Global News Podcast - Signs of imminent ceasefire deal for Gaza
Episode Date: January 14, 2025Qatari mediators say major differences have been overcome in Gaza negotiations. Also: US Justice Department report says Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his 2020 el...ection defeat.
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Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion.
Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by bestselling author Oliver Berkman,
containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity.
Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions
of this relentless churn of activity.
We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever.
Somewhere, when we weren't looking,
it's like busyness became a way of life.
Start listening to Oliver Berkman,
Epidemics of Modern Life,
available to purchase wherever you get your audio books.
This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Alex Ritzen and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday the 14th of January, these are our main stories.
There are signs a ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza could be agreed soon.
A US Justice Department report says Donald Trump would have been convicted of illegally trying to overturn his election defeat in 2020, and desperate efforts continue in South
Africa to rescue hundreds of illegal miners.
Also in this podcast.
He was this very, very eminent art historian who really was the most influential art historian
in Britain.
He was admired across the world at the same time.
Of course, he had been a Soviet spy.
He had handed over thousands of documents.
How much did the late Queen Elizabeth really know
about her top art expert?
Time and again over the course of the conflict in Gaza,
hopes have emerged that a ceasefire
deal to end the suffering of civilians on both sides is within reach.
Today, hopes have risen once again after mediators reported a midnight breakthrough at talks
in Qatar.
This was the response of people on the streets of Gaza.
All the news and leaks confirm that there is a truce.
We really hope it happens because our people are in desperate need to take a break from
this big burden and this wound that hit every house in Palestine and every house in the
Gaza Strip.
The first thing we will do is thank God that we are still alive for this moment and that
we reached the end. I ask God
for it to really be the end of the war so that we can regroup and rearrange our houses."
Caution remains the watchword given the failure of all previous
attempts to end the violence and secure the release of hostages but this time
just maybe there seems to be more substance
to the hope. A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majid al-Ansari, said a deal was
close but not done yet.
During the past months there were underlying issues, major issues between the two parties
unresolved. These issues were resolved during the talks in the past couple of weeks and
therefore we have reached a point where the major issues
that were preventing a deal from happening were addressed.
We especially appreciate the roles of both the Biden
administration and the incoming Trump administration
in the talks in the past couple of weeks.
They were working in tandem together here in Doha
and beyond in the region to make sure that a deal happens.
And we appreciate statements by both President Biden
and President-elect Trump that were helpful.
I've been talking to our correspondent in Jerusalem, Amir Nader.
This time it does feel like we're getting to a place
which we haven't been before with a much higher level of detail,
with positive signals that just keep coming from all parties,
and then this incoming President Trump who has seems to be
using the leverage that
He has to push the parties closer towards a deal
So it's not there yet, but it does feel much different from previous rounds
Even if the detail of the deal isn't much different to what we've seen in previous rounds before
It feels like the pressure on the parties to get it done is much higher.
So it's the deadline that's maybe forcing the issue.
But what has emerged about the outline of the deal?
What would happen?
So we understand from sources that have been speaking to the BBC
that there would be a first stage of six weeks
where it would begin with an exchange of Israeli hostages
that are being kept in Gaza with Palestinian prisoners who are in prison in Israel. As
that would happen Palestinians that have been displaced in Gaza through the war
will be able to return home primarily up to the north of Gaza and there's a
crucial element of the second stage as well which involves the withdrawal of
Israeli troops from places that they are in now allowing sort of big population areas cities to
be populated again by Palestinians. As that first stage is going on those first
six weeks talks would begin for a second stage and that second stage would pave
the way for the final ceasefire and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
And that is clearly a critical stage as well, which, you know, it could fall apart in that first stage,
but many are hoping that the momentum would push it through into a permanent ceasefire.
And that is the thing, isn't it? Even if there is an agreement, the parties have got to deliver.
That's right. And I think all the parties have been pulled in different
directions so Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu here in Israel
has obviously been able to bring his government
to this stage to engage with the negotiations, you know, has committed to them
in Qatar, but just in the past few hours we've heard from
a number of key members of his cabinet, ministers
in his coalition, who are threatening to resign.
