Famous chimpanzee sanctuary faces existential threat from illegal land grab

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1 month ago

June 3, 2025

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There is a distinct moment when the tranquillity of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary envelops our car as we drive higher up the mountain.

The buzz of Freetown gives way to the hushed calm of this pocket of pristine rainforest reserved for critically endangered western chimpanzees rescued from across Sierra Leone.

The quiet is necessary. These bright primates – closest related to humans in the animal kingdom – are easily disturbed and the ones living in Tacugama are particularly sensitive.

The more than 120 chimpanzees brought here are traumatised survivors of mistreatment, hunting and violent separation from their families in the wild.

They are now facing another existential threat. Illegal encroachment is eating away at the edges of the conservation area. Despite wildlife laws, forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures.

“We’ve been issuing several warnings over the last year,” says Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran. “Four months ago – again – we gave a warning. Then we had presidential intervention say that some of this encroachment will be stopped. It started very well for the first month then everything stopped again and we are back at square one. So, we are very tired and very stressed.”

Thirty years ago, Mr Amarasekaran appealed to the government to donate land and partner with him to create a sanctuary for the protection of the abused orphaned chimps he was finding across Freetown. Today, land in the Western Area Forest Reserve is being grabbed right under the government’s nose.

“The government has been very good in terms of helping us in every way – however we expect the leadership to be more firm,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

“When we talk to them, they are all with us. They all want to help. But when it comes to action it looks like some of the departments that have the mandate to institute certain laws and take the necessary law enforcement action are not acting.”

Sanctuary closes its doors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research

Tacugama has grown to become Sierra Leone’s most popular tourist attraction over the last three decades. But in a stand against the fast-approaching illegal encroachment, the sanctuary has closed its doors to visitors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research.

“It is not a tourist attraction – we made it become a tourist attraction. It is supposed to be an orphanage for rescued chimpanzees,” Mr Amarasekaran says.

“They are used to us and some visitors but they will start to see strangers come and that is where the problems start. They are not comfortable with strangers – don’t forget it is the stranger who killed their mother. It is the stranger that wiped out their group.”

‘A complex problem’

We asked Sierra Leone’s government spokesperson and minister of information and civic education, Chernor Bah, about the illegal encroachment.

“It is a complex problem. You have a city that is growing. People need places to stay and we have not done the best job in terms of enforcing all these limitations,” he replied. “Some of our agents seem to have been complicit in allocating and giving people land in places they are not supposed to stay. So, I don’t think I can sit here and say we have done enough – there is much more we can do.

“[Tacugama] is probably our most cherished and significant wildlife asset in the country.”

A national symbol for tourism

In 2019, the government designated the western chimpanzee as the national animal and national symbol for tourism. The image of a chimp is now etched in Sierra Leonean passports, a result of Tacugama’s advocacy Mr Amarasekaran and his team hope will entrench a love and respect for chimps that will curb the need for intervention.

“We wanted something more – that is how the national animal bill came through,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

“We thought if the agencies that are mandated to do all the law enforcement are not active and effective, then maybe we need to create a synergy between the people and the animals.”

Chimpanzees hunted for bushmeat

But chimpanzees are still being hunted as bushmeat for food across Sierra Leone and baby chimps are being torn from their families to be kept as illegal pets. Tacugama’s latest rescue is only eight months old.

Baby Asana is frail with thinning hair and is being nursed back to health by his chimp mum, Mama P, when we meet him. He was rescued after an informant sent a video of Asana wearing human clothes and being mistreated as an illegal pet in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city.

“For me as the founder of the sanctuary, I feel defeated,” says Mr Amarasekaran with Asana being cared for behind him.

“These chimps shouldn’t be arriving here if we have done enough work outside – there shouldn’t be any killings, there shouldn’t be any rescues. That is the time when I can say that I achieved something.”

Research from the Jane Goodall Institute identified that between five and 10 chimpanzees die for every surviving rescued chimpanzee. And with the sanctuary closed, much-needed public advocacy work will take a hard hit.

