A University of Birmingham PhD student plotted to supply Islamic State terrorists with a drone capable of delivering a bomb or chemical weapon, a terror trial jury has heard.

Prosecutors allege Mohamad Al-Bared was designing and building the unmanned aerial device, found in a bedroom at his home, when he was arrested in January this year.

The 26-year-old mechanical engineering graduate, of Kare Road, Coventry, went on trial before a jury at Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday.

He denies a charge alleging he engaged in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts to benefit a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Opening the Crown’s case, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC told the court: “His home was searched and police found a drone.

“They also found material suggesting this defendant supported Islamic State, a terrorist organisation.”

The court heard Al-Bared, who lived with his parents, was arrested while driving at the same time as the raid took place, and had a mobile phone which police also seized.

Al-Bared was studying for a PhD at the University of Birmingham, the court heard, and a 3D printer was also found at his home, which could be used to make parts for the drone.

Ms Heeley alleged that evidence gathered from devices said to belong to Al-Bared showed he was a supporter of Islamic State and that “this drone was being built” to help the organisation.

After showing the drone, which was contained in a large see-through plastic bag, to the jury, the prosecutor said it was of a type which has landing gear and a small digital camera.

“It had all the components required for it to fly,” Ms Heeley added. “We suggest it was being manufactured to deliver a bomb … to fly into IS enemy territory and deliver a chemical weapon or some other kind of device.”

During the opening day of the trial, Ms Heeley also alleged that Al-Bared had filled in an Islamic State application form and set up a UK-registered company to help plans for future foreign travel.

Ms Heeley continued: “He says he is not responsible for filling in the application form, but we say how else has it got there?”

Written material saying the idea for the drone was “somewhat inspired by the design of the Tomahawk missile” was put before the jury, in what the Crown claims was Al-Bared describing his build process.

Ms Heely said of the evidence found on an electronic device, which also included reference to fuses, mechanical detonators and an “explosive” head: “He is literally reporting back to someone about what it is that he is doing.

“What drone for legitimate use needs an explosive head?

“What does need an explosive head is a drone that has been designed on a missile.”

Ms Heeley told the jury: “That’s the real reason this drone is being built.

“That one sentence tells you what this case is about and why we say the defendant is guilty.

“The only reasonable conclusion you can reach is you can be sure that he was preparing for acts of terrorism.”

Al-Bared, whose PhD work involved laser-based micro-drilling, denies a single charge covering the period between January 1 2022 and January 31 this year.

The trial continues next Tuesday.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has told Harry Dunn’s parents it will continue to pursue the prosecution of their son’s alleged killer, despite the High Court ruling she had diplomatic immunity.

Anne Sacoolas was charged with causing the teenager’s death by dangerous driving 12 months ago after a fatal road crash outside a US military base in Northamptonshire on August 27 last year.

Chief Crown Prosecutor for the East Midlands, Janine Smith, wrote to the 19-year-old motorcyclist’s family just before the anniversary of the CPS’s charging decision, to say she was “satisfied that there remains sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.”

Sacoolas, 43, was able to return to her home country after the US Government asserted diplomatic immunity on her behalf, sparking an international controversy.

Despite the charging decision by the CPS, and an extradition request submitted by the Home Office, the US State Department refused to return her to the UK – describing the decision as “final”.

In a meeting with the Director of Public Prosecutions in September, the family was told the CPS had concluded Sacoolas did not have immunity at the time of the collision.

The family had contested the diplomatic immunity asserted on behalf of the suspect, but High Court judges accepted the Foreign Office’s position that Sacoolas “enjoyed immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction”.

Mr Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, have been granted permission to appeal against the judgment.

In Ms Smith’s letter to Mrs Charles and Mr Dunn, seen by the PA news agency, she said: “I wanted to take the opportunity to provide an update following our consideration of the recent High Court judgment.

“Having considered the judgment, and notwithstanding the outcome in respect of diplomatic immunity, I am satisfied that there remains sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that it remains in the public interest for the prosecution to continue.

“The CPS remains of the view that Mrs Sacoolas should return to the UK to stand trial.

“I do hope this confirmation is of some small comfort to Harry’s family and friends at this challenging time of the year.”

