Read the daily news to learn English

British widow, 78, told to leave Sweden under Brexit rules after living there for 21 years

A 78-year-old British widow who has lived in Sweden for 21 years is fighting deportation from the country after authorities told her a post-Brexit application to stay had been submitted too late. Her case is the latest of 2,500 British people ordered to leave the country after Brexit in what campaigners and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have said is an inexplicably hardline approach taken by the Swedish authorities. It comes two years after Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia in a care home shortly before she died. Joyce Thomas, a retired nurse, was given just four weeks to leave Sweden in November, three years after her husband had died, causing huge distress. After being widowed, Thomas downsized with her dog to an apartment in Hammarö, which is close to her son and grandchildren, and to her husband’s grave. She said she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the distress of what was happening. “It is unbelievable at my age to be chucked out after being in a country for so long, when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” Thomas said. “I have no criminal record, no driving penalties, nothing. And I have lived here on my own financial means. I just think nobody has actually looked into this thing. I mean, if it was their family or mother, they wouldn’t like them to be in this situation.” Holding back tears, she said: “I am not young, and the idea I would have to come back and forth to visit my son and grandchildren and to visit my husband’s grave here … it is just horrible when you sit and digest it all.” Her husband, Gwynne, died in 2023 of cancer. It was on a trip back from the UK in 2022, when they visited their second son in Brighton, that they first learned they should have made a formal application to stay in Sweden after Brexit. She said her husband had been meticulous at keeping up with news relevant to British people in Sweden and had taken responsibility for all the administration in their household. She was sure he would have made the Brexit application had he known about it. While late applications are permissible under the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, Thomas’s submission was rejected in 2024 as she could not demonstrate “reasonable grounds” for applying late. A subsequent application to stay under national immigration laws was also rejected. With the help of lawyers who are working pro bono, she is now taking the case to a higher court. “When Gwynne died it was the worst thing. We were married for 55 years; he was my best friend and meant everything to me after all those years. But, you know, it [his death] was an end. This is just unbearable limbo. It is horrible. I am not young. I have already moved from a house to a flat – and to start moving again and looking for another place? I will be dead by the time I would be settled.” The former business secretary Peter Kyle, who is MP for Brighton, said the case was “deeply concerning”. He told the Guardian: “While immigration decisions in Sweden are a matter for the Swedish authorities, I have consistently believed that the rights of UK nationals who exercised free movement rights before Brexit should be treated fairly and with compassion.” He urged Sweden to review her case. “I hope the authorities will carefully consider all the circumstances of Mrs Thomas’s case, including her long residence in Sweden, her family connections, and the humanitarian factors involved.” The FCDO has also expressed concern, not just about Thomas but about the wider hardline approach taken by Sweden to British people living in the country since before Brexit. Data shows that Sweden has the highest number of Brexit-related deportations of Britons of all EU member states. According to Eurostat data, 2,500 British nationals have been ordered to leave the country since Brexit, one-third of the entire number of removal orders issued across the 27-member bloc since Brexit in 2021. An FCDO spokesperson said: “We regularly raise concerns regarding Sweden’s protection of citizens’ rights with both the Swedish authorities and the European Commission, which is responsible for monitoring the implementation and application of citizens’ rights matters in EU member states.” Article 18 of the EU-UK withdrawal agreement allows for late applications on “reasonable grounds”. But UK government sources said they believed Sweden was “taking a considerably stricter approach” than others. The result is that “in practice individuals are not likely to have their reasonable grounds accepted”. According to the most recent European Commission annual report on implementation of the WA, almost 4,000 applicants for post-Brexit residency status in Sweden were refused, out of 14,200 made. By contrast, Bulgaria, which has a similar number of applicants at around 16,000, refused just five people, and Belgium, which had 13,000 applicants, refused 605, according to the same report. According to FCDO analysis, Sweden’s refusal rate of 27.5% is three times higher than any other member state and considerably higher than the EU average of between 3% and 4%. A spokesperson for the Swedish immigration authority, Migrationsverket, said: “In exceptional circumstances, it is still possible to submit a late application. The applicant must explain in writing why they were unable to apply within the prescribed period. Simply stating that the person was unaware of the requirement to apply is not, in itself, considered a sufficient explanation.”

