the Royal Military Police for two core reasons. First, leadership feared a full formal investigation would pull SAS operators off the high-tempo counter-Taliban campaign targeting insurgents and IED bomb-makers, disrupting ongoing operations by forcing units to focus on probes rather than planning new missions. Second, N2252 confirmed a major unspoken factor was that much of the initial evidence implicating the SAS had come from a rival UK special forces regiment, creating institutional distrust that swayed the decision to ignore red flags.

This intentional choice meant that military investigators remained unaware of widespread concerns about SAS conduct for years, even as multiple senior officers at UKSF headquarters raised alarms about troubling patterns on the ground. Those red flags included multiple accounts of detained, handcuffed suspects being shot dead during raids, a persistent mismatch between the number of people killed in operations and the number of weapons recovered from kill sites – a common indicator of unlawful extrajudicial killing – and formal complaints. A high-profile international conflict monitoring organization submitted complaints about unlawful killings, and even Afghan partner special forces refused multiple times to deploy alongside the SAS over outrage at the alleged murder of civilians.

Instead of meeting their legal obligation to report suspected war crimes to military police – a requirement binding all British military commanding officers – UKSF’s then-director ordered a rapid internal review led by an officer closely affiliated with the SAS unit under scrutiny. The inquiry has confirmed the review was completed in just seven days, signed off by the unit’s own commanding officer, and concluded no evidence of criminal wrongdoing existed.

N2252 told the inquiry that the leadership also believed that external police scrutiny would erode trust between command and frontline SAS troops, arguing that questioning operators’ official accounts would send a demoralizing message that headquarters did not believe their on-the-ground judgments. The testimony, first heard in closed session in 2024, was only released in declassified summary form by the inquiry this Friday, marking the latest in a series of damning disclosures about UK special forces conduct during the Afghanistan deployment, which began in 2009.

Not all witness testimony has aligned on what senior leaders knew. Another senior UKSF headquarters officer, identified as N1788, told the inquiry he only was aware of tactical errors and never received formal complaints or rumors of extrajudicial killings, evidence tampering or falsified records. However, inquiry lawyers directly contradicted that account, noting it clashes with prior testimony from N1788’s superior officer, who confirmed the two discussed the risk of extrajudicial killings and planted weapons, as well as testimony from an Afghanistan-based senior officer who recalled N1788 asking in a phone call whether the “m-word” – murder – was relevant to the allegations.

A third witness, a UKSF officer deployed on the ground in Afghanistan codenamed N889, acknowledged that he may have been overly trusting of SAS operational reporting in real time. “I totally accept, you know, all these years later looking back that perhaps one should have taken a slight harder view,” he told the inquiry. “I maybe naively read this stuff, believed it and carried on.”

The Independent Inquiry into Afghanistan is continuing its work examining the full scope of allegations against the SAS, with additional disclosures expected as more closed testimony is declassified in the coming months. The BBC has issued a public call for additional whistleblowers with information about the case to come forward through secure, encrypted channels including Signal and the BBC’s Tor-based SecureDrop platform to protect the anonymity of sources.

In a surprise development this week, the second Trump administration has confirmed it will extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for an estimated 11,000 Lebanese citizens currently residing and working legally in the United States. The six-month extension will push the expiration of their protected status to November 27, 2026, marking the first such voluntary extension of the program since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025.

The official notice of the extension was submitted to the U.S. Federal Register on Wednesday and is set for formal publication this Friday. Contrary to many assumptions about the Trump administration’s broader aggressive rollback of TPS programs across multiple nations, the extension for Lebanese nationals is not a deliberate policy shift, but an automatic procedural renewal. According to the filing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin lacked sufficient time to complete a full formal review of Lebanon’s TPS designation and issue a final determination 60 days ahead of the program’s original expiration date, triggering the automatic six-month extension under existing regulations.