One minister this morning calling on his colleagues to resign should this deal go ahead, saying
it jeopardises the future national security of Israel.
So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is faced with a situation where his government could
become a minority government, could collapse.
So there are internal political issues in Israel for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resolve as well,
should he want to push ahead with the deal.
Amir Nader in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Gaza, the violence, the hunger and the deprivation continue unabated. Amand Bazarol is project coordinator for Medesan San Frontier, MSF,
based close to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.
She has been telling Nick Robinson about another difficult night
for Palestinian civilians.
There was heavy shelling in Rafah, so we are very close to it.
So it's about one kilometre from us.
In Khan Yunis, there was one strike and there was 10 people who died.
Then we had like further north in Der Albala
where we have a field hospital.
There was also some shelling.
And then last night, my colleagues in Gaza City
called me saying that they don't think
they're gonna be able to move tomorrow
to go and to open the clinic
because they're too scared because they just saw a strike just in front of them, killing
some several people.
So if there is a ceasefire, the hope presumably is that you will be able to treat people,
you will be able to get aid to people in a way that you're not able to now.
Actually the sign that the Israelis are giving at the moment is
more impediment actually at Kerem Shalom crossing and then there's still the problem of the looting
inside Gaza as well that has been increasing and increasing over the last months. We'd like to be
hopeful but like the sign that's not showing that it's going to be improved because all the trucks
still need to be screened and the volume that they are letting
in at the moment is very slow and I don't see any sign that it's going to improve in the next
days and weeks even with the true sources of fire.
What is the scale of the need in Gaza where you're working?
It's enormous. When you just have a look at Gaza and you see all the makeshift tents that
shelter that the people have that are leaking, the fact that they cannot have access to water,
like there's a distribution of clean water for drinking, but there's enough water for the people
to be able to shower. We can see the kids that could not wash their hair and are staying in the streets because
like there's no school at the moment. So it's just like the basic needs of everyday life that we
would expect are not met here. And it's going to take very, very long time to be able to reconstruct
like some facilities. The law and order has been really destabilized and it's going to be difficult
for any authority. And there's no sign of different
kind of authorities actually who's willing to take over in Gaza today. So the only authority
who remains and seems to be remaining will be the de facto authority of Hamas. The expectation
is they are going to show that they are still very much here and they are the one in charge.
Amand Bazarol from MSF.
The man who tried to prosecute Donald Trump for election
interference in the 2020 US presidential poll
has said a jury would have convicted him.
Special counsel Jack Smith's investigation
has now been shut down.
But he says that does not mean the president-elect is
exonerated for what he described as an unprecedented criminal
effort to hold onto power. Donald Trump has responded by calling Jack Smith deranged.
Here's our North America correspondent, Nomiya Iqbal.
Jack Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the US government investigations into Donald
Trump. In his final report, he says that the evidence shows Mr Trump tried to subvert the
2020 election
after he lost to President Joe Biden. He claimed he did this through a variety of methods, including
violence against those he considered his opponents. Both this case and another one regarding classified
documents resulted in criminal charges against Mr Trump. He pleaded not guilty and said the
prosecutions were politically motivated. Mr Smith described that in his report as laughable. He pleaded not guilty and said the prosecutions were politically motivated.
Mr Smith described that in his report as laughable. He said Donald Trump was only
off the hook because he won back the White House. The Department of Justice
has a long-standing policy that it doesn't prosecute sitting presidents.
Nomiya Iqbal. The Russian war against Ukraine is seeing more action far away from the frontline.
Ukrainian sources speak of a fiery night as targets deep inside Russia were hit,
including oil refineries in Saratov and Engels on the Volga and chemical plants in the regions of
Tula and Bryansk. Russia claims to have shot down the Ukrainian drones and missiles used.
I heard more
from our Europe regional editor Danny Aberhart. One of the attacks appears to
be on an ammunition factory in the region of Bryansk. It's a town just to
the northwest of Bryansk city. That's according to the Ukrainian military. They
say that this is a place that gunpowder, artillery shells, cruise missile components and things were targeted.