Movie paradise? How Malta became a magnet for big film shoots

What links the Caribbean, ancient Rome, Enid Blyton’s Land of Spells, the south of France and the Bay of Pentos from Game of Thrones? They are all places that have been portrayed in recent and forthcoming films by a sunny archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, no bigger in size than Sheffield. Malta has over the last decade risen to become one of the most popular places in Europe for American and British film-makers to set their works in, taking a lead in what has been described as an “arms race” to lure big movie productions with tax incentives. The EU’s smallest country has hosted more than 30 film and TV productions each year in each of the last three years, including a record 36 in 2023 and 2025. They include Jurassic World Rebirthand Gladiator II, this spring’s Blyton adaptation The Magic Faraway Tree and the new Jason Statham action thriller Mutiny, out at the end of this month. On the screen, Malta has stood in for Greece (in the BBC’s recent Two Weeks in August), 1980s Sicily (Heidi Ewing’s forthcoming British feature The Travel Writer), rural southern France (Channel 5’s cosy crime drama The Madame Blanc Mysteries) and the Caribbean (Guy Ritchie’s forthcoming Layer Cake follow-up Viva la Madness). The island is even starting to represent itself: the third season of Netflix’s detective drama Enola Holmes decamps from Victorian London to the then British-occupied island, and principal photography is due to start next year for TV auteur Stephen Poliakoff’s The Order, set on the eve of the 1565 siege of Malta by Ottoman forces. “For such a small European country, Malta is really punching above its weight,” said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission. “It’s been very aggressive, in a positive way, about diversifying its industry.” The microstate’s history of hosting cinematic productions dates back to 1925’s silent maritime drama Sons of the Sea, and since the 1970s it has hosted two of the world’s largest water tanks designed to allow film-makers to shoot maritime scenes in a controllable environment. But in the past its film industry was essentially seasonal, said Johann Grech, Malta’s film commissioner. “Now, we have an industry that is working every day, all year round.” Its success is largely due to the broader global upheaval of how film-making is financed. Until the early 2000s, audiovisual productions in Europe were mostly funded by direct funding, such as film funds or selective grants. Over the last few decades, however, films are increasingly made possible by tax incentives, such as cash rebates that production companies are reimbursed after filming if they hire local crews or rent facilities. Such financial incentives now make up almost half of European fiction films’ budgets, and mean that “films and series no longer simply occupy locations, they are engineered around them”, as a recent report by the European Audiovisual Observatory noted. Malta, which introduced a cash rebate mechanism in 2005, has aggressively ratcheted up its offering over the last decade, to what the Napoleon and Gladiator II producer described as “probably the most generous cash rebate in the world”. All of the 36 major productions that filmed in Malta in 2025 qualified for a 40% cash rebate, which, unlike in some competing states, can also be applied to crew and equipment coming in from abroad if it can’t be sourced locally. At the Mediterrane film festival on the island in June, Grech announced his intention to further improve the rebate model, which runs out in 2028, and to find private investment to build an €80m (£70m) studio complex. “Every euro that we invest in the rebate, the industry generates back four,” he said in an interview. “The film industry is becoming an economic pillar for our country.” Some critics in Malta say the country’s rise as a filming location has come at the cost of neglecting local cinematic talent. Examples of Maltese films engaging audiences outside its borders are few and far between: Alex Callimeri’s 2021 film Luzzu, which contended for the grand jury prize at Sundance, is a rare exception. With local crews in demand from international production companies, Maltese directors often find themselves being outbid by Hollywood, said Teodor Reljić, a Malta-based screenwriter and former film critic. “There’s a bit of a parallel universe: people in servicing are thriving, but local film-makers can’t pay a DOP [director of photography] because they are expecting Jurassic World fees.” The Malta Film Commission is focused on courting international productions, while nurturing domestic film is left to the arts council, which operates on a smaller budget. Malta does not match funding for financial incentives to its homegrown film funding, which is something that countries such as Estonia have done. “Without incentives, smaller European countries would simply be excluded from the global production market,” said Edith Sepp, the head of the Estonian Film Institute. “They can be gamechangers.” “At the same time, we need to ensure our own films are seen, exported and remembered. Otherwise, we risk becoming a place to shoot the films, but our own stories struggle to find their funding.” There are also signs that Malta’s infrastructure is being tested to the limits as its cities, towns and villages regularly turn into film sets. Road closures and parking restrictions have become a bugbear for local people. “What are Valletta residents supposed to do – stay confined in their homes?”, one resident of Malta’s capital asked news outlet MaltaToday recently. Last month, equipment linked to a film being shot in Valletta knocked over and damaged a 100-year-old statue and a historic pedestal in St George’s Square, causing anger among Malta’s religious community. “There are signs of a pushback against overtourism, like in Barcelona or Venice,” said Reljić. “But in Malta we have online gambling, construction and tourism – for now, film-making is the least toxic of our big industries.”

