The Documentary Podcast

This is the true story of how Star Wars Episode IV-A New Hope got made. A film that, as plain old Star Wars, transformed cinema to become part of a pop culture phenomenon known across the world. As Episode IX arrives in our cinemas, wrapping up the destinies of the original trilogy characters and much more, we travel back a long, long time ago to the often agonising, challenging and ground breaking creation of the first film.

New figures released in the UK have revealed at least 4,000 young people are currently caught up in what are known as "county lines" – meeting orders for heroin and cocaine via mobile phone "deal lines". They are transporting drugs from cities to rural and coastal towns, and carrying weapons too – knives, hammers and acid. Many find themselves selling drugs in a strange town, trapped, too scared to leave. Increasingly, when police raid the "traphouses" where the drugs are held, they are finding girls. For Assignment, Jane Deith hears the stories of young women caught in a world of sexual violence and drug running. Reporter: Jane Deith Producer: Emma Forde(Photo: Young woman by a window. Credit: Cindy Goff/Getty Images)

Thirty years after Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas day, Tessa Dunlop looks back at the violent birth of post-Communist Romania and asks if it has shaken off the legacy of decades of ruthless totalitarianism.

Jane and Patricia fled their home in the middle of the night. Days before they had narrowly escaped an arson attack. It’s illegal to be gay in Barbados. You can be sent to prison for life. Now they needed out. A few months before they had reached out to an organisation in Canada, the Rainbow Railroad which helps move gay people, persecuted for their sexuality, to safety. After the arson attack Jane and Patricia contacted them again - “Please help us now”. In Canada, the team leapt into action. In collaboration with CBC’s The Doc Project, presenter Acey Rowe picks up the story as the women pack to board a flight to an uncertain future.

Judy Garland's last concerts at London's the Talk of The Town in 1969 is the subject of a new feature film. Weaving together newly restored archive recordings and eye-witness accounts, we separate the woman from the myth, examine her exceptional talent, exploitation and troubled relationship with Hollywood.

Life in Lebanon is a daily battle to beat the power cuts caused by the country's chronic electricity shortage. If you live in a block of flats, you have to time when you go in and out to avoid getting trapped in the lift. Food goes bad because fridges don't work, families must often choose between air-conditioning and watching TV, and those on life-support machines live in constant fear of a switch-off. But if it's hell for citizens, it's heaven for operators of illegal private generators who profit by filling the gap left by the failures of the national grid. Some are former warlords who led militias in Lebanon's civil war. They're given an unofficial licence to operate, often in return for favours to the authorities in Lebanon's chaotic and often corrupt sectarian system. Now a huge protest movement is demanding change in Lebanon - and a constant power supply is one of the demonstrators' main demands. They want to break the power of the "fuel mafia" that imports diesel for the generators and has close links to the country's leading politicians. For them, the fight for light is a fight against corruption. But can Lebanon's feeble state ever manage to turn all the lights on? Reporter: Tim Whewell Producer: Anna Meisel(Image: Protesters block the main entrance of the Lebanese electricity company headquarters in Beirut. Credit: European Photopress Agency)

Gordon Corera becomes the first journalist allowed to record inside GCHQ's listening station at Bude on Britain’s south-west coast. The station has spied on global communications satellites for decades, sucking in signals from space. He takes us from the Cold War, when GCHQ was quietly eavesdropping on the front lines in Berlin, to the current digital era. And Gordon finds out how, following the revelations of Edward Snowden, the agency has been forced out into the open.

Hossein Sharif is an Iranian boy, about to marry Hee Sue, a South Korean girl. As the families begin to meet, Sharif discovers all the criss-crossing roads that the couple's home countries have travelled. In the last 50 years, South Korea and Iran have switched places in the world table of economic prosperity. South Korea has risen while Iran has fallen behind. Hossein and Hee Sue's families begin to discover a parallel universe, a world of “might have beens” and divergent paths.

In the UK’s 2019 general election, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are playing a more prominent role than in any previous campaign. As the election enters its final stages, political scientist Travis Ridout, co-director of the highly respected Wesleyan Media Project – travels to the UK to immerses himself in current online activity. He finds out what strategies and techniques are being used to influence – or manipulate voters – and considers what lessons from the USA could be influencing the campaign.