And it seems to have been a combined missile and drone strike.
The Ukrainians say that drones were used to distract Russian air defenses and then missiles were used.
They didn't specify what type of missiles, but Russia's Ministry of Defense says it has repelled an attack using US-made Atakan missiles and
British-made Stormshadows missiles in the Bryansk area.
It said all of those were shot down, but Ukraine has produced video which seems to argue very
much against that.
Big explosions, very powerful strikes in that area.
That video has not yet been verified.
Away from there, there have been several other attacks.
One is on the twin cities of Saratov and Engels, which is a place,
Engels has a very important military base.
It was attacked last week and an oil depot was hit that burnt for days.
Ukraine says it struck the oil depot in Engels again,
as well as ammunition bases at that military air base.
So that's again
that hasn't been confirmed but there's been video of the Saratov attack and
that it looks very much like the oil refinery in Saratov so significant
places. And this all just six days before Donald Trump takes over? Yeah so what
we're seeing here perhaps is an attempt by Ukraine to
strike sites in Russia that are used for attacks against Ukraine with its own
drones but also with Western weapons ahead of Donald Trump because Donald
Trump has previously opposed the use of Western weapons for targets inside
Russia so that could be a switch there and there is a wider
escalation as well. So Russian forces are still making ground in the east of
Ukraine, captured a number of sites in Donetsk but they're also in other areas
Kupianski is one area to watch. And of course we've long had the predictions
that, well from Donald Trump, that the war will end shortly after he takes
office. Have we got any more flesh on what's going to happen?
Well, we've had reports from his special envoy that he's going to try to wrap the war up in a hundred days.
Donald Trump, obviously, initially in the campaign, was talking about finishing the war in 24 hours,
but gave very little details. There's speculation that what he might try to do is hold talks with President Putin in
order to try to get some sort of situation where the war can be frozen. That could see Ukraine
having to make territorial concessions. It's not clear whether Ukraine would be prepared to do that
but also perhaps give Ukraine some sort of security guarantees. Ukraine is very wary about talk about security guarantees. It's seen them in
the past and they have failed as seen by Russia's invasion in 2022. Danny Aberhart, let's stay with
the conflict now where it's emerged that Russia is using Ukrainian prisoners of war as leverage to
force their families back in Ukraine to carry out sabotage. The BBC has seen evidence that Russia is using bribery and threats against POWs to persuade
worried relatives to carry out spying and sabotage.
Ukrainian officials say about half of all POW families are approached by Russian agents.
Will Vernon sent this report.
Under arrest. Arsonists.
Another plot foiled, say Ukraine's security services.
Saboteurs recruited by Russia to set fire to military vehicles and railway lines.
by Russia to set fire to military vehicles and railway lines.
Many do it for money paid by suspected Russian agents, but others are motivated by the desperation of waiting for loved ones in captivity.
A Ukrainian number called me. I picked up and he introduced himself as Dmitry.
Svetlana hadn't heard from her husband, Dima, for more than two years,
when she received a strange phone call.
He spoke with a Russian accent.
He said, if you want your husband to come home sooner, I can help.
Dima, an army medic, had been captured not long after the full-scale invasion.
The man on the phone, Dmitri, said he could arrange for Svetlana to speak to her husband,
or even organize an early release for him.
But there was a price.
He said I must either set fire to a military facility, a car or a railway electrical box. The other option was to reveal the location of air defense systems nearby.
Svetlana reported the call to the security service,
who told her she should try and buy for time while they investigated.
So she played along, pretending to agree to torch a nearby railway facility.
She managed to record some of the calls.
Pour in a litre of the fluid and add a bit of petrol.
Go to some sort of railway junction.
Make sure there are no security cameras.
And wear a hat, just in case.
The security service then told Svitlana the calls were coming from inside Russia, and
she should refuse to cooperate further.
And then the threats began.
He said they'd kill my husband.
For days he kept calling, saying, your husband is being tortured and it's your fault.
Did you at any point consider going through with it?
No, not for a second.
My husband never would have forgiven me if I had done something like that.