Ukraine war briefing: North Korea sending 50,000 troops to Russia – Zelenskyy

Up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers will be deployed in Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, while calling on South Korea to provide support for Ukraine’s air defence. It is an increase from the estimated 30,000 announced by the Ukrainian president in July. Kyiv had found some North Korean missiles in Ukraine’s territory, he said. “It is absolutely clear that ⁠North Korea will continue to build its experience in modern warfare, receive licences from Russia, and receive all kinds of military tools from them.” This month, an official at Ukraine’s military intelligence told Reuters that a North Korean missile unit has begun deploying personnel and equipment to western Russia and the unit could be equipped with 120 ballistic ⁠missiles and six launchers for strikes against Ukraine. North Korea sent an estimated 14,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk region in 2024, helping Moscow fight an invasion by Ukrainian forces. Thousands have been wounded or killed. North Korea has supplied Russia with millions ‌of artillery and mortar rounds – sometimes of dangerously low quality, according to Russian milbloggers and troops – as well as ballistic missiles, long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, according to Ukrainian and independent assessments. Zelenskyy continued that Ukraine “would very much like to receive support from South Korea in ‌an area where we have a shortage”, referring to air defence systems. “We are ready to work on the drone deal and other areas as well,” he said, adding that Ukrainian diplomats “are in contact” with Seoul to push potential deals. Ukraine is very short of high-end air defences and Russia has tried to exploit this by using more ballistic missiles, which are very hard to shoot down without interceptors like the US-owned Patriot. Seventy Atacms short-range ballistic missiles are part of a weapons package that Ukraine is poised to buy from Turkey, according to US congressional documents (pdf). The US would have to approve the resale of the American-origin weapons. The state department indicated to Congress it is prepared to give permission. Along with the M39 Atacms missiles, Turkey also plans to sell Kyiv 47,000 artillery rounds, 12 M270 multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) and more than 2,000 cluster bombs, according to the notice from the US state department. Russian missiles struck a high-rise apartment block in the Saltivskyi district of Kharkiv, killing two people and injuring 13, said regional head Oleh Syniehubov. Zelenskyy said eight people were wounded in Odesa, where strikes damaged the power grid, the port and residential buildings. He condemned an “absolutely brutal” strike targeting energy infrastructure near a shopping centre in Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region, that wounded nine people including four children. Russia said Ukrainian drones killed five people and injured two dozen others in the Belgorod region. Zelenskyy, in his evening address on