Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, currently in jail after being impeached and removed from office, has been charged with additional offences, including supporting an enemy state.

The prosecutors said this on Monday.

Yoon, 64, is accused of attempting to provoke a military conflict between South and North Korea by covertly sending drones into the North, in an effort to legitimise a state of martial law he declared late last year.

Prosecutors argued that the drone deployment in October 2024 led to the leak of military secrets to the North as the vehicles crashed near Pyongyang.

The conservative politician has been in pre-trial detention for months and already faces charges over the declaration that include high treason, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.

Yoon’s dramatic action on December 3 plunged the country into a deep political crisis.

He justified the move by claiming that the left-wing opposition had been infiltrated by communist and anti-state forces, though he presented no evidence to support the allegations, and it was soon overturned.

Left-leaning Lee Jae Myung is now president; he won an early presidential election in June following Yoon’s removal from office in April.

The African Union (AU) has called for an urgent international response, including intelligence-sharing, to address worsening security conditions in Mali, where insurgents are imposing a fuel blockade and kidnapping foreigners.

An Al Qaeda-linked jihadist group active in West Africa’s Sahel region has blocked fuel imports since September, attacking convoys of tankers and creating a shortage that forced schools and businesses to shut.

The latest show of force by the group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, has raised concern that it might eventually try to impose its rule over the landlocked country.

Western countries including the U.S., France, Britain, and Italy are urging their citizens to leave.

In a statement, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, chairperson of the African Union Commission, expressed “deep concern over the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Mali, where terrorist groups have imposed blockades, disrupted access to essential supplies, and severely worsened humanitarian conditions for civilian populations”.

He said there should be “enhanced cooperation, intelligence-sharing and sustained support” for countries in the Sahel affected by violent extremism.

He also called for the immediate release of three Egyptian nationals he said were recently kidnapped.

JNIM has targeted foreign nationals for kidnapping to finance its operations in West Africa.

Reuters reported in October that a deal was reached to free two citizens of the United Arab Emirates in exchange for a ransom payment of roughly 50 million dollars.

At least 31 inmates have been found dead in a prison in southern Ecuador, including 27 who had been hanged, officials said.

Four prisoners were killed and more than 30 injured in clashes between rival gang members in El Oro prison in the city of Machala in the early hours of on Sunday.

Hours later, security guards who had been alerted to a fresh outbreak of gang violence found the others who had been hanged on the building’s third floor, Ecuador’s prison service said.

The country’s overcrowded prisons have been the scene of a series of deadly riots and gang fights in which hundreds of inmates have been killed in recent years.

Ecuador’s prison service, known by its initials as Snai, said that the clashes had been triggered by plans to move some of the inmates to a newly-built prison.

El Oro prison was the site of another deadly incident in September when 13 inmates and a guard were killed in clashes between rival gangs.

Relatives of the prisoners have asked the authorities to step up security inside the prison, including keeping rival gang separate, whilst residents of Machala have long demanded that the facility, which is located in the city centre, be relocated.

Earlier this year, the government of President Daniel Noboa announced the construction of a new maximum security jail in the province of Santa Elena.

The new prison, named El Encuentro, is expected to open in late November, and according to the interior minister, will boast all the latest security measures.

Prison gangs have for years played a key role in the rise of violent crime in Ecuador and two of them, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, were declared Foreign Terrorist Organisations by the US Department of State in September.