this is bbc news, the headlines... the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for vladimir putin and his children's commissioner — accusing them of war crimes over the unlawful deportation of children from ukraine to russia. it's the first time the court has ordered the arrest of a prominent, serving political leader. china has annoucned that its president xijinping — will visit russia next week to hold talks with president putin. beijing and moscow say the two men will discuss strategic cooperation. beijing is currently promoting a plan it says can bring, a negotiated end, to the war in ukraine. the head of nato has welcomed turkey's decision to start, the process of ratifying finland's application to join the bloc.

butjens stoltenberg stressed it was important that sweden too joined as soon as possible. president erdogan said sweden still hadn't handed over people he called terrorists. now on bbc news, sean's story: death on the ward. a warning this programme contains upsetting scenes and includes references to self—harm and suicide. sean. this is sean boyle. look at the road leading to the horizon for their look. at this point, walking

with his mum on sleeve gullion in county armagh, he had his whole life ahead of him. sean was a great, exciting young fella and he loved to be the centre of attention. so he enjoyed going to different places with me. and enjoyed being around people and had a lot of promise, great future ahead of him. was just simply a great, great fella. 2a years old, a music fan, interested in a career in farming near his home in newry county down. but sean also battled serious mental health challenges. there were times i cried and i watched him cry. that's for a mummy

to watch that. god, it's so hard to — even when you're talking about it again, it brings up it just takes you right back. in 2020, he was admitted to this psychiatric hospital. it's supposed to be the safest place for someone like sean. but within hours of admission, he was able to take his own life. i'm still trying to work out and piece together what in the name of god happened. what happened 7 this is the story of a young man who died in a place where he was meant to be protected. but it's also the story

of the shocking sequence of events which enabled sean to take his own life. events which left the hospital trust were shown died at one point being investigated for corporate manslaughter. sean killed himself with his own belt, a belt that had been taken from him on safety grounds, but later returned with fatal consequences. i thought he was in a place of safety. and not only, not only was he not in a place of safety, they give him the means to end his life. last year i spent three months undercover in a psychiatric hospitalfor the bbc�*s panorama programme. what i found at that hospital was shocking.

ms boyle saw the programme. it's what led her to tell me sean's story. according to schneider, his mental health problems were exacerbated by drug use, which started when he was at school. this drug thing, i didn't know about it until he was 15. he didn't tell me. he kept that silent for two years. but, the teachers were starting to notice a change in his behaviour and school. and they were writing on this report that he the lack of attention and it's like he's on drugs or something. and it didn't cross my mind for a second that he might have been on any drugs. sean had started using hard drugs. sinead says at times she struggled to find him the right help. we were worried always about the availability of of services to help, what was going on with him. and then at all the time, all the time i was worried,

am i going to keep him alive long enough to fix this? in 2021, shevaun 0'neil became northern ireland's first mental health champion. she says it's not unusual for people like sean to find it hard to get help. we have more people coming forward who have difficulty with substance, with their substance use and services aren't able to meet the demand there. so people can get into services and they receive good services when they're there. but unfortunately, the waiting lists are quite significant and people are finding that they are being excluded from services because of the complexity of their needs. as time went on, sean became even more vulnerable. mental health and drug intervention services just hadn't worked, and he was now suffering from more severe mental health conditions and had started to self—harm.

the dangerous and scary part about this was he was then starting to cut his hand or there was a few occasions he was just little cuts on his hand. was that at this stage? yes. yeah. and i thought, what, you know, what are you doing? because i would not wouldn't have understood self—harming at that stage. in 2016, when he was 20, sean was admitted to bluestone, the psychiatric unit at craigavon area hospital in county armagh. the 7a bedroom facility is run by the southern health trust and was described as state of the art when it first opened in 2008. sean was discharged a few days later, but his struggle with drink and drugs continued. at times, his life was chaotic.

did sean ever talk about being suicidal, that he had suicidal thoughts? yes, he did. he started saying, i don't want to be here any more. and i'm like, don't say that. don't say that. as the years passed, talk of suicide turned into suicide attempts, and shaun's mental health got worse. dr. brodie patterson is an expert in psychiatric treatment. we showed him a report into shaun's care. well sean's case, alongside suicide attempts. he was also self—harming and he was hearing messages. what would that tell you about his mental health? from a diagnostic point of view that would suggest psychosis. the history of self harm and if there were immediate issues around self—harm, would suggest he might need support. if he would not accept that support voluntarily,

then there could well be grounds for admitting in order to prevent him actually from completing suicide. in spring 2020, covid restrictions gripped most of the globe. sean had moved to his grandfather's farm outside newry to try and get clean. but his mum was alarmed to find he had continued to self harm. my daddy was there. he was dying to feed the cattle. and i said, we're showing. and he says, i haven't seen sean and i'm here an hour. well, i had this awful feeling and i went into the house and i went up the stairs and i went over to her. the room was that he was standing and i knocked the door and he answered, i think, relief. oh, thank god. i'll never forget that. oh, thank god. and then i was sort of getting angry.