There’s a new climate of fear in Sri Lanka. This time it’s the Muslim community who are fearful of the future. The Easter bomb attacks in Sri Lanka - targeting churches and international hotels - horrified the island. It’s suffered civil war but never known jihadi violence. But the attacks also intensified a creeping campaign by the Sinhala Buddhist majority against the Muslim community - with Muslims murdered, their businesses burned or boycotted. Jill McGivering investigates the growing climate of fear now driving many Muslims to emigrate and casting a shadow over those left behind. Producer: Caroline Finnigan(Image: Muslim boy on a bicycle in Kattankudy, Sri Lanka. Credit: Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

The work of GCHQ started just after the end of World War One as telegraph became a vital means of military communications. We hear from people who worked at the listening station in the Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough during World War Two and the Cold War. BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera reveals how Government Communications Headquarters – GCHQ - has been listening in for 100 years.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-in for peace protest and the people who witnessed it

Raed Fares, founder of Syria's legendary Radio Fresh FM, was mowed down by unknown gunmen as he left his studios in rebel-held Idlib in November 2018. The death of the man who fought hatred with humour and laughed in the faces of President Assad, ISIS and al-Qaeda, sent shockwaves way beyond his troubled homeland. When ordered by Islamist extremists to stop broadcasting music he had replied with bird song and clucking chickens. On being told to take his female presenters off air, he put their voices through software to make them sound like men. In tribute to its founder, Raed Fares's radio station has refused to die with him. One year on from his killing it continues to broadcast the comedy programmes he loved, as Assad's troops close in and bombs fall around it.Presenter: Mike Thomson Producer: Joe Kent(Image: Raed Fares standing outside Radio Fresh. Credit: Radio Fresh)

In the span of five years, Chairman Huang turned farmland in China’s Sichuan province into Seaside City. The ocean-themed town, which Huang says was inspired by Dubai and Disneyland, is now home to more than 400,000 people. In the city centre, numerous maritime spectacles attract visitors from afar. The crown jewel is the world’s largest aquarium with several whale sharks and a community of sea turtles. But is Seaside City a forward-thinking economic experiment or the personal fiefdom of a megalomaniac? What do former peasants in the area think of the city?

A race is on to save thousands of tapes of traditional Malawian music in danger of disintegrating in the archives of state broadcaster, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. The old reel-to-reel tapes date back to the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s and were recorded in towns and villages all over Malawi and in the MBC studios. The folk songs, traditional chants, dances and contemporary music of the time all provide a snapshot of Malawi’s social and musical history.

Domestic abuse in Russia is endemic with thousands of women dying at the hands of their partners every year. Despite this a controversial law was passed in 2017, which scrapped prison sentences for first-time abusers. Beatings that do not cause broken bones or concussion are now treated as administrative offences rather than crimes. As one activist puts it: “the punishment for beating your wife now feels like paying a parking ticket.” But Russian society is waking up to the crisis. The case of three girls - the Khachaturyan sisters - who face long prison sentences for murdering their tyrannical father, has sparked mass protests. More than 300,000 people have signed an online petition urging prosecutors to drop the murder charges. The girls’ mother tells reporter Lucy Ash that her daughters were acting in self-defence against a man who had abused them physically, emotionally and sexually for years. Lucy also meets the mother of a woman stabbed to death by her husband who was discovered in her blood soaked bed by her seven year old son. In all three cases, the frightened women had appealed to the police but to no avail. These tragedies might have been averted if only the authorities had taken earlier warnings seriously.In Moscow, Lucy talks to activists who are fighting back by supporting victims, pushing for legal reforms and drawing attention to the cause through art, video games and social media. And she meets a lone feminist MP in the Russian Duma who is trying to bring in restraining orders for violent husbands, boyfriends and family members. Today Russia has no such laws and domestic violence is not a standalone offence in either the criminal or the civil code. (Image: Woman holding sign saying “What is it for? Stop violence!” at a rally in support of the Khachaturyan sisters. Credit: Sergei Konkov\TASS via Getty Images)