First established to allow foreign nationals to remain and obtain work authorization in the U.S. when their home countries face unsafe conditions such as armed conflict, natural disaster, or humanitarian catastrophe that make return impossible, TPS grants temporary extensions of up to 18 months at a time with no statutory cap on total extensions. Lebanon was first added to the TPS program by the outgoing Biden administration in October 2024, amid a sharp escalation of Israeli military operations in the country that began after a Hezbollah attack on Israel in October 2023, launched in solidarity with the group’s ally Hamas in Gaza.

As of this week, the ongoing Israeli campaign has killed more than 3,000 Lebanese people, injured close to 10,000, and this week saw a major expansion of ground operations into southern Lebanon beyond previously declared buffer zones, with more than 135 strikes on alleged Hezbollah targets in a single 24-hour period, including strikes in the capital Beirut that killed at least 14 people, among them children. This escalating violence comes as top U.S.-brokered military security talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials are set to open in Washington on Friday, the first high-level direct talks between the two sides in more than 30 years, following an initial meeting between their ambassadors hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month. Notably, a permanent ceasefire was not on the agenda for the initial talks, and Hezbollah, the core Lebanese faction involved in the conflict, has no representation at the negotiating table, leaving Lebanese negotiators with limited authority to reach substantive agreements.

The TPS extension applies only to Lebanese nationals (and stateless individuals who last resided in Lebanon) who have continuously lived in the U.S. since October 16, 2024, and will remain in effect from May 28, 2026 through November 27, 2026.

This extension marks a departure from the Trump administration’s broader agenda of dismantling existing TPS programs across the globe. Since taking office in January, the administration has moved aggressively to terminate TPS designations for multiple nations including Haiti, Somalia, and Venezuela, though many of these termination attempts have been temporarily blocked by federal court orders. Last month, advocacy groups and affected TPS holders filed a federal lawsuit challenging the administration’s termination of TPS for Somali nationals, arguing that the country still faces a decades-long humanitarian crisis marked by ongoing armed conflict, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killing, torture, and widespread severe human rights violations that make return unsafe for Somali nationals. Somalia has held continuous TPS designation since 1991, with every successive administration from 2002 to 2024 reaffirming that ongoing instability meets the criteria for protected status. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the administration’s move to end Somalia’s TPS earlier this year, claiming that “temporary means temporary” and that conditions in Somalia have improved enough that it no longer meets the legal standard for the program, which the administration argues was never intended to serve as a pathway to permanent residency.

Israel’s latest push for natural gas exploration off the coast of the Gaza Strip has sparked sharp criticism from Palestinian rights organizations and environmental campaigners, who argue the initiative violates international law, undermines Palestinian sovereignty, and poses unnecessary threats to marine ecosystems and the global climate.

In February 2024, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen formally approved the country’s fifth round of offshore gas licensing in the Mediterranean Sea. Per official documentation from Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, the auction opens up roughly 8,600 square kilometers of Mediterranean waters for exploration, split across six distinct exploration blocks.

Adalah, a Haifa-based legal organization that advocates for Palestinian rights, has revealed that two of these six blocks sit within internationally recognized Palestinian maritime territory off Gaza’s shore. This is not the first time Israeli licensing rounds have encroached on Palestinian waters: the group notes that the previous offshore auction also extended into waters claimed by the State of Palestine.

Last month, Adalah submitted an official letter to both Cohen and Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara challenging the legality of the new licensing round. The correspondence, which has been shared with independent news outlet Middle East Eye, argues that the plan is unlawful because approximately 1,000 square kilometers of the proposed exploration area lies in waters over which Palestine claims full sovereignty. Adalah emphasizes that Israel holds no legal authority to conduct resource activities in these Palestinian maritime areas, noting that any exploration here would violate both Israeli domestic legislation and binding international law.

The organization rejects Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territories as a valid justification for denying the inherent sovereign rights of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian people. It further points out that the drilling plans directly contradict the 1993 Oslo Accords, the landmark agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization that laid out frameworks for Palestinian self-governance in occupied territories. Under international humanitarian law, Adalah notes, occupying powers are explicitly prohibited from exploiting natural resources in occupied territories for their own benefit—a rule the new exploration plan clearly violates.

Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director, framed the gas plans as an inseparable component of a broader accelerating Israeli policy aimed at formalizing annexation and permanent control over all Palestinian land and natural resources. “This is not merely a violation of international law,” Bishara explained in a public statement. “It is a deliberate attempt to entrench permanent Israeli control over Palestinian territory and resources, directly undermining the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination.”

To date, the Israeli energy ministry has not publicly released the results of the licensing round since the tender was first announced, and Middle East Eye’s request for comment on the allegations went unanswered as of the original publication of this report.

Adalah’s investigation also connects the new exploration round to a long-standing pattern of Israeli restrictions that have systematically denied Palestinian access to their own offshore energy resources. Since the early 2000s, Israel has blocked the Palestinian Authority from developing the Gaza Marine gas field, which independent experts estimate holds up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Development of this field would generate an estimated $4 billion in revenue for the Palestinian Authority, according to industry projections. The organization also notes that Israel already exports billions of dollars worth of natural gas to Egypt via the Ashkelon-Arish pipeline, which traverses Palestinian maritime territory without any consent from Palestinian authorities.

Joining the condemnation are Israeli environmental advocates, who warn that the exploration plan carries severe ecological risks and runs counter to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. Yuval Arbel, a policy specialist with the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli group focused on protecting marine and freshwater resources, argues that Israel already holds sufficient domestic gas reserves to meet all its current and future energy needs. “There is no justification for expanding gas production,” Arbel told Middle East Eye. “Our policy priority should be accelerating the transition to renewable energy, not opening new fossil fuel exploration blocks.”

Arbel warned that offshore drilling carries inherent major risks to delicate Mediterranean marine ecosystems, and that expanded gas production will only worsen climate change by increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. He noted that while the energy ministry justifies new exploration on the grounds that renewables alone cannot meet future Israeli energy demand, the policy is primarily driven by the pursuit of short-term profit. “Even if extraction moves forward, production will not begin for another six to 10 years,” Arbel pointed out. “No one can accurately predict what global gas demand will look like in 10 or 15 years. There is no tangible public benefit for Israel in extracting more gas—this is solely about generating extra export revenue for the state.”

These claims are backed by recent official revenue figures: in 2024, the Israeli energy ministry reported record revenues from domestic gas production, with the state collecting 2.3 billion shekels (roughly $640 million) in royalties, an increase of more than 8% from the previous year. Israel’s offshore gas sector has been a major source of state revenue since it was privatized in 2015, and currently hosts operations from a range of international and domestic energy firms, including UK-based Energean and U.S. energy giant Chevron. Just one year prior, BP and Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy firm SOCAR won bids in Israel’s fourth licensing round, which was also widely criticized for violating Palestinian maritime sovereignty.

Arbel emphasized that even a low probability of a catastrophic oil or gas spill is unacceptable given the irreversible damage it would cause to Gaza’s and Israel’s Mediterranean coastlines. “The potential damage from drilling is so severe that even a small risk of disaster is not worth taking,” he said.

Over the past decade, natural gas has become Israel’s dominant source of electricity generation, displacing coal as the country’s top fuel. Knesset data shows that gas accounted for just 49% of Israeli electricity production in 2014; a decade later, that share has jumped to more than 70%, with coal and renewable energy each contributing roughly 14% of total generation.

The gas exploration plan off Gaza aligns with a broader aggressive policy agenda pursued by Minister Cohen since he took office in 2024, which centers on consolidating Israeli control over occupied Palestinian territories in line with demands from the Israeli settler movement. Just last week, Cohen announced plans to expand natural gas infrastructure into the occupied West Bank, explicitly framing the move as an exercise in de facto Israeli sovereignty. The project will extend Mediterranean gas supplies to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and earlier this week Cohen told Israeli outlet Channel 14 News that new power plants and gas pipelines across the West Bank are “the economic key on the path to one million settlers” living in the occupied territory.