Sunday, defended Ukraine’s replies to Russia’s attacks – including strikes on Russian oil refineries, air defence systems and radar stations – as “truly just responses”. “The Russian war will be increasingly felt at home, in Russia,” he said. The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said a WHO warehouse stocking medical supplies in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro was destroyed in strikes on Friday. “I cannot say loudly enough: attacks on health care must stop. Otherwise, people are deprived of lifesaving healthcare,” Tedros posted. “Even wars have rules. One of those is that health must be protected!” Ukrainian drone strikes damaged commercial sites and a home in the Russian city of Novorossiysk, said the mayor, Andrey Kravchenko. A major fuel terminal is located at Novorossiysk that links Kazakhstan’s oilfields to markets around the world. It has previously been a target for Ukrainian strikes. Bulgaria summoned Ukraine’s ambassador after a drone entered Bulgarian airspace, the country’s public broadcaster BNT reported on Sunday. The drone exploded on Saturday close to an international gas pipeline shortly after crossing the border from Romania, the Bulgarians said. No casualties or damage were reported. Bulgaria’s defence ministry said the incident was likely accidental and involved a drone that appeared to be a Ukrainian type. Kyiv’s foreign ministry said Ukraine did not deliberately target Bulgaria and the two sides were in “close contact” about it. A “powerful explosion” believed to be from a combat drone was reported in the village of Crocmaz, in south-east Moldova near the border with Ukraine, local police said on Sunday. No one was injured by the impact, which caused a vegetation fire in the Stefan Voda district, police said, adding that “fragments of a combat drone were found at the scene” and would be examined by specialists. Police did not specify the origin of the drone. The UK defence secretary, Wes Streeting, has urged allies to boost Ukraine’s air defences ahead of a winter that Vladimir Putin will seek to use as a “weapon” against Kyiv. Writing in the Sunday Times, Streeting warned that while Putin was currently losing the war, “Ukrainians know what winter brings, and how it can change the picture”. Allies’ efforts to assist Ukraine “must include greater resources for air defence”. “My task – alongside my German counterpart Boris Pistorius, with whom I co-chair the Ukraine defence contact group – is to turn the goodwill of some 50 nations into concrete help.” Pope Leo on Sunday said innocent people were being ⁠killed and wounded in Ukraine and Russia, and called for an end to ⁠the conflict. “Tragic incidents ⁠are multiplying, causing an ever-growing number of civilian victims, including children,” the pontiff said before worshippers ⁠gathered for Sunday’s Angelus prayer. “I renew my heartfelt appeal for international humanitarian law to be ⁠respected and for attacks against civilian targets to cease on both sides.” More than ‌16,000 civilians have been killed, according to the UN, the overwhelming majority of them Ukrainian.