Mrs Charles said the family would be “nowhere” without the CPS – adding that she was “really pleased” with Ms Smith’s letter.

She told PA: “My family and I are really pleased to see this letter from the CPS.

“We are approaching our second Christmas without Harry and without justice for Harry.

“Our pain is raw and real and we need to get this done sooner rather than later.

“In our darkest hour we know we can continue to count on the CPS to continue to do their job. We would be nowhere without them.”

The family’s spokesman, Radd Seiger, told PA he believed the letter showed the “CPS remain of the view” that Anne Sacoolas was not entitled to diplomatic immunity.

He said: “This is an important letter from the Chief Crown Prosecutor.

“It signals yet again that the CPS remain of the view, as do Harry’s parents on legal advice, that Anne Sacoolas did not have diplomatic immunity at the time of the crash and intend to proceed with their prosecution of her notwithstanding the judgment of the High Court.

“We have always been clear on that issue.

“We look forward to holding talks with both governments in the new year to bring the family’s torture to an end.”

Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania sexually abused thousands of children over a 70-year period and silenced victims through “the weaponization of faith” and a systematic cover-up campaign by their bishops, the state attorney general said on Tuesday.

An 884-page report made public by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro after a two-year investigation contained graphic examples of children being groomed and sexually abused by clergymen. It was largely based on documents from secret archives kept by the dioceses, including handwritten confessions by priests, he said.

“It was child sexual abuse, including rape, committed by grown men – priests – against children,” Shapiro told a press conference.

Representatives of the six Pennsylvania dioceses included in the report could not be reached for comment.

The attorney general said it was the most comprehensive report on Catholic clergy sex abuse in American history, nearly two decades after an expose of widespread abuse and cover-up in Boston that rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

Several of the dioceses issued statements apologising to victims and saying they were taking steps to ensure any criminal behaviour was stopped. “The grand jury has challenged us as a Catholic diocese to put victims first and to continue to improve ways to protect children and youth,” Bishop Lawrence Persico of the Erie Diocese said in a statement.

As accusers wept behind him, Shapiro described alleged abuse by priests in six of the state’s eight dioceses, including a group of Pittsburgh clergymen accused of ordering an altar boy to strip naked and pose as Christ on the cross while they photographed him.

“The pattern was abuse, deny and cover up,” Shapiro said, adding that church officials sought to keep abuse allegations quiet long enough so they could no longer be prosecuted under Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations.

“Priests were raping little boys and girls,” Shapiro said. “They hid it all for decades.”

The report cited 301 priests, some of whom have died. Only two of the priests are still subject to prosecution.

A few of the clergymen accused in the report succeeded in having their names redacted, and Shapiro said he would argue at a Sept. 26 court hearing for making all the names public.

He said the grand jury identified about a thousand victims, but believed there may be many more.

Shapiro said that one priest had molested five sisters in one family, he said. The diocese settled with the family after requiring a confidentiality agreement, he said.

The attorney general said that Catholic bishops covered up child sexual abuse by priests and reassigned them repeatedly to different parishes. “They allowed priests to remain active for as long as 40 years,” he said.

Describing the “weaponisation of faith” to silence victims, Shapiro cited several examples including one priest who allegedly told children “how Mary had to lick Jesus clean after he was born” to groom them for oral sex.

“Children were taught that this abuse was not only normal but that it was holy,” Shapiro said.

Since the Boston abuse scandal erupted in the 1990s, accusations involving American clerics have sporadically surfaced.

Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington, resigned as a cardinal last month after accusations resurfaced that he abused a 16-year-old boy decades ago.

In recent months, Pope Francis accepted a number of resignations from Chilean bishops in a sex abuse scandal that has rocked that country.

Two special envoys sent by Pope Francis to investigate a child sex abuse scandal in Chile were meeting priests and church workers at a university in the Chilean capital last month when aides rushed into the room with an alarming development: police and prosecutors were about to start raiding church offices.

The envoys were 90 minutes into a seminar on how to investigate allegations of sex abuse committed by fellow clergy following revelations that hundreds of children might have been molested. For decades, the Roman Catholic Church in Chile quietly investigated such allegations without alerting police, but it now stands accused, even by Pope Francis himself, of a cover-up that allowed abusers to operate with impunity.