The push for new fossil fuel exploration comes as Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza has already had extreme climate and energy impacts. Research published last year by the Social Science Research Network found that the carbon footprint generated in the first 15 months of military operations in Gaza exceeded the total annual emissions of more than 100 countries combined. Since October 2023, Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s already fragile energy infrastructure, leading to near-total nationwide electricity blackouts throughout 2024, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Before the current war, Gaza residents received an average of just 10 hours of electricity per day, with the entire occupied Palestinian territory relying almost entirely on energy supplies from Israel. Pre-war data from the Institute for Palestine Studies shows that Palestinians sourced 87% of their total electricity from Israel, with the remaining 13% coming from Egypt, Jordan, and small-scale local solar generation projects.

The future of Israel’s diplomatic presence in Istanbul has been thrown into uncertainty after the former consulate building failed a mandatory earthquake resilience inspection, forcing Israeli officials to evaluate multiple high-stakes options for reestablishing their mission.

Multiple informed sources speaking to Middle East Eye have confirmed that the multi-story mixed-use plaza that hosted the consulate has been marked for demolition, with a full redevelopment of the site scheduled to unfold over the next several years. The building has operated at partial capacity since October 2023, when Israel withdrew all its diplomatic staff from Turkey over growing security risks.

Early media reports claimed the consulate would remain closed indefinitely due to escalating political tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, but new details reveal that structural and financial barriers — not diplomatic friction — are the primary driving force behind the current uncertainty. While the Israeli government owns portions of the existing building, integrating the strict security and operational specifications required for an Israeli diplomatic mission into the new redevelopment project has presented significant commercial hurdles and unexpected additional expenses.

The structure in question is a multi-level plaza that hosts a wide range of private businesses and commercial office spaces across its floors, classified as a semi-skyscraper under Turkish building regulations, making its planned demolition an uncommon step. Beyond the structural safety issue, the site has already been targeted in a high-profile security incident: in April, two Turkish police officers were injured in an attack on the now-vacant consulate by individuals linked to the Islamic State group.

“Israeli diplomatic facilities have very specific construction and security standards, and the private development leading the redevelopment will almost certainly not be able to meet these requirements because of how expensive they are,” one source familiar with the internal discussions explained. “If Israel wants to retain its consulate on the same plot, it will have to negotiate an agreement with the construction firm and allocate a separate budget to cover the extra costs.”

Even though the Israeli government will retain ownership of its share of the land after redevelopment is complete, sources say a continued consulate presence at the site is highly unlikely. Relocating the entire consulate operation to a new building in Istanbul is also proving to be a prohibitively expensive option, however.

Israeli diplomatic missions require extensive custom security upgrades, including high-level ballistic armor, reinforced structural elements, specialized secure communications cabling, 24/7 monitored surveillance camera systems, and a suite of other protective infrastructure. Independent estimates put the total cost of these upgrades for a new location at roughly $6 million, a figure that has sparked internal debate in Israel over whether the expenditure is justified when bilateral diplomatic relations between the two countries are effectively frozen.

At this stage, Israeli officials have not finalized a path forward. “Israel is currently reviewing all possible options, and no final decision on the matter has been made,” a second official source told Middle East Eye. But a third insider with knowledge of the government’s budget situation noted that no funding has been allocated for a relocation, making a move to a new Istanbul site an unlikely outcome for now.

The uncertainty over the consulate compound other strains on Turkish-Israeli bilateral ties: both countries currently have vacant chief-of-mission posts. Israel’s outgoing ambassador to Turkey, Irit Lillian, will retire from her post at the end of this month, while Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, retired from his role last year and has yet to be replaced.

A groundbreaking ProPublica investigation has uncovered direct White House involvement in pushing through a $620 million Pentagon loan to a small North Carolina rare earth magnet startup connected to Donald Trump Jr., raising serious new questions about cronyism and ethical conflicts within the second Trump administration. When the historic loan was announced one year ago, top defense officials, company leaders, and representatives for the president’s eldest son moved quickly to dismiss public and congressional suspicions of political favoritism. Trump Jr.’s spokesperson stated he had no role in securing the deal, the Pentagon publicly insisted he did not influence the funding decision, and Vulcan Elements’ founder claimed the company received no preferential treatment because of its high-profile ties. But new interviews with multiple anonymous Pentagon officials and a review of internal Defense Department documents obtained by ProPublica tell a different story: the multi-hundred-million-dollar loan request for Vulcan was directly initiated by Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade advisor with close personal ties to Trump Jr.