Fatmata, Jamilatu and Alimamy all see themselves as failures. They’re young Sierra Leoneans who risked everything for the sake of a better life in Europe. Along the way, they were imprisoned and enslaved. They saw friends die. Eventually, they gave up. Now, they’re home again - facing the devastating consequences of what they did to their families before they left, actions that have left them ostracised by their nearest and dearest. Who will help them to survive back home? Can they rebuild their lives, and achieve any reconciliation with their parents? And if they can’t, will they be tempted to set off again, to seek their fortunes abroad? Reporter: Tim Whewell (Photo: An awkward embrace - Jamilatu Sheriff is reunited with her mother Maryatu after two years absence. Credit: Sayoh Kamara/BBC)

Unprecedented mass protests have caused chaos in Hong Kong’s public sphere – but what has it meant for private life? How have they affected the increasing number of couples who have married across the divide, with one partner from Hong Kong and another from the Chinese mainland? BBC World Affairs correspondent Paul Adams hears from one such couple, for whom the political has become personal.

How Communist East Germany tried to influence Africa via radio, during the Cold War. The West often saw the GDR as a grim and grey place, so it’s something of a surprise to find a radio station based in East Berlin playing swinging African tunes. Yet Radio Berlin International (RBI), the ‘voice of the German Democratic Republic’, made it all happen over the many years it broadcast to Africa. It built on the little known strong bonds between East Germany and several large states in Africa such as Tanzania and Angola during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s

Who are Albania’s Iranian guests? In July, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani visited an Albanian village just outside Tirana. At a tightly-guarded encampment, he addressed the Iranian group who live there - the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). MEK has been a leading opposition voice against the Islamic Republic of Iran for decades. Following the revolution of 1979, MEK fell out with the Iranian government – members were persecuted, and the organisation moved to Iraq for around three decades. Migration to Albania was facilitated by the United States, and more than 3,000 members have arrived. But in Albania – a fragile democracy - there’s disquiet. Critics claim MEK’s presence compromises Albania’s security, and is fuelling a crack-down on the press. Meanwhile, dozens of Iranian MEK members have defected but find themselves living a precarious existence in Tirana because they are stateless, without passports. Assignment investigates the improbable relationship between Albania and MEK. Presenter: Linda Pressly Producer: Albana Kasapi(Photo: Gholam Mirzai has left the MEK. He would like to return to Iran. Credit: BBC Credit)

New Yorker Huey Morgan examines the life, work and enduring appeal of the musician known as Moondog, who lived and worked on the city's streets in the 1950s and '60s. Born Louis Thomas Hardin in Kansas in May 1916, he played musical instruments from an early age and lost his sight in an accident when he was 16. He went on to teach himself music and composition by ear, as well as music theory through books in braille. His music would take inspiration from street sounds like the subway and foghorns, and his compositions were a combination of classical, traditional jazz and American vernacular. He became a pioneer with a unique attitude to composition and melody, and also invented instruments.

By the age of 10 Francis Ngannou was working in a sand quarry, where he dreamed of becoming a world class boxer. As a young man he traversed the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea to find himself homeless in Paris. From there, within an extraordinarily short amount of time, he exploded through the ranks to the highest echelons of the fastest growing sport in the world, mixed martial arts.He is now a leading contender for heavyweight champion of the world and a global star. He returns to his village in western Cameroon, where he is investing in the next generation. Zak Brophy travels to Cameroon to hear the story of his incredible life, and his dreams of becoming a role model within his community.

When Miatta was 14 years old, armed rebels stormed into her classroom and forcibly recruited her and her classmates. They were trained to use machine guns and then sent to the front line to fight in Liberia’s devastating civil war.Nineteen years later, Miatta is what many Liberians would call a Zogo. The Zogos are Liberia’s underclass: jobless, homeless and addicted to drugs. They’re a menace on the streets of the capital, Monrovia, where many make their living by snatching purses and phones from passers-by. In this Assignment, Lucy Ash follows a projects aiming to rehabilitate hundreds of Liberia’s Zogos – including Miatta. Producer: Josephine Casserly (Image: A mural in the Liberian capital called Female Zogos of Monrovia. They are sitting on gravestones because many are homeless and seek refuge in cemeteries. Credit: James Giahyue)

Ruth Sanderson grew up in Northern Ireland yet never really understood how the Troubles started. In the second programme, looking back at Scarman testimonies and talking to her parents who were caught up in events, Ruth is trying to work out how Northern Ireland spiralled out of control. Fifty years on and with her first baby on the way, Ruth wants to know if the legacy of the Troubles will ever be lifted in a Northern Ireland which is still divided today.