One of the clergymen listening to the envoys was Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, the legal adviser to Santiago’s archbishop. The aides rushed to his side and told him, ‘”Father, go to the (church offices) because there’s going to be a raid”,’ Ortiz later recounted.

Police and prosecutors were staging simultaneous raids on church offices less than a mile away from the university and outside the capital, looking for evidence of sex crimes the Church had not reported to police.

The surprise sweeps, ordered by Emiliano Arias, a provincial prosecutor, marked the start of what experts who track sex crimes in the Roman Catholic Church say is one of the most aggressive investigations ever undertaken by a judicial authority anywhere in the world.

Since that cold June afternoon there have been five more raids on church offices to seize documents, phones, tablets and computers, leaving the Vatican scrambling to respond to a rapidly unfolding scandal that is the worst image crisis of Francis’ papacy, now in its sixth year.

Leading the charge against the Church is Arias, 45, who is experienced in fighting organised crime and has a showman’s fondness for taking television news crews on the raids.

Arias told Reuters in an exclusive interview that documents seized by his team contained 30 cases of alleged abuse dating back to 2007 that the Church had not reported to the police. While Reuters was allowed to film his investigators poring through seized documents, he declined to give details from the files because he said they named victims of abuse.

He also alleged that some local Church officials had tried to destroy documents but that his team – made up of two prosecutors, three lawyers and a unit of specialist sex crime police – had salvaged them. He declined to say who had tried to destroy them or how they had tried to get rid of them.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm those assertions.

Víctor Villa Castro, head of communications for the Santiago archbishopric, said he could not comment on any cases under investigation by Arias.

“We would however say that we have no knowledge of the destruction of documents, nor the covering-up of crimes,” he said. “The victims are the first, and most important, in this and we will cooperate with the civil authorities in any way that can help to get to the truth of these matters.”

Arias says he wants to arrest both those who perpetrated the abuse and those who he says helped to cover it up. He arrested Oscar Munoz, a top aide to Santiago’s archbishop, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, after seizing church documents in which Munoz confessed to sex crimes. Munoz’s lawyer has acknowledged that some of the accusations in the documents are true but says he will challenge some others.

Arias last week named Ezzati, the most senior Roman Catholic in Chile, as a suspect, accusing him of covering up his aide’s alleged abuses. Ezzati has denied any wrongdoing and promised to cooperate.

Arias said he launched the raids after Church officials in Rancagua, the capital of O’Higgins region, told him he would have to make a formal petition to the Vatican to obtain information he was seeking because it was protected by ‘pontifical secret.’

A spokesman for the Rancagua archbishop’s office said they were told to do this by the Vatican and insisted they were cooperating fully with civil authorities. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment.

The Roman Catholic Church says the ‘pontifical secret’ provision in canon law is intended to protect the privacy of all involved in sex abuse claims. Critics say bishops have historically used it as a shield to block inquiries from civil authorities.

“We are not talking about a fraud, or a theft, we are talking about crimes against children,” Arias said in an interview in his office in Rancagua, explaining his decision not to submit the request to the Vatican and instead get a judge to approve the raids.

‘CULTURE OF ABUSE’

Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy are not new, but under Chilean law governing the separation of church and state, the Catholic Church, a powerful and politically influential institution in this conservative Andean nation, has no legal obligation to report the allegations to police.

The sex abuse scandal came to a head after Pope Francis visited in January and was initially dismissive of claims by survivors of a cover-up by top Church officials there. A backlash among advocates for abuse survivors prompted him to dispatch an investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who produced a confidential 2,300-page report on the allegations.

After receiving the report Pope Francis wrote an open letter to Chile’s faithful in May in which he decried “the culture of abuse and the system of cover up” by the Church in Chile.

He summoned all 34 of Chile’s bishops to Rome in May where they offered to resign en masse. He has so far accepted five resignations and is expected to accept more.

Arias speaks mostly without emotion during the hour-long interview until he talks about how, according to their accusers, priests convinced their victims that they were doing nothing wrong. Then he displays flashes of anger, sometimes so impassioned that he trips over his words.