According to one senior Pentagon official who was not cleared to speak publicly about the internal process, of the dozens of companies competing for Pentagon funding under the critical minerals initiative at the time, the Vulcan deal was the only one directly pushed forward by a top White House presidential aide. Two insiders involved in processing the loan confirmed that after receiving the request from the White House, defense leadership ordered staff to accelerate the review and approval process at an unprecedented pace. To meet the rushed timeline, Pentagon teams worked consecutive late nights, skipping downtime to push the massive loan through in just a matter of weeks, a stark departure from the months-long standard vetting process for comparable funding deals. One source directly involved summed up the internal directive: “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done.”

This revelation marks the first time that a federal agency contract or funding award under the second Trump administration has been directly tied to intentional White House intervention, adding fuel to longstanding allegations that the administration has directed government benefits to companies tied to the Trump family’s personal business interests. The loan itself was framed as part of a critical national security initiative to reduce U.S. dependence on China’s dominant grip on the global rare earth supply chain, a sector that underpins everything from commercial semiconductors to advanced military systems including Tomahawk missile guidance systems and F-35 fighter jet engines.

Roughly three months before the Pentagon made the loan public, Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, acquired an undisclosed stake in Vulcan, a two-year-old startup founded by a Harvard Business School student that had raised less than $10 million in total private funding ahead of the deal. Following the loan announcement, Vulcan’s estimated valuation surged tenfold from roughly $200 million to $2 billion, delivering an immediate windfall to its early investors including 1789 Capital. The investigation also revealed that a second company tied to Trump Jr. — Florida-based drone parts manufacturer Unusual Machines, where he holds a board advisory role and millions in personal equity — is also currently under review for Pentagon funding, following a 2025 defense contract for the firm that already sparked cronyism allegations.

Navarro, who served as Trump’s trade advisor during his first term and has built an extremely close personal relationship with Trump Jr. in recent years, has not responded to multiple requests for comment from ProPublica. Trump Jr. has previously stated he does not discuss his portfolio investments with administration officials and never spoke with Navarro about the Vulcan deal, claiming he had no knowledge of how the funding was approved. 1789 Capital has also denied any role in securing the loan. The White House issued a blanket defense of the process, stating in a formal statement that the administration “is working in the best interest of the American people,” adding that the entire team “is working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump speed.” The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that political connections or outside affiliations play any role in its funding decisions.

The national security context for the loan is broadly supported by policymakers across the aisle: China currently controls nearly all global processing capacity for rare earth elements, a position it has already used to restrict exports to pressure geopolitical rivals, leaving U.S. military supply chains potentially vulnerable. The Office of Strategic Capital, the Pentagon unit that approved the Vulcan loan, was originally created under the Biden administration to support private-sector development of domestic rare earth capacity, with an initial $1 billion in lending authority. After taking office for a second term, the Trump administration dramatically expanded the office’s authority to $200 billion in total lending, overhauled its operating structure, and replaced the original slow, open application process with a model that relies heavily on the personal networks of new leadership drawn from Wall Street to source deals.

The Vulcan loan has drawn intense bipartisan criticism from ethics experts and congressional Democrats. Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration, called the intervention a clear abuse of power. “This is our money they’re spending,” Painter said. “This is corruption we pay for.” A group of Senate Democrats has demanded the Pentagon release a full accounting of Vulcan’s selection process, warning that the Trump family’s conflicts of interest could be “resulting in a waste of taxpayer dollars and a threat to national security.” The Pentagon’s response to the request did not address how Vulcan was selected, only addressing conflict of interest protocols for its own employees, not the president’s family. House Democrats attempted to subpoena Trump Jr. to testify about the deal earlier this year, but the effort was blocked by Republican lawmakers.