Netanyahu rejects US-led 15-point Gaza peace plan in rare public break with Trump

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump. In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in. On Gaza, he said: “Israel does not accept the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry. And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. Right now, we are talking with the Americans about this issue.” Trump’s Board of Peace in July proposed the 15-point plan, which mandated that Hamas disarm in exchange for providing a full Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an eventual transition of power to an independent Palestinian National Committee. Trump had said that the agreement would be implemented in stages, but Netanyahu on Sunday said that he wanted a full disarmament first in order to implement the deal. The Israeli leader’s main target in his remarks was the US. Israel has emerged as a key stumbling block in the Trump White House’s plans to broker peace in the region, in Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon as well as in the war begun by joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. And Netanyahu, who is facing tough elections in October and pressure from hardliners in his own government, appears ready to test his relationship with Trump in public in order to shore up his reputation as a defender of Israel at home. Israel had already signalled that it would reject the US-led plan. Soon after Trump announced it last month, Israel stepped up its bombing campaign in the Palestinian territory – strikes killed 18 people last Sunday. Netanyahu’s office had previously indicated it would not back the plan, saying: “The version that has been made public does not reflect Israel’s positions.” But Sunday’s rejection was far more forceful and direct, and appeared targeted at the Trump White House, as Trump and Netanyahu both face difficult elections. “Unlike all those who lecture us, we do what needs to be done for Israel’s security, and we can and know how to stand our ground, even against our best friends when necessary,” Netanyahu said. The head of Trump’s Board of Peace hit back on Sunday, saying the plan remained the “only way forward”. Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s high representative for Gaza, told Israeli television: “The option we are offering today is the only way forward that ensures this tragedy does not happen again.” Netanyahu’s rejection is a blow to Trump’s desire to be seen as a broker of peace in foreign conflicts. With US midterm elections due in November, the White House is desperate to negotiate a peace in Iran in order to reopen the strait of Hormuz and help bring down oil and petrol prices. But the conflicts in the Middle East are interconnected and parallel US efforts have continued to bring peace to Lebanon, where Israel has occupied land in what it says is a buffer zone against Hezbollah, and Gaza, where Gulf allies of the US have decried what they say is an ethnic cleansing campaign being carried out by Israel. Like US presidents before him, Trump has found that Netanyahu can be a difficult ally. Bill Clinton, after meeting Netanyahu for the first time in 1996, is reported to have said: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” More recently, the Biden administration found that its concerns about the human toll in Gaza were ignored, but continued to publicly back Netanyahu and did not significantly suspend military aid to the country for fear of the political blowback that Netanyahu and his allies in the US could cause. In Trump, however, Netanyahu has found a far more unorthodox and unpredictable counterpart in the White House. Netanyahu is a natural ally for Trump, and he has attacked Democrats before the midterm elections for being weak on supporting Israel. Yet more broadly, support for Israel and its war in Gaza is eroding in the Democratic party, and the Republicans have a presidential frontrunner for 2028 in the vice-president, JD Vance, who is publicly sceptical of Israel and the war in Gaza. Trump will have to decide whether to increase pressure on Netanyahu, potentially alienating some pro-Israel allies, or to allow his efforts for a Gaza peace plan to stall, perhaps indefinitely. The answer will depend heavily on the US president’s own political instincts – are US voters hoping to see Trump emerge as a statesman capable of ending one of the world’s bloodiest recent wars in Gaza, or would a public clash with Netanyahu provoke a revolt among his base? With both countries entering tumultuous election cycles and a generational shift in support for Israel among US voters, the result could redraw the alliance between Israel and the US.

Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza plan and vows no withdrawal until Hamas disarms – as it happened

We’re wrapping our live coverage of the Middle East crisis for today. Here are Sunday’s top developments: Israel has rebuffed Donald Trump’s Gaza plan. The country said it would not leave Gaza unless Hamas was “genuinely” disarmed. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that they were discussing their concerns with the US. “They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters,” Netanyahu said. Donald Trump said he’s “low keying it” with Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Trump’s comments to Axios came after Iran said it would not agree to a deal until the US met its demands, which included never speaking insulting the country. “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” Trump also told Axios. Although Donald Trump has rebuffed claims that the US is running low on weapons crucial to its war on Iran, a leaked memo indicates that his military leadership is concerned by falling stockpiles. Per the Washington Post, deputy US defense secretary Steve Feinberg on Wednesday told defense industry leaders that they must “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities.” Meanwhile, Trump’s war on Iran continues to draw prominent criticism in the US. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump’s complaints about rising costs clash with his policies that has made daily life more expensive. “Donald Trump may be saying that oil companies are making too much money, but what Donald Trump is doing is starting a reckless war in Iran, having closed door meetings with oil companies before his election, saying, you know, you give me money, you give me campaign contributions, and I will do whatever you want,” Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC.

Canadian government steps in as ‘out of control’ wildfires force thousands to flee