Alan Kasujja tells the story of the guerilla war in Uganda which began nearly 40 years ago and led to the current President Yoweri Museveni taking power. After the fall of Idi Amin there was a power vacuum in Uganda which led up to a general election. The former President Milton Obote returned from exile and was declared the winner. But amidst accusations of gerrymandering and intimidation, opposition groups claimed the 1980 election had been rigged. A young politician, Yoweri Museveni, had promised to fight an armed uprising in the bush if Obote won, and in 1981 he began a protracted guerrilla war.

Dickens Olewe meets Italy’s first and only black senator, Tony Iwobi, and hears how a new generation of black Italians are fighting to claim their place in a society that’s still very white. Born and raised in Nigeria, Senator Iwobi moved to Italy as a young man and carved out a successful career in business. Now he’s immigration spokesperson for the right-wing Lega party and wants to stop the illegal flow of migrants coming to Italy from Africa. BBC Africa journalist Dickens Olewe follows Iwobi in the Senate in Rome and finds out what it’s like to be black in a party that’s widely perceived as racist. At a festival on the bank of the River Tiber, Dickens meets aspiring politician Paolo Diop from the Far-Right Brothers of Italy. Diop moved to Italy from Senegal as a baby and describes himself as “an Italian nationalist and an African nationalist” who wants to “make Africa great” by sending migrants home. We also meet the young black activists coming of age in the midst of the migrant crisis and the rise of the political right. Born and bred in Italy, they feel deeply Italian but are not always recognised as such - among them the rapper Tommy Kuti whose work explores his Afro-Italian identity, the founder of Milan’s Afro Fashion Week Michelle Francine Ngonmo and the writer Igiaba Scego, whose parents grew up in one of Italy’s African colonies.Producer: Helen Grady (Image: Afro-Italian rapper and musician Tommy Kuti in Milan. Credit: Helen Grady/BBC)

Ruth Sanderson grew up in Northern Ireland, yet never really understood how the Troubles started. Although the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement effectively brought peace in 1998, Ruth believes the fallout from the violence continues to cast a long shadow over a society which is still divided. Now Ruth returns to the same courtroom in Belfast where the Scarman Tribunal sat, and begins to piece together the events of August 1969, when Northern Ireland spiralled out of control.

The Zoroastrian community has given the world Freddie Mercury, produced some of India’s richest businessmen and practises one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism. Yet the community faces extinction: there are less than 200,000 Zoroastrians left worldwide. Shazneen is one of them. She is 31, lives in London and is on the lookout for someone to settle down with. The problem? Members of her small community can only marry other Zoroastrians.

In 1979 a young girl named Melissa Rich asked her mother Lois why there were no women trading cards. So Lois decided to produce her own set called “supersisters”, 72 trading cards highlighting inspirational women, many of whom were athletes. Exactly forty years later we reunite Melissa, Lois and some of the supersisters together for a discussion based on the cards and the importance - and establishment - of icons in women’s sport in front of a live audience at the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York.

Are lithium-powered electric vehicles as ‘green’ as we think they are? With the advent of electric cars, manufacturers tell us we’re racing towards a clean-energy future. It’s lithium that powers these vehicles. Most of the world’s stocks of this lightest of metals are found in brine deep beneath salt flats, high in the Andes.In Argentina, in Jujuy - the province with the highest percentage of indigenous households in the country - massive projects are underway. But in a super-dry region, with water the most precious resource, and lithium extraction demanding huge quantities of it, there’s anxiety - and outright opposition. Presenter / producer: Linda Pressly Producer in Argentina: Gert De Saedeleer(Image: Tomasa Soriano keeps goats and llamas – she believes there’s less water locally since the lithium miners arrived. Credit: BBC/Linda Pressly)

What should billionaires do with their money? The world’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie said they should give it all away. Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland and moved to America where he became a steel magnate and the richest man in the world. In his guidebook to philanthropy, The Gospel of Wealth, he challenged people who acquired great wealth to give it back to the community. He also believed the most important cause to support was education. Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown asks why today’s billionaire philanthropists aren’t giving away more money and why education is no longer the top priority.