In a statement, the Russian authorities denied allegations that prisoners' families are used
by Russia as leverage and accused Ukraine of coercing people to commit sabotage in Russian territory.
Back in her flat, Svitlana and husband Dima are enjoying time with Vova, their four-year-old
son.
Dima was released from captivity in September.
He says the Russians didn't follow through with their threats to harm him.
But with thousands of Ukrainians still in captivity,
some could go to extreme lengths to bring their loved ones home.
Will Vernon.
Still to come in this podcast.
I was just wondering how I would prefer to die.
Yeah, I was ready to die.
What really happened to the Egyptian boat
that sank in November, killing 11 people?
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion.
Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by bestselling author Oliver Berkman,
containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity.
Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity, and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity.
We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking it's like busyness
became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life.
Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
Los Angeles is bracing itself for more wildfires with strong winds set to
return to the city.
Forecasters are expecting gusts of more than 100 kilometres per hour and four fires continue to burn.
President Biden has warned it will cost tens of billions of dollars to rebuild the parts of Los Angeles that have been destroyed.
Although the federal government is going to cover 100% of the cost for the next 180 days for things
like firefighter overtime pay, debris removal, temporary shelters. It's going to cost tens
of billions of dollars to get Los Angeles back to where it was. So we're going to need
Congress to step up to provide funding to get this done. And we're going to get that
done, God willing.
After a space of crime during the wildfires, several people have been charged with burglary
and looting. Speaking at a news conference, the LA County Sheriff, Robert Luna, said the
charges would serve as a warning to anyone who intended to take advantage of the tragedy.
We've seen hour and hour of people in our community suffering,
losing their homes, losing their property and just like everybody else people are
saying hey this is the reason I don't want to evacuate. I don't want to be
victimized again. This is a strong message from all of us that we are here
and when we catch people we mean business so whether we are here and when we catch people, we mean business.
So whether we are talking about burglary, looting,
whatever it is, we're gonna get you.
Do not make this worse than it already is.
Our correspondent, David Willis, is in the Palisades,
one of the worst affected areas, and gave us this update.
High winds are anticipated overnight and we're talking about winds gusting at 70 miles an
hour or thereabouts and they're expected to kick in in the next couple of hours or so
and remain in place until Wednesday lunchtime.
Now that's sparking fears here that all that could undo the progress
made by firefighters over the weekend by whipping up embers from the two big fires that are
blazing here, transporting them and potentially sparking fires in other parts of the city.
The big question of course is whether those high winds
will prevent firefighters from mounting
the sort of aerial sorties, dropping water and flame
retardant from planes and helicopters above,
that has proved quite effective up to now.
Now, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass,
has said that this city is prepared
for any changes
in the weather, but officials here have been taking advantage today anyway of the slightly
lighter winds in order to plot, to survey the affected areas, the areas affected worst
by these fires, to pinpoint properties that have been damaged or destroyed
by the flames and those that have survived.
And they meanwhile announced that nine people have been arrested on offences ranging from
looting to burglary.
One of those people is charged, would you believe, with stealing an Emmy Award from
somebody's
burnt out house.
David Willis in Los Angeles.
Hundreds of people have been trapped in an abandoned mine shaft two kilometres underground
since November.
But now the rescue and recovery operation in the small South African town of Stilfontaine
is gathering pace.
On Monday, 26 miners were brought up alive
and nine bodies were recovered. They were working in the mine illegally.
Human rights activists have criticized the government's tough stance on
illegal mining which saw them deny the men food and water in order to force
them out. The authorities have defended their actions saying the miners
shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Mayani Jones in Johannesburg gave us more details.
We're not exactly clear how many miners are still trapped on the ground but some
rights groups here say it could be as many as 800. The authorities say it's going to
take several days to get them out. They've set up a crane that has a cage, a
kind of lift which goes down into the mine which we believe is two kilometres
deep. It's taking food and water down to the miners that are trapped and then it's also bringing
miners back up.
This situation has been going on since November.
The authorities say that the reason why the miners are still down there is because they
refuse to come out for fear of arrest.
