Daniel Wainwright, Gerry Georgieva and Nicholas Barrett
BBC Verify

Image source, Getty Images

The sharp rise in mistaken prisoner releases - 262 in 2024–25, more than double the previous year - has exposed serious strains in the justice system.

BBC Verify analysis suggests that these errors occurred in 72 of 121 prisons, with Pentonville alone releasing 16 inmates by mistake.While total releases rose by 13%, the error rate surged disproportionately.

Staffing issues in prisons are among the explanations for that.Nearly 13% of prison staff left their roles in a year, and half had been in their roles for a year or less. Absences are also high, with staff missing an average of 12 days annually, often due to mental health reasons.Funding pressures are also among the discussed reasons for the issues across prisons.

The Ministry of Justice’s budget is expected to be 5.6% smaller than it was in 2010 by the end of the current parliament.

Read our full analysis of the situation across prisons here..

As part of BBC Verify’s work our journalists have to review and assess graphic material.

Correspondent Merlyn Thomas takes us through this part our verification process.

This video is part of a series designed to explain how BBC Verify investigates stories.

Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify

A video purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers destroying an effigy of the killed US conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and threatening his widow Erika is likely to be the work of a Russian disinformation unit, experts have told BBC Verify.

In the video - which has had almost three million views on X - a group of soldiers seemingly dressed in Ukrainian uniforms address Erika Kirk. They say they will kill her if she repeats her husband’s call for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia or oppose supplying it with aid.

Independent researchers we spoke to told us the video has the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at undermining support for Ukraine.

It’s known as Storm-1516 and has a history of creating staged videos posing as Ukrainian soldiers. Back in May it created a clip allegedly showing a trio of Ukrainian soldiers burning an effigy of Donald Trump.

Darren Linvill, a media forensics specialist at Clemson University in the US, tells BBC Verify this latest video “has many hallmarks of a Storm-1516 narrative”.

They take a “current, divisive issue and attempt to push stories the Russians want us to hear”, he says, adding the video is “very carefully crafted”.

“The basic narrative can be understood without even viewing the video, you can tell what is happening simply by viewing the thumbnail as you scroll through your social media,” he told BBC Verify.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, EUNavfor

I’ve just received an update on a piracy incident off the coast of Somalia involving a Malta-flagged oil tanker.

The European Union Naval force (EUNavfor) says it has successfully liberated Hellas Aphrodite that was boarded by pirates early yesterday off the coast of Somalia.

All 24 crew members are “safe and no injuries have been reported”, it said in a statement, external.

The vessel’s operator, external has issued a separate statement saying armed forces from EUNavfor boarded the ship supported by a helicopter and confirmed the safety of all crew adding that no-one else was found onboard.

EUNavfor believes a vessel used as a “mothership” by the pirates is still in the area and says it’s carrying out a sweep of the surrounding waters.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

We spent many days studying video and satellite images close to a berm, a barrier of raised earth, north of el-Fasher, Sudan, to understand the mass killings that happened there, as part of a BBC Verify investigation.

Among these, one video of soldiers on a jeep driving alongside the berm shows at least 21 bodies spread across 11 locations. The jeep slows down near groups of bodies as the camera focuses on them.

In the absence of any significant roads or buildings, we had to work with dirt tracks and shrubs to match desert landmarks to the location of apparent bodies visible on a Vantor satellite image.

Sometimes this was by their size and colour - most notably nine bodies we first see in the video (the marking furthest right, above) and a body in a pink shroud at the end of the video (the far left marking).

We cross-referenced the Vantor image with two others from Planet Labs, showing the same landmarks and sometimes equivalent markings for bodies, allowing us to pinpoint co-ordinates.

We’ve counted bodies if we can see hands, heads or feet, or are the size and shape of people, or in colours too bright to be anything but clothing. These images also show what may be additional dead bodies, but we can’t be certain.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

By sunrise on 26 October, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had captured the city of el-Fasher, the last stronghold in Darfur held by the Sudanese military - which has been fighting the RSF in a devastating civil war since 2023.

Over the following days the militia’s troops carried out mass shootings and brutal executions of unarmed captives in a killing spree that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said could amount to “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

BBC Verify has been analysing graphic video footage, satellite imagery and eyewitness testimony to tell the story of a massacre that humanitarian officials fear has killed more than 2,000 people.

We’ve exposed a key RSF fighter filmed gunning down unarmed captives, identified evidence of premeditation by some troops and tracked the movements of RSF units as they engaged in the brutal executions.

You can read the full story here.

Gerry Georgieva
BBC Verify researcher

Image source, BBC/Jeff Overs

The UK government is facing questions about the state of the prison system in England and Wales after two inmates were mistakenly released within days of each other.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed was asked about prison capacity on Times Radio earlier. He said that the previous Conservative government had built 500 additional prison places while the last Labour government had added 28,000. The current government “has built 2,500", he said.

The 2,500 figure refers to new places opened which Labour announced they had built by late August, external.

Let’s break down the 2,500 figure Reed mentioned. Well, during that same period some prison places also closed - so the net increase in prison places is lower.

If you took the figures from last Monday the useable capacity of prisons in England and Wales is 89,291. It was 88,864 on 5 July 2024, external - a net increase of 427.