‘Until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee’

“I’m really concerned because I only even started to experience chimpanzees when I started working here. I knew that we had chimps here. But until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee,” says 25-year-old Tacugama communications officer, Sidikie Bayoh.

“Now, we are at a situation where we are closed indefinitely but what if this becomes something wherein we can never open the sanctuary again for people to visit? Then you will have all these young Sierra Leoneans never fully understanding what their national animal is.”

The closure also means there will be no revenue from visitors at a time when USAID funding has been halted.

“In the absence of funding from – at the moment – the US government, it is going to be difficult for us to turn around quickly,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

He then shrugs and smiles knowingly, adding: “We are very resilient – we are like chimpanzees. So, we will manage somehow.”

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Hamas gives ‘positive’ response to ceasefire proposal but asks for amendments

Published

4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Hamas gives 'positive' response to ceasefire proposal but asks for amendments

Hamas has said it has “submitted its positive response” to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza to mediators.

The proposal for a 60-day ceasefire was presented by US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing hard for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to visit the White House next week to discuss a deal.

Mr Trump said Israel had agreed to his proposed ceasefire terms, and he urged Hamas to accept the deal as well.

Hamas’ “positive” response to the proposal had slightly different wording on three issues around humanitarian aid, the status of the Israeli Defence Forces inside Gaza and the language around guarantees beyond the 60-day ceasefire, a source with knowledge of the negotiations revealed.

But the source told Sky News: “Things are looking good.”

Hamas said it is “fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework” without elaborating on what needed to be worked out in the proposal’s implementation.

The US said during the ceasefire it would “work with all parties to end the war”.

A Hamas official said on condition of anonymity that the truce could start as early as next week.

But he added that talks were needed first to establish how many Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for each freed Israeli hostage and to specify the amount of humanitarian aid that will be allowed to enter Gaza during the ceasefire.

He said negotiations on a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for the release of the remaining hostages would start on the first day of the truce.

Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the 60-day ceasefire would lead to a total end to the nearly 21-month-old war, which caused previous rounds of negotiations to fail as Mr Netanyahu has insisted that Israel would continue fighting in Gaza to ensure the destruction of Hamas.

The Hamas official said that Mr Trump has guaranteed that the ceasefire will extend beyond 60 days if necessary to reach a peace deal, but there is no confirmation from the US of such a guarantee.

Speaking to journalists on Air Force One, Mr Trump welcomed Hamas’s “positive spirit” to the proposal, adding that there could be a ceasefire deal by next week.

Hamas also said it wants more aid to flow through the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, which comes as the UN human rights officer said it recorded 613 Palestinians killed in Gaza within a month while trying to obtain aid.

Most of them were said to have been killed while trying to reach food distribution points by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said the agency was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings, but added that “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by GHF.

Ms Shamdasani said that of the total tallied, 509 killings were “GHF-related”, meaning at or near its distribution sites.

The GHF accused the UN of taking its casualty figures “directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry” and of trying “to falsely smear our effort”, which echoed statements to Sky News by the executive director of GHF, Johnnie Moore.

Mr Moore called the UN figures a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip.

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Gaza: The man in the room acting as backchannel for Hamas in negotiations with US

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4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Gaza: The man in the room acting as backchannel for Hamas in negotiations with US

Behind the efforts to secure the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release is the remarkable story of one man’s unlikely involvement.

His name is Bishara Bahbah, he’s a Harvard-educated economics professor from Phoenix, Arizona.

In April, his phone rang. It was Hamas.

Since that phone call, Dr Bahbah has been living temporarily in Qatar where he is in direct contact with officials from Hamas. He has emerged as an important back-channel American negotiator. But how?

An inauguration party

I first met Dr Bahbah in January. It was the eve of President Trump’s inauguration and a group of Arab-Americans had thrown a party at a swanky restaurant in Washington DC’s Wharf district.