“I have seen some tough cases but what shocks me about all this is the abuse of conscience – how an accused (Church worker) has entered into the soul of another person and is capable of convincing him that satisfying his desires is not even a sin,” said Arias, who describes his family as “very Catholic” but says he is lapsed.

Arias said he can prosecute senior Church officials for covering up the abuses if he can prove they knew about systematic abuse and failed to do anything to stop it, or hid evidence to prevent civil authorities from getting involved.

But first he must prosecute the abusers, said Maria Ines Horvitz, a senior lawyer at the State Defense Council of Chile, a public agency that provides legal advice to the Chilean state. And to do that he must find cases within the 10-year statute of limitations – a potential problem that has bedevilled prosecutors in other countries – or turn to the one court in Chile that still handles cases from before roughly 2000, which is backlogged.

PROSECUTORIAL ZEAL

The national public prosecutor instructed all provincial prosecutors last month to pursue sex abuse allegations more vigorously.

But Arias has gone much further than his colleagues in his zeal to bring prosecutions. He has repeatedly widened his remit, from a handful of cases to dozens, from his provincial base to the capital, and from investigating claims of abuse by 14 priests in Rancagua to the alleged complicity of Ezzati, Santiago’s archbishop, himself.

As a result of his uncovering new cases in Church documents, the national prosecutor last week authorized him to expand his investigation into other regions.

BishopAccountability.Org, which tracks allegations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, says the only comparable investigation into sex abuse in the Church was in Belgium in 2010 when police launched coordinated raids on Church offices and the home of a cardinal. That investigation did not lead to any prosecutions because of the statute of limitations.

Arias is carrying out his investigation in the absence of any public backing from the centre-right Sebastian Pinera government. Shortly before becoming president in March, Pinera criticized the Church for its “defensive” attitude to the scandal and “insufficient” investigations but has remained silent on the issue since.

A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

WHY NOW?

For decades allegations of sexual abuse by priests swirled through Chilean society, but little was done to address them. The Church was largely left to police itself.

But this year that suddenly changed.

Church watchers say several factors contributed to this watershed moment – the international attention received by several victims who went public; the pope’s initial poor handling of the claims; and the ripple effect of the global #MeToo movement.

The Church’s grip on Chile is also weakening, public opinion polling shows, even though the formerly predominately Catholic nation remains largely conservative on social issues.

The waning support for the Church was evident when the pope visited Chile in January – there were many empty seats at his public masses. This was “a turning point for Francis’ papacy”, a Vatican official said. “It is when he realized that he was listening to the wrong people about the real situation in Chile.”

For Arias, the pope’s subsequent mea culpa that the Church had covered up abuses gave him the impetus he needed to act. “His description of what was happening in Chile was powerful and should concern us all,” he said.

A judge placed France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen under formal investigation on Thursday on suspicion of disseminating violent images over tweets she posted of Islamic State executions, a move she indicated was politically motivated.

The investigation relates to three graphic images of Islamic State executions she posted on Twitter in December 2015, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

“If they are trying to silence me, they will not succeed,” Le Pen told news channel LCI. She had denounced an earlier stage of the investigation as “political interference”.

Under France’s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often – but not always – leads to a person being sent to trial.

The judge’s decision to step up the investigation comes a little over a week ahead of the National Front’s annual congress, where she is expected to lay out how she plans to rebuild the battered party after her thumping defeat at the hands of President Emmanuel Macron in last year’s election.

It is, though, unlikely to affect her popularity with party loyalists.

Other ongoing investigations, including one into allegations her party misused European Union funds to pay parliamentary assistants and another into the financing of past election campaigns, have not dented her appeal among the National Front faithful. She has denied any wrongdoing in both cases.

Party stalwarts rallied around Le Pen on social media.

“@MLP_officiel placed under formal investigation for spreading photos of Islamic State executions. No, it’s no good telling the truth,” tweeted Bryan Masson, a National Front official from the southern Alpes-Maritimes region.

If the investigation proceeds to a trial, Le Pen could face a maximum sentence of several years in jail and a 75,000 euro fine if convicted.