The eyes have always been a focal point of Persian beauty for men and women and they have always been embellished with sormeh, or thick black eyeliner. Presenter Nassim Hatam's grandmother taught her mother how to apply sormeh, which originates from a 4000-year-old recipe, and when the family was scattered to the four winds by revolution she made it her responsibility to supply the family women with their sormeh wherever they had settled. Now for Nassim, and millions of modern Persian women, the wearing of sormeh or black eye makeup has become something much bigger than make-up – it is an important part of their resistance to oppression.

A revolution is underway in Cuba. The country’s communist leaders, who normally retain tight control of the media, have encouraged Cubans to become more connected online. Internet access used to be the preserve of a privileged (and relatively rich) few. But prices have come down, public wifi spots are popular, and less than a year ago 3G data access became available on Cuban phones. Along with a huge uptake in the internet has come a flood of Cubans signing up to social media accounts. Even President Miguel Diaz-Canel is on Twitter. And unlike staid and traditional state-run media, Cuban social media is relatively open, freewheeling, full of jokes, criticism of the government and, of course, memes. Prices are still high and the government keeps a close eye on dissidents or “counter-revolutionaries”. But online, Cubans are exploring new ways to communicate that would have been unheard of just a few years ago. The BBC’s Cuba correspondent Will Grant and BBC Trending reporter Reha Kansara have been meeting the Cubans at the forefront of their country’s digital revolution. They meet political podcasters, a lesbian activist, a pro-government blogger, a gamer-turned-protester, a dissident journalist and one of Cuba’s biggest YouTube stars. How are Cubans making their voices heard in a way they never have before – and how might social media transform the country?

University lecturers sexually harassing and blackmailing their students. It's a problem which plagues West Africa but it's almost never proven. Until now. This week Assignment teams up with the World Service investigative series, Africa Eye, which sent female journalists posing as students inside a top university in Nigeria to secretly record men who sexually harass and abuse young women. A year-long investigation reveals how lecturers - who can make or break academic careers - groom victims in academic settings; abusing their power to try to get what they want. Sex for grades is described as being so normalised it has become an epidemic, where vast numbers of young women have been harassed and abused.Presenter: Kiki Mordi Producer: Jim Frank Editor: Hugh Levinson(Image: Presenter - Kiki Mordi. Credit: Charlie Northcott/BBC)

Across the UK, in supermarkets, hospitals, council houses and solicitors’ offices, children and young people are doing vital unpaid work: interpreting for their parents. Psychologist and former child migrant Humera Iqbal takes us inside the lives of Britain’s young translators as they try to make the most of their childhood and teenage years while shouldering adult responsibilities – from dealing with the landlord to taking mum for a smear test.

Citizenship is changing; and half the world’s governments are making money through citizenship schemes. In Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific Island Nation, a blossoming and controversial passport scheme is in place. Vanuatu’s government says it needs the revenue to boost the weak economy, but many are asking why the money from passport sales does not seem to have trickled down, while growing Chinese influence in the region is becoming a common cause of concern.

Muslim men and women are forbidden to sleep together outside marriage, but in Iraq, it’s possible for men to find a way round this obstacle to sexual freedom through a deeply controversial custom. So-called 'pleasure marriages' allow time-limited wedlock, sometimes for as little as half an hour, and with no commitment whatsoever. The practice is illegal, though some Shi’a clerics nevertheless claim it is permitted under Sharia, and offer to oversee pleasure marriages in return for payment. As Nawal al-Maghafi of BBC Arabic discovers in this disturbing story, the clerics’ lucrative business comes at enormous personal cost to many women, who are often tricked and coerced into marrying, only to be dumped shortly afterwards. Worse, their life-chances and even their lives are put at risk, because virginity is a prerequisite for proper marriage. Using undercover reporting and secret recording, the programme also finds clerics willing to supply women for sex, and even to officiate for men who want to have sex with children.