If Reed was speaking about the total capacity, including the operating margin, the net increase was 717.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

In the latest in a series of recent piracy attempts off the coast of Somalia, a new alert has been issued to shipping in the area following what’s described as “suspicious activity”.

UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), which monitors incidents affecting international shipping, says three people in a small craft approached a commercial ship before turning away.

The commercial vessel was identified by maritime risk firm Vanguard as the liquid natural gas tanker al-Thumama. According to vessel-tracking website Marine Traffic, the tanker is sailing from Ras Lafan, Qatar, to Swinoujscie, Poland, via the Cape of Good Hope.

UKMTO says al-Thumama outran a small craft which then returned to a larger vessel referred to as a “mothership” - the Iran-flagged “ISSAMOHAMDI” which has been linked to other attacks reported this week.

Separately, all 24 crew members aboard the oil tanker Hellas Aphrodite, which was illegally boarded yesterday in an incident also linked to “ISSAMOHAMDI”, are safe according to Vanguard.

According to Marine Traffic, this vessel has stopped sailing but is continuing to transmit its location every few minutes several miles off the coast of Somalia.

Thomas Copeland and Peter Mwai
BBC Verify

US President Donald Trump has ordered the military to prepare for action in Nigeria to tackle Islamist militant groups, accusing the government of failing to protect Christians.

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Thousands of Christians are being killed.”

Claims of a widespread targeted killings of Nigeria's Christians have been circulating in recent weeks, and last month we fact checked a claim by US comedian Bill Maher in which he said over 100,000 Christians had been systematically killed in Nigeria since 2009.

In Trump’s post he said 3,100 Christians were killed last year alone in Nigeria, compared with a total of 4,476 worldwide.

The figures Trump quoted appear to be from a report by advocacy group Open Doors and relate to killings the group says were carried out last year.We’ve asked Open Doors to explain how they arrived at these figures but have not had a response.

Nnamdi Obasi from the International Crisis Group, says “any figures of the numbers of Christians or Muslims killed are questionable, as such claims are not based on any credible databases of fatalities, disaggregated by religious identity.”

The US-based monitoring group, ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), has tracked civilian deaths in Nigeria over many years, collating multiple official reports and media sources.

It recorded 29 deaths from incidents where the Christian identity of the victim was a reported factor for the targeted violence against them. In contrast, there were 34 deaths from targeted attacks against Muslims in 2024.

In total, ACLED reported 4,393 deaths from various attacks across the country during last year. Dr Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst with ACLED says some of these attacks may have had Christian victims, where their identity was not clear or salient.“

Peter Mwai
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, X/@Alaaty_fb

We are looking at dramatic footage which appears to show the aftermath of a drone strike that targeted a vehicle convoy for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in north-west Sudan.In one of the videos, we see a large dark plume of smoke filmed from a distance.

When the camera zooms in we can make out at least four lorries on fire.

Another video clip, filmed closer, shows one of those vehicles is on fire. The video then captures an explosion, possibly of fuel or ammunition igniting, and a man is seen being thrown to the ground by the power of the explosion.

Image source, X/@MohanadElbalal

The person filming this second clip mentions the date in Arabic as 5 November 2025.Through looking at heat signatures captured by Nasa’s Firms system - which uses satellites to detects heat sources on Earth’s surface - for that date and location, we found a likely location near Sudan’s border with Chad.

Satellite imagery has also captured vehicle tyre tracks in the same area. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs captured on the same day as the video also shows a similar plume of smoke at the same location and burn marks can be seen in imagery captured the following day.Pro-Sudanese army social media accounts have suggested the convoy was carrying armaments for the RSF.

However, pro-RSF accounts claim the vehicles were carrying humanitarian supplies. It is not possible to independently the confirm the nature of the cargo.

The area along Sudan’s border with Chad and Libya has long been believed to be the main supply route for the paramilitary group which has been battling for control of the country with the Sudanese army for more than two years now.

Paul Brown and Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify

Image source, Telegram/ukr_sof

Ukrainian special forces have this morning released a video showing drone strikes on oil infrastructure in the Simferopol region of Russian-occupied Crimea.

The footage shows strikes on at least two locations around 10 km (6 miles) apart.

One target is an oil depot and nearby railway in the town of Hvardiiske. The depot itself was hit by Ukraine last month, as we reported at the time. Damage to several oil tanks from that attack is visible in recent satellite imagery.

Image source, Planet Labs PBC

On this occasion, in addition to striking the depot, the drones appear to have hit tanks stationed at a nearby loading bay.

The footage also shows a drone approaching a static tank in the nearby town of Bitumne, and two large fires, filmed from distance.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to the live page where we share the work of the BBC’s specialists in fact-checking, video verification and disinformation debunking.

Our team is working to verify videos posted overnight from Ukraine that appear to show drone attacks in the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The Ukrainian military has also released video of a drone attack on an oil store in Russian-occupied Crimea - we’ll bring you more on that shortly.

We’re investigating a viral video which has had nearly three million views on X that appears to show Ukrainian soldiers issuing a threat to the widow of the killed US conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. We suspect the video is fake and are carrying out checks including on the accents of the men heard speaking Ukrainian in the video.

BBC Verify has an investigation out this morning into a massacre by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan - you can read the full piece here.

We’ll explain here how satellite imagery played an important role in our reporting, which alerted the world to evidence of the mass killings.