For other companies seeking funding from the revamped Office of Strategic Capital, the incident has reinforced a widespread perception that access depends on personal connections to the Trump circle rather than open competition. Brodie Sutherland, CEO of Nevada-based tungsten miner Patriot Critical Minerals, told ProPublica his firm hired a lobbyist with existing ties to the office to secure a meeting, adding, “Whether you need someone on the inside track to get it across the line I don’t know. We’re hopeful you don’t need to be chums with Trump Jr. to get a project across.” Defense Department records show Patriot Critical Minerals was already rejected for a loan, though the agency did not provide a reason for the denial. Sutherland said he still holds out hope for future funding.

New details have emerged of the full scope of security concerns that prompted the UK government’s official vetting body to reject security clearance for Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former British cabinet minister who was forced to step down as UK ambassador to the United States just months after taking the post.

Mandelson’s short tenure in Washington ended in September 2024, when he resigned after public revelations of his long-standing close personal ties to deceased American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this year, he was stripped of his lifetime peerage in the House of Lords over the scandal. The controversy has plagued Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration, which has faced relentless public and political scrutiny over its 2024 decision to appoint Mandelson to one of the UK’s most high-profile diplomatic postings, despite pre-existing concerns about his associations.

It was already confirmed earlier this year that the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), the national agency responsible for assessing security clearance for senior public roles, had formally concluded Mandelson should be denied clearance. However, the permanent secretary at the UK Foreign Office overruled that finding and approved the clearance anyway, clearing the way for his appointment.

In its latest reporting published Wednesday, The Guardian has exposed new, specific connections flagged by UKSV that raised red flags for vetters, including ties to senior figures across Israel, China, and Russia that created unacceptable national security risks.

Among the Israeli connections flagged was a regular contact between Mandelson and Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence. Hayman led the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate from 2018 to 2021, and currently serves as director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INNS), a leading Tel Aviv-based think tank. Hayman has previously publicly acknowledged that during his tenure as intelligence chief, Israeli officials pushed the United States to carry out the 2020 drone assassination of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

UKSV’s assessment found Mandelson and Hayman communicated once every two months. The INNS pushed back on the characterization of the relationship in a statement to The Guardian, saying Hayman has “no personal connection or familiarity whatsoever” with Mandelson, and noting that Mandelson participated in the think tank’s external advisory framework before his ambassadorial appointment.

Vetting officials also flagged a separate financial tie: Mandelson took out a £1 million loan from an unnamed business figure to purchase shares in Moon Active, an Israeli gaming firm best known for developing the globally popular mobile game Coin Master. Additional links to Israeli figures, connected through Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, have also previously come to light. Reporting from Middle East Eye in February 2025 revealed that in 2013, Epstein asked former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to assign Mandelson to lead the sale of Paz Oil Company, Israel’s largest fuel provider. That same year, Mandelson also reached out to Epstein to request that Epstein consult Barak for input on Israeli political consultant Asaf Eisin.

Beyond Israeli connections, UKSV’s report also highlighted problematic associations with senior figures from both China and Russia that created security concerns. One Chinese figure flagged was Lan Fo’an, China’s current Minister of Finance, who reportedly held several meetings with Mandelson each year. Lan has also met separately with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves over the past two years, a fact that has prompted new questions about whether Mandelson, while serving as ambassador, played any unreported role in arranging or facilitating those meetings.

On the Russian side, UKSV reiterated long-documented concerns over Mandelson’s long-standing close friendship with sanctioned Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Earlier this year, it was revealed that as far back as 2010, Mandelson asked Deripaska to help Epstein secure a Russian visa to visit Moscow, a connection that raised further red flags for vetters.

The new revelations come as Starmer’s government faces growing parliamentary pressure to release all official documents related to Mandelson’s appointment. Earlier this month, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee accused the government of intentionally withholding key relevant records, despite a formal parliamentary motion ordering the full release of the files. A new batch of documents related to the Mandelson appointment is scheduled to be declassified and released next month.

In a statement issued Thursday, a government spokesperson reiterated that the administration is “committed to complying” with the parliamentary motion “in full.”