The government did take a hard line against them when the situation came to light, when
they were discovered in this mine in November. One minister said he would quote, smoke them out. For that reason, rights
groups say the miners have been reluctant to come up, but many of them are also very
hungry and very weak and unable to come up and that's why they say they need help.
A number of mining companies have stopped operations around the country because of the
high costs involved, but these shafts remain down there and a lot of the local miners know
their way around it. So they've gone in there by themselves, but this poses significant risks to themselves as we're seeing now with the number of people trapped
They also causes a lot of problems for the local community
And then there's also the issue that these miners have gone down there of their own free will some rights groups argue that they are coerced by
Powerful criminal gangs, so it's a very complicated picture very complicated situation that the government is trying to tackle but so far they've really struggled to contain it.
Maine Jones. The BBC has been told of safety failings on board an Egyptian
dive boat that sank last November killing 11 people. The Egyptian authorities had previously
blamed the disaster on a massive wave. Joe Inwood has spoken to nearly a dozen survivors,
including one woman who spent 35 hours trapped in an air pocket.
This is what it sounds like, trapped inside the hull of a slowly sinking ship. The footage you can hear was filmed by Luciana Galetta and her
partner Christophe, four hours in to a 35-hour ordeal.
Our things are coming back to us, Christophe says, as their possessions float by. Around
them the detritus of the ships hold. The experience still haunts Luciana.
I was ready to die. And for me, to be honest, it's very weird to be alive compared to the
others.
She was one of the very last people to be rescued from the Sea Story, a luxury dive
boat that sank in Egypt's Red Sea.
To see it before the disaster it looks luxurious, four stories high with polished decks, there's even a Jacuzzi. One of the guests did a video tour of the boat on Instagram.
But on the morning of the 25th of November it went down in just minutes.
We've interviewed nearly a dozen survivors who, for the first time, have spoken of the
terror of that night.
Hisora Gonzalez describes the moment the ship went down.
It kept going like this and then all of a sudden it went boom.
My bed was in the wall and my friend Christian was on top of me who flew over.
I was really disorientated so I couldn't find the light.
But really fast my friend started going, shouting at me, saying, run, run, get out, get out.
Justin Hodges was just down the hall from his Sora and helped lift other passengers to safety once he'd escaped his own cabin. I didn't realise that the whole boat,
that point was already on its side.
And there was water gushing in the room.
Hisora managed to make it into the water,
but she didn't have a life jacket.
Everything was pitch black.
The sky was black, the sea was black.
We remember looking at the boat and the boat kept sinking
and we just screamed, swim away from the boat. Hisora, Justin and 18 others managed to escape the boat and the boat kept sinking and we just screamed swim away from the boat.
Hisora, Justin and 18 others managed to escape the boat before it was fully submerged.
Luciana was one of 16 who did not.
We didn't hear any boat, we didn't hear anyone, we didn't hear anything, not even another helicopter. So I was just wondering how I would prefer to die.
To drown because I would try to get out of this boat.
Or if I needed to wait to be thirsty and hungry.
But yeah, I was ready to die.
She would spend 35 hours sitting on fuel tanks before local divers braved the rake.
Speaking shortly after, the Egyptian authorities were quick to blame a wave.
But what you can hear now is footage from just hours before the sinking
of the sea story. It was taken after one of the small boats slipped off the back and clearly
shows relatively small waves. This footage, plus the testimony of the 11 survivors we
spoke to, cast out on the official narrative.
Oh my god, they're going to get hurt!
Dr Simon Boxall is an oceanographer at the University of Southampton.
I've had a look at the available data for that region for wind conditions and there's
no way that a large wave would have caused the vessel to capsize. That really then boils
down to two options, either pilot error or in this case navigator error or an error in the design
of the vessel. The chances are it could be a combination of both.
Neither the Egyptian government nor the company who owned the boat responded to our detailed
questions but it's understood there has been a tightening of the rules governing dive boats
in the last few weeks. If lessons have been learned they've come at a very heavy price.
That report by Joe Inwood.