Canada’s federal government has announced it will provide urgent assistance to British Columbia after an onslaught of unprecedented fast-moving wildfires that killed one person and forced about 22,000 people to flee their homes in frantic evacuations. A total of 102 wildfires were raging across the province on Sunday, of which nearly half were categorised as “out of control”, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Of those fires, 78 ignited during the past week. The entire community of Summerland, about 30 miles (48km) south-west of the city of Kelowna and home to about 12,000 people, was evacuated overnight on Saturday, along with a further 8,000 people around nearby Peachland. About 10,000 others have been told to prepare to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Anette Boulet was among residents who fled Summerland along Okanagan Lake in British Columbia. As she and her family left around 4.30am Saturday, their home was shrouded in smoke. “You couldn’t see barely. It was just dark, and the ridge, the ridge of fire just coming towards you,” said Boulet, who evacuated to a centre in Penticton. “There’s no words to express it, the fear.” In a social media post on Sunday, Eleanor Olszewski, Canada’s minister of emergency management and community resilience, said she had “approved a request for federal assistance from British Columbia to provide shelter and accommodations for people who have been forced to leave their homes”. “I have tasked federal officials, led by the government operations centre at Public Safety ‌Canada, to work with the province to ensure support reaches those who need it most,” she said. Efforts to battle the Bald Range wildfire have been hampered by the breakneck speed of its spread. The blaze was first detected late on Friday evening, and grew within hours to more than 40 sq miles (100 sq km) – nearly twice the size of the island of Manhattan – as it raced nearly nine miles toward Okanagan Lake. The province’s premier, David Eby, declared a state of emergency late on Saturday, telling reporters that the blaze had been “like a bomb going off.” Cliff Chapman, BC Wildfire Service’s director of provincial operations, said the prolonged hot and dry weather the province has faced this summer had resulted in “explosive” fire conditions never seen before. Lightning caused by thunderstorms forecast this week could make the situation still worse, he said. Residents were shaken awake in the middle of the night to flee their homes. Jennifer Pascoa, who lives in Summerland, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that she had begun to pack when she saw flames licking the nearby mountains. “It happened so quickly. We came home from the beach, we saw the plume of smoke, and then within an hour, the sky was covered in dark, black clouds,” she said. The British Columbia Wildfire Service said 10 standard helicopters and one night-vision helicopter were involved in the response. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country’s federal police force, said an 80-year-old woman died while trying to escape the wildfire that forced evacuations in the Okanagan Lake region. Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, said the rapidity of the fires’ spread was indicative of increasingly extreme blazes springing up in Canada and the US. Southern BC and the pacific north-west in the US had had little to no rain in the past six weeks, leaving the regions “bone dry”, he said. “You walk through the forest, it crunches; if you look sideways, you start a fire.” These conditions were being driven by human-caused climate change, he said. “We’re seeing higher intensity fires today than the past … the shorter the timeframe, the more challenging it is.” Before this decade, fire agencies’ policy was that if a blaze was 20km (12 miles) away from a community, there was no cause for immediate concern. The ferocity and speed of these fires meant that such calculations no longer held, said Flannigan, warning that all homes in at-risk regions should have an emergency kit ready to go. “If a fire can run 60km in a day, you should be worried about it,” he said. The Bald Range fire was also an example of how fires could metastasise through the night, he said. Traditional firefighting practices would usually give firefighters a break during nightfall, as the cooler air would slow the burning. “That’s not the case any more. The fire roars through the evening, through the night, and we’re seeing this more and more,” he said. Drought and the sheer power and size of the fires during the day allow them to keep momentum even in the dark. Fire management agencies in BC and Alberta now fight fires after dark using night-vision helicopters. Current conditions indicated that the fire season in BC and the US states of Washington and Oregon could extend into the autumn, Flannigan said. “It looks grim … there’s no rain,” he said, adding that, like California, Canada may begin to have “fire years” instead of a summer fire season. “I’m scared for the coming weeks.” In the US, crews in Washington that for over a week have been fighting three wildfires that began burning in the Spokane area continued clean-up near containment lines. None of the fires were growing, officials said. The fires have damaged or destroyed about 920 structures. Earlier in the week a man was arrested and charged with intentionally setting the biggest of the three Spokane-area blazes.

Alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan’s return to Ireland ends global game of cat-and-mouse

A decade after escaping assassination and fleeing into exile, Daniel Kinahan is back in Ireland – but it is not the homecoming he wanted. The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai in an Irish government jet on Sunday and met by a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat and mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities. The 49-year-old landed at Casement aerodrome in Dublin on Sunday evening and was taken to the criminal courts of justice in central Dublin to be charged with directing organised crime. A judge told Kinahan that, because of the charge, an application for bail would have to be made to the high court. Kinahan said: “I understand. I think we know I won’t be getting bail, but thank you.” He was then taken 50 miles outside the city to his new home in Portlaoise prison. Tabloid headlines anticipated his return with glee. “Du-Bye!” said one. “Dan and Dusted,” said another. “Kin Air: He’s Coming Home,” said another. It is a moment long sought by law enforcement agencies that named Kinahan as a leader of a cartel said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply, along with running criminal sidelines in firearms and racketeering. As the founder of the boxing management company MTK Global, the Dubliner was also an influential figure in sports and boasted of friendships with Tyson Fury and other champions. Kinahan has not been tried but is braced for conviction and a long sentence, according to clips of an interview that he gave by phone from Dubai to the podcaster James English. “I think I’ve already got life in prison. And we have to go through the dance now.” The married father of five said he had “not been an angel” but that accusations against him were overblown. “I believe in a way I’m a scapegoat.” He had not laundered money through boxing promotion, he said, rebutting one of the allegations against him. Kinahan said he looked forward to familiar Irish treats such as a crisp sandwich. “Get back home and have a little bit of batch bread and a packet of King crisps or Tayto.” The bravado, or fatalism, could not disguise a dramatic fall. From gilded opulence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allegedly at the helm of a criminal empire worth hundreds of millions of euros, Kinahan will reportedly become an inmate at the maximum-security A5 unit within A block at Portlaoise. His father, Christopher Kinahan, launched a family enterprise in the 1980s by importing heroin into Dublin. A polished figure with university degrees and a facility for languages, Kinahan senior, better known as Christy, was convicted of drug offences and money laundering while creating a network that spanned Latin America, north Africa, the UK and continental Europe. In 2009, a US diplomatic cable named his son Daniel as “an Irish businessman involved in narco-trafficking throughout Europe”. Soon after, Spanish authorities arrested Christy and Daniel and seized assets, but the Kinahans emerged largely unscathed. That changed when a murderous feud with the rival Hutch gang piled up corpses and led to an audacious but unsuccessful attempt on Daniel’s life at a boxing weigh-in at Dublin’s Regency hotel in February 2016. The death of one man, David Byrne, fuelled further killings. Kinahan was never again seen in public in Ireland and operated from southern Spain before settling in Dubai in the UAE, which had no extradition agreement with Ireland. With his father and brother Christopher junior, Daniel remained alert to surveillance attempts but lived openly and turned MTK Global into a boxing powerhouse. That apparent untouchability evaporated in 2022 when the US offered a reward of up to $15m for information that led to the arrest or conviction of the trio. Washington had been reluctant to get involved until lobbied by the then assistant garda commissioner John O’Driscoll, Greg Gatjanis, who ran the US national security council’s strategy for transnational organised crime, told the MacGill summer school last month. “To this day I hold Ireland, the gardaí, as the model [for international manhunts] of how they handled the Kinahan organisation,” said Gatjanis. “Their drug empire probably did not touch the US, but then he started talking about the effects of the Kinahan organisation and the terror they were inflicting. I went from telling him I couldn’t accommodate sanctions because I could not make a case for it to agreeing to starting up an investigation, and that began the entire sanction investigation.” In May 2025 Ireland agreed an extradition treaty with the UAE and the net began to close. Sean McGovern, a cartel lieutenant wanted for murder and directing organised crime, was extradited that month and jailed for 24 years. Daniel Kinahan was arrested in April this year. UAE authorities rejected his appeal last month, clearing the way for extradition. Irish military personnel are expected to reinforce police during Kinahan’s transfers to court and prison. Kinahan told the podcast he would be subject to a “circus” and “character assassination”. Gatjanis said no organised crime group lasted for ever. “It’s born, it crawls, walks, runs, starts to decline, ultimately dies.”