Citizenship is changing; and half the world’s governments are making money through citizenship schemes. We investigate the booming trade in passports, and in a rare interview with the boss of the world’s biggest citizenship brokerage, we hear how easy it can be to get a second – or third – passport, for the right price.

A tense debate is taking place in states across America. At what age should someone be allowed to marry? Currently in 48 out of 50 states a child can marry, usually with parental consent or a judge's discretion. In 17 states there is no minimum age, meaning in theory, a two year old could marry. But there is a campaign to change the law and raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 without exceptions across all American states.

A Chilean man - adopted at birth and sent overseas - searches for the mother forced to give him up. He is among thousands now finding out the truth about their past. Many mothers were pressurised into giving up their children during General Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s. A government investigation is gathering evidence from judges, socials workers, medical staff and nuns who are all thought to be involved. Families are meeting after decades. And mothers are being reunited with children they were told were dead. (Image Mans Backman. Credit: Family photo)

On 27 September 1969, Imam Abdullah Haron – an outspoken Muslim cleric in South Africa – died in police detention. Abdullah Haron was the only Muslim cleric in Cape Town who used his sermons to speak out against apartheid policies and laws. His family do not accept the official conclusion that he fell down the stairs. And, to mark 50 years of his death, they want the government to commission a new inquest, which they say will uncover torture and murder. At the centre of the family’s renewed push for justice will be a series of artworks by visual artist Haroon Gunn-Salie.

The story of World War Two is usually told in terms of heroism on the battlefield, but perhaps the most important struggle was the economic battle. Across the world countries were fighting to feed their populations, maximise production from their factories and fund their armies. To mark the 80th anniversary of the start of World War Two, economist Duncan Weldon examines how the economies of the European powers, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Soviet Union, set the scene for the conduct of the war in 1939 and 1940.

Every August tens of thousands of Kurdish migrant workers, including children, toil long hours for a pittance in the mountains of northern Turkey picking hazelnuts for the spreads and chocolate bars the world adores. Turkey provides 70% of all hazelnut supplies – and the biggest buyer is Ferrero, maker of Nutella and Kinder Bueno. The confectionery giant says it’s committed to ethical sourcing, and aiming for its hazelnuts to be 100% traceable next year. But how is that possible in Turkey, with its half a million tiny family orchards, where child labour is rife? Tim Whewell investigates Ferrero’s complex supply chain and finds that while hazelnuts are celebrated in Turkish culture and song, it’s a sector where workers and farmers feel increasingly unhappy and reform is very hard to achieve. (Image: Hazelnut picker on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Credit: Reyan Tuvi)

When Aleks Krotoski was six years old she lived in a world surrounded by people with leprosy, or Hansen's Disease as it's officially known. Both her dad and step mum worked at the US's last leper home, the National Hansen's Disease Centre in Carville Louisiana, tucked away in a bend of the mighty Mississippi. Today she makes a return journey to find out if the stigma of leprosy still exists and how the disease is being treated.

Precipitous mountain roads, specially-modified bikes, and deadly consequences. Simon Maybin spends time with the young men who race down the steep roads of Colombia’s second city Medellin. Marlon is 16 and he’s a gravitoso - a gravity biker. He hooks onto the back of lorries or buses climbing the precipitous roads to reach high points around the city. Then, he lets gravity do its thing and - without any safety gear - hurtles back down the roads, trying to dodge the traffic. This year, two of his friends have died gravity biking and Marlon has had a near-fatal accident. But he’s not quitting. So what drives young men like him to take their lives into their own hands? And what’s being done to stop more deaths? Presenter/producer: Simon Maybin (Image: Marlon with his bike ready to ride back down into Medellín. Credit: Simon Maybin/BBC)

(This programme contains audio effects that may cause discomfort to people living with hearing conditions. There is a modified version of this programme, with quieter effects, on this page https://bbc.in/2TrInga) What does life sound like for someone whose hearing has suddenly changed?

Audrey Brown looks back at the life of the former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who has died in Singapore aged 95.