There was a sense of excitement. Arab-Americans were crediting themselves for having helped Trump over the line in the key swing state of Michigan.

Despite traditionally being aligned with the Democrats, Arab-Americans had abandoned Joe Biden in large numbers because of his handling of the Gaza war.

I’d reported from Michigan weeks earlier and been struck by the overwhelming support for Trump. The vibe essentially was ‘it can’t get any worse – we may as well give Trump a shot’.

Mingling among diplomats from Middle Eastern countries, wealthy business owners and even the president of FIFA, I was introduced to an unassuming man in his late 60s.

We got talking and shared stories of his birthplace and my adopted home for a few years – Jerusalem.

He told me that he still has the deed to his family’s 68 dunum (16 acre) Palestinian orchard.

With nostalgia, he explained how he still had his family’s UN food card which shows their allocated monthly rations from their time living in a refugee camp and in the Jerusalem’s old city.

Dr Bahnah left Jerusalem in 1976. He is now a US citizen but told me Jerusalem would always be home.

He echoed the views I had heard in Michigan, where he had spent many months campaigning as the president of Arab-Americans for Trump.

He dismissed my scepticism that Trump would be any better than Biden for the Palestinians.

We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet for lunch a few weeks later.

A connection with Trump

Dr Bahbah invited two Arab-American friends to our lunch. Over burgers and coke, a block from the White House, we discussed their hopes for Gaza under Trump.

The three men repeated what I had heard on the campaign trail – that things couldn’t get any worse for the Palestinians than they were under Biden.

Trump, they said, would use his pragmatism and transactional nature to create opportunities.

Dr Bahbah displayed to me his own initiative too. He revealed that he got a message to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to suggest he ought to write a personal letter of congratulations to President Trump.

A letter from Ramallah was on the Oval Office desk on 6 November, a day after the election. It’s the sort of gesture Trump notices.

It was clear to me that the campaigning efforts and continued support of these three wealthy men had been recognised by the Trump administration.

They had become close to key figures in Trump’s team – connections that would, in time, pay off.

There were tensions along the way. When Trump announced he would “own Gaza”, Dr Bahbah was disillusioned.

And then came the AI video of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunning themselves in a Gazan wonderland.

“It is provocative and unacceptable,” he told me just after the president posted the video in February.

Trump must have thought it was funny, so he posted it. He loves anything with his name on it.”

Then came the Trump plan to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza. To this, he released a public statement titled Urgent Press Release.

“Arab-Americans for Trump firmly rejects President Donald J Trump’s suggestion to remove – voluntarily or forcibly – Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan,” he said.

He then changed the name of his alliance, dropping Trump. It became Arab-Americans for Peace.

I wondered if the wheels were coming off this unlikely alliance.

Was he realising Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t solve the Palestinian issue? But Dr Bahbah maintained faith in the new president.

“I am worried, but at the same time, Trump might be testing the waters to determine what is acceptable…,” he told me in late February as the war dragged on.

“There is no alternative to the two-state solution.”

He told me that he expected the president and his team to work on the rebuilding of Gaza and work to launch a process that would culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state, side by side in peace with Israel.

It was, and remains, an expectation at odds with the Trump administration’s official policy.

The phone call

In late April, Dr Bahbah’s phone rang. The man at the other end of the line was Dr Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas.

Dr Bahbah and Dr Hamad had never met – they did not know each other.

But Hamas had identified Dr Bahbah as the Palestinian-American with the most influence in Trump’s administration.

Dr Hamad suggested that they could work together – to secure the release of all the hostages in return for a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas was already using the Qatari government as a conduit to the Americans but Dr Bahbah represented a second channel through which they hoped they could convince President Trump to increase pressure on Israel.

There is a thread of history which runs through this story. It was the widow of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who passed Dr Bahbah’s number to Dr Hamad.

In the 1990s, Dr Bahbah was part of a Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks.

He became close to Arafat but he had no experience of a negotiation as delicate and intractable as this.

The first step was to build trust. Dr Bahbah contacted Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy.

Witkoff and Bahbah had something in common – one a real-estate mogul, the other an academic, neither had any experience in diplomacy. It represented the perfect manifestation of Trump’s ‘outside the box’ methods.

But Witkoff was sceptical of Dr Bahbah’s proposal at first. Could he really have any success at securing agreement between Israel and Hamas? A gesture to build trust was necessary.

Bahbah claims he told his new Hamas contact that they needed to prove to the Trump administration that they were serious about negotiating.

Within weeks a remarkable moment more than convinced Dr Bahbah and Witkoff that this new Hamas back-channel could be vitally important.

On 12 May, after 584 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli-American Edan Alexander was released.

We were told at the time that his release was a result of a direct deal between Hamas and the US.

Israel was not involved and the deal was described by Hamas as a “good faith” gesture. Dr Bahbah sees it as his deal.

Direct talks took place between Dr Bahbah and five Hamas officials in Doha who would then convey messages back to at least 17 other Hamas leadership figures in both Gaza and Cairo.

Dr Bahbah in turn conveyed Hamas messages back to Witkoff who was not directly involved in the Hamas talks.

A Qatari source told me that Dr Bahbah was “very involved” in the negotiations.

But publicly, the White House has sought to downplay his role, with an official telling Axios in May that “he was involved but tangentially”.

The Israeli government was unaware of his involvement until their own spies discovered the backchannel discussion about the release of Alexander.

Since that April phone call, Dr Bahbah has remained in the Qatari capital, with trips to Cairo, trying to help secure a final agreement.

He is taking no payment from anyone for his work.

As he told me when we first met back in January: “If I can do something to help to end this war and secure a future for the Palestinian people, I will.”

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Inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison – as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

Published

22 hours ago

July 4, 2025

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Inside Iran's notorious Evin Prison - as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

It is one of the most notorious and secret places in Iran.

Somewhere foreign journalists are never allowed to visit or film. The prison where dissidents and critics of Iran’s government disappear – some never to be seen again.

But we went there today, invited by Iranian authorities eager to show the damage done there by Israel.

Evin Prison was hit by Israeli airstrikes the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran. The damage is much greater than thought at the time.

We walked through what’s left of its gates, now a mass of rubble and twisted metal, among just a handful of foreign news media allowed in.

A few hundred yards in, we were shown a building Iranians say was the prison’s hospital.

Behind iron bars, every one of the building’s windows had been blown in. Medical equipment and hospital beds had been ripped apart and shredded.

It felt eerie being somewhere normally shut off to the outside world.

On the hill above us, untouched by the airstrikes, the buildings where inmates are incarcerated in reportedly horrific conditions, ominous watch towers silhouetted against the sky.

Evin felt rundown and neglected. There was something ineffably sad and oppressive about the atmosphere as we wandered through the compound.

The Iranians had their reasons to bring us here. The authorities say at least 71 people were killed in the air strikes, some of them inmates, but also visiting family members.

Iran says this is evidence that Israel was not just targeting military or nuclear sites but civilian locations too.

But the press visit highlighted the prison’s notoriety too.

Iran’s critics and human rights groups say Evin is synonymous with the brutal oppression of political prisoners and opponents, and its practice of hostage diplomacy too.

British dual nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe were held here for years before being released in 2022 in exchange for concessions from the UK.

Interviewed about the Israeli airstrikes at the time, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe showed only characteristic empathy with her former fellow inmates. Trapped in their cells, she said they must have been terrified.

The Israelis have not fully explained why they put Evin on their target list, but on the same day, the Israeli military said it was “attacking regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran”.

The locus of their strikes were the prison’s two entrances. If they were trying to enable a jailbreak, they failed. No one is reported to have escaped, several inmates are thought to have died.

The breaches the Israeli missiles made in the jail’s perimeter are being closed again quickly. We filmed as a team of masons worked to shut off the outside world again, brick by brick.