so, where were you? what are you doing? and he says, do you not know where i was? and i said, no, were where were you? and then he lifted his sleeve and right from his wrist to his elbow, there were 12 gashes. and he says, i was in i was in a&e in craigavon. another incident shortly afterwards convinced ms boyle that her son needed to return to psychiatric care. what he had said to me was, did you see that video, momma, thatjessiej made? she made a video for congratulating and thanking the nhs workers. please stay home. please stay safe for yourself and for everybody else. and those of you on the front line, thank you. and he said he watched the video. and did you see the way she tilted her head? mummy. i'm going to make some awkward eye contact with everybody in the audience.

that message was for me. i rememberthinking, ok, this. this is bigger than me. i can't i can't help him now. so i need someone who understands what's going on chemically in his brain and understands his behaviour. that description suggests he is experiencing what is termed a psychosis. he's delusional. certainly an issue in relation to, you know, if he has been if he has a history of suicide and a history of suicide attempts, that's a and these have occurred when he's delusional, that would suggest he needs urgent treatment. so, i made the fatal call to.. mental health services injury.

i made the call because i had a belief. they had the answers, they had the expertise, they had... i didn't have to help him. so, this is why you have to carry that for the rest of my life. that it was me that made the call. he could possibly still be here today. yes. still be here today. suffering. still be here today. but he'd still be alive. still be here today. did he want help at the time? still be here today. yes. still be here today. yes, he did. still be here today. because he spoke to the lady. still be here today. she was on speaker. still be here today. she said to him, she asked him, do you want to die? do you want to take your life? and he said, no, no, i don't. so she spoke to me then on the phone and she said she's going to detain him. he's going to be detained under

the mental health act. sean's grandfather drove him to the bluestone unit at craigavon area hospital. it was 5:30pm on may 27, 2020 when they arrived. two doctors assessed shaun and decided to temporarily detain him. it's an extraordinary power that meant shaun could be held for up to five days in order to get a full psychiatric assessment. this is the form signed by doctors at 8:50pm that night. it offers key evidence on the state of shaun's mental health at the time of his admission. he believes radio broadcasters were discussing him in codes, disclosed on multiple occasions that he would like to overdose and not wake up. reports feeling low.

poor sleep. preoccupied with being a bad person. unwilling to stay in hospital. however, requires a period of assessment given risk of harming self. it's that last point that's important. the admitting doctors acknowledge that sean is a risk to himself. now detained sean was in the safest place he could be as far as his family were concerned. so what does it mean to be detained and what it means to be detained? what it means is, involved have decided that for your own safety, it's necessary that you be accommodated against your will within a mental health service. so really significant thing to do to somebody to basically remove their choice

from the situation. it should only be done very much as a last resort. when he was admitted, sean refused to take a covid test. he was uneasy interacting with staff who were wearing full ppe for infection control reasons he was confined to a four bedroom corridor away from most other patients. covid restrictions were applied across mental health services in northern ireland. unfortunately for people with a mental illness, this could add to the distress. you know, and you have that concern about transmission of covid at the same time. so it was a terrible situation for everybody. but for people with mental illness, we know that their illnesses got worse. watched by the ward cctv camera sean spent hours on his own with almost nothing to do. he didn't sleep and refused food. his paranoia led him to believe it could have been tampered with. at some point during the night, a member of the nursing staff took sean's belt away from him, locking it in a bedside cabinet.

even though more senior medical staff had allowed him to keep it, the staff member later said this was because sean may have posed a risk to staff and other patients. sometime later, when he asked for it. the same member of staff gave sean his belt back. sean was last seen by the ward cctv camera walking into his room at 2:1i8pm on the 28th of may, about 21 hours after he arrived at the hospital. by 3:53 p:m... he had used the belt to asphyxiate himself. that was when sean was found unresponsive by the clinical team sent to assess him. he was rushed to icu