UK court convicts three of arson organised by Russia's Wagner group
Prosecutors said the 20 March 2024 attack was planned by agents of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, acting on behalf of Russian military intelligence.
The British government has proscribed Wagner as a terrorist organisation.
The prosecution said Wagner used British intermediaries to recruit the men to target an industrial unit in Leyton where generators and StarLink satellite equipment bound for Ukraine were being stored.
The StarLink is frequently used by Ukraine's military in fending off Russia's full-scale invasion.
Authorities said the arson was part of a campaign of disruption across Europe that Western officials blame on Moscow and its proxies.
A jury at London's Central Criminal Court found Jakeem Rose, 23, Ugnius Asmena, 20, and Nii Mensah, 23, guilty of aggravated arson.
A fourth man, 61-year-old Paul English, was acquitted.
The fire caused around £1 million (€1.16 million) worth of damage.
Prosecutors said the attack was orchestrated by Dylan Earl, 21, and 23-year-old Jake Reeves, who pleaded guilty to aggravated arson on behalf of the Wagner Group before the trial started.
They also pleaded guilty to offences under the UK's National Security Act 2023.
Two other men were on trial over the arson and related plots. One was found guilty on Tuesday of failing to disclose information about terrorist acts, while the other was cleared.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Local France
4 hours ago
- Local France
Top cybercrime forum manager arrested in Ukraine: French prosecutors
Industry experts describe as one of the longest-running dark web forums. 'On Tuesday, July 22nd, a person suspected of being the administrator of the Russian-language cybercrime forum was arrested as part of a criminal investigation opened by the Paris public prosecutor's office,' Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement. 'Active since 2013, this forum was one of the main hubs for global cybercrime,' Beccuau said, adding that enabled the sale of malware, access to compromised systems, stolen data, and ransomware-related services. 'The forum also operated an encrypted Jabber messaging server, facilitating anonymous exchanges between cybercriminals,' the statement added. An investigation was launched in July 2021 and was handed over to investigating magistrates in November the same year. 'A judicial investigation was opened on November 9th, 2021, on charges of complicity in attacks on an automated data processing system, organised extortion, and criminal conspiracy,' Beccuau said. 'The intercepted messages revealed numerous illicit activities related to cybercrime and ransomware, and established that they generated at least $7million in profits,' Beccuau added. Advertisement The suspected forum administrator was arrested by Ukrainian authorities with the help of the French police in charge of the investigation and Europol. French and European authorities are stepping up cooperation on arrests linked to cybercrime, while reports of cyberattacks targeting public entities and private groups are mounting.
Euronews
6 hours ago
- Euronews
Thailand closes border crossings with Cambodia after landmine blast
Thailand said on Wednesday it is closing border crossings with Cambodia from its northeastern provinces, as well as withdrawing its ambassador and expelling Cambodia's diplomat, following an incident in which a Thai soldier lost a leg in a landmine explosion. A Thai Army statement said five soldiers were wounded when one of them stepped on a land mine in a border area. The incident drew a swift response from the Thai government with acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai saying the Foreign Ministry would make an official protest to Cambodia and further measures would be considered. The landmine incident on Wednesday came a week after three other Thai soldiers were wounded after one stepped on a landmine and lost a foot in a different area along the border, which has several small pockets claimed by both countries. Thai authorities say that the mines were newly laid along paths that by mutual agreement were supposed to be safe. They said the mines were Russian-made and not of a type employed by Thailand's military. The army statement called on Cambodia "to take responsibility for this incident, which constitutes a serious threat to peace and stability in the border region between the two countries." Cambodia rejected the Thai version of the events as "baseless accusations" and denied that it had laid new mines along the border, pointing out that many unexploded mines and other ordnance remain all over the country, a legacy of civil war and unrest that began in 1970 and ended only in 1998. Since the end of that fighting, nearly 20,000 Cambodians have been killed and about 45,000 injured by leftover war explosives. Defence Ministry spokesperson Lieutenant General Maly Socheata said the landmine explosion took place on Cambodian territory and charged that Thailand had violated a 2000 agreement "regarding the use of agreed paths for patrols." Many border checkpoints had already been closed by one side or the other or operated with restrictions after relations between the neighbours deteriorated following an armed confrontation on 28 May in which one Cambodian soldier was killed in one of several small contested patches of land. Efforts to defuse the situation have been hindered by the nationalist passions that flared in both countries. There is historical enmity between the two nations. There have been major political consequences in Thailand, with former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra suspended from office last month after making what critics saw as a disparaging comment about her country's military in a phone call to Cambodia's former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who leaked a recording of it.
Euronews
10 hours ago
- Euronews
Elon Musk's X fails to deal with Russian disinformation, study says
More than 100 pieces of content published on X from Russian state media and disinformation actors that fail to comply with European rules still appear on the social media platform despite being reported to X, according to a new report. The report commissioned by German non-profit group WeMove Europe, which was shared exclusively with Euronews, found '125 clear sanction-violating posts' on the Elon Musk-owned platform. Some of the posts included programmes from the Russian state broadcaster Russia Today (RT), which has been banned by the European Union since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In one instance, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs account on X shared an excerpt from a documentary produced by RT, which shared a false narrative about an Adolf Hitler collaborator who was 'elevated to the rank of national hero by the Kyiv regime'. The post also provided a link to bypass sanctions and access the full film on Telegram. The researchers behind the paper had reported to X all the content deemed illegal under Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA), the bloc's digital transparency rules. The report found that only 57 per cent of the reports of illegal content received acknowledgement receipts, which breaches the DSA. Among the 125 reports, only one post was removed by X. The company said that there was no violation of EU law. In some cases, X responded to the researchers' complaints within two minutes, the report said, suggesting that automation is playing a big role in X's content moderation. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, launched a formal investigation into X this year for breaching the DSA and said it would finalise the investigation before the summer recess, which begins on July 25. However, the Financial Times reported last week that the Commission will miss this deadline as it aims to conclude trade talks with the United States. Euronews Next has contacted the Commission for comment about the latest report and the X investigation but did not receive a reply at the time of publication. In January, French prosecutors also launched an investigation following allegations that X's algorithm was being used for the purposes of foreign interference. The researchers filed the reports to X on July 8 and 9, 2025. While they were met with automatic replies in most cases that X would look into their complaints, in the majority of them, they did not hear back. Euronews Next has also contacted X for comment about the report but did not receive a reply at the time of publication. Russia's online war Under the EU sanctions regime, it is prohibited to offer content hosting services for sanctioned entities, such as broadcasters or sanctioned individuals. Russia has intensified its disinformation campaign in Europe since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, the researchers said. Along with official Russian government accounts spreading fake news, there were also accounts likely operated by the 'Social Design Agency,' a Russian company known to produce Russia's influence campaign 'Operation Doppelgänger,' as well as anonymous users repeatedly posting such material. 'Overall, the volume indeed exploded [since the war]. It's much more significant,' said Charles Terroille, a project and investigative research officer at the fact-checking group Science Feedback who worked on the paper. 'A lot of the posts that we flagged to X are for instance, documentaries, if you can call them that, so 40-minute videos hosted on X that are Russia Today showing, for example, how Ukraine deserved it all or how [President] Zelenskyy and all the government people and officials in Ukraine are just fans of Nazi figures and all these widely false and reported stories that Russia is propping,' he told Euronews Next. Terroille said another Russian method is to fabricate pages that look like well-known Western media outlets and spread them on X. He added that fake news about public health and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines are still running, among other topics, such as misinformation about the environment and are 'absolutely weaponised' by Russia. For Taïme Smit Pellure, a digital campaigner at WeMove Europe who led the report, the most shocking part of the research was that the content is also translated into people's home languages, such as French, and is 'everywhere' on X. She told Euronews Next that both the Commission and X should be acting faster and that her organisation has reached out to the Commission but it has not had a 'positive response yet'. 'We know they are working on this, we know they are, it's not like they're looking away completely, just taking their time because they want to do it right and we completely understand that,' she said. Another recommendation for the Commission is for European governments to work together in a more coordinated manner to address this issue, said Saman Nazari, lead researcher of civic campaign group Alliance4Europe, who also worked on the paper. 'As long as we stay only working in our own little bubbles, we do not stand a chance against a multi-billion euro influence apparatus,' Nazari said. His recommendation for X is that 'there is not that much nuance. It's straight-up illegal content,' and that 'it doesn't take much time' to find such content and address it. 'This is incredibly low-hanging fruit,' he added.