Anthony Blunt was the late Queen Elizabeth's advisor on the British royal
family's extensive and priceless art collection. But was the Queen kept in the
dark by the intelligence service MI5 about the fact that he was actually a
spy during the Cold War? Well that is the question raised by the release service MI5 about the fact that he was actually a spy during the Cold War.
Well, that is the question raised by the release of MI5 files at the National Archives in the UK
about Anthony Blunt, who was leading a double life as a secret agent for the Soviet Union.
The papers show that in 1971 the Queen officially knew nothing about Blunt's security record and it seems
likely that she was only fully briefed in 1973, nine years after he had already confessed
to being a spy.
Here is Anthony Blunt himself speaking in 1979 when he was asked whether Queen Elizabeth
knew about his confession.
Well, this is a question again, which I shall, I would rather
not discuss because my information is, so to speak,
if not secondhand, is rather vague.
And I can only say that as far as I was told at the time
and later, she was not.
But I may be wrong about this.
That was what I was told.
Miranda Carter has written a biography
called Anthony Blunt, His Lives.
He was this very, very eminent art historian
who really was the most influential art historian in Britain.
He ran the Courtauld Institute.
He was admired across the world.
He basically recruited a whole generation of art historians
who went on to run all the major galleries and museums in the country
and he was also surveying the Queen's pictures, which was a bit of a side hustle for him.
But it meant that he got to oversee this astonishing collection that the Royal Family had built up over the years.
That gives us a feeling of what a big deal it was.
Yes.
When he was in...
And at the same time, of course, he had been a Soviet spy when he was in my five during the war
He had handed over thousands of documents to the Soviets
So what do you make of the story revealed in these ml5 papers that the Queen was only told?
officially told as in not
Had a chat about the possibility
Until years later after his recovery.
Well, it is very interesting. And I have to say, my caveat is that I have not seen all
the documents. I've seen two or three very interesting memos from the early 70s, which
from the then head of MI5, Sir Michael Hanley, who says initially in 1971 that he'd been
told by the Queen's private secretary, Michael
Aden, that the Queen knew nothing about Blunt. Then there's another memo, which has also
dropped today from 1973, in which he reports that Aden's successor as private secretary,
Martin Charteris, wrote to tell him that he had now told the Queen who, and I quote, took
it calmly without surprise.
She remembered he'd been under suspicion in the early 50s.
Yeah, we should remind people that he confessed years before he was publicly outed.
He was.
He confessed in 1963, didn't he?
In 1964, in fact, yeah, and had been offered immunity from prosecution and that the story
will be kept quiet in return for telling them
everything he knew. If the story had come out during the 60s, it would have been excruciatingly
embarrassing for all concerned, not least because the government of the day and MI5
had been involved in a whole series of tremendous spy scandals and cock-ups in the previous
three years, including Philby defecting in 1963
and the profumers affair. So, it was going to look bad if it came out. But of course,
because Blunt had this association with the palace, the question was, what were they going
to do about the Queen? To be honest, I think that she was informally told. I interviewed
Roy Jenkins and Martin Chartres when I was
researching my book in the 90s and both of them said the Queen knew and they...
That's the difference between knowing and knowing, isn't it?
Yeah, I think this is absolutely... I think they gave her plausible deniability. I think
it would have been excruciatingly embarrassing if it had come out and everybody had known
that she'd known. On the other hand, the job of a private secretary is to protect and inform and his job, Edine's job, was to sort of tell her informally that,
you know, if she saw blunt in public, she was not to throw her arms around it. Not that
she would ever have done that.
Miranda Carter speaking to Nick Robinson.
And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast
later.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us
an email.
The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk.
You can also find us on X at Global News Pod.
This edition was mixed by Nicola Brough
and the producer was Richard Hamilton.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.
Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by.
And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.
It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes I felt amazing. But soon that calm welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker.
A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.
I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing.
The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.
World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed.
In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry,
where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise.
And it's like this, the secret that's there.
I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me,
was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't even understand.
Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network.
I feel that I have no other choice.
The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line.
I want truth and justice.
And for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future.
To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on
and take back the power.
World of Secrets, Season Six, The Bad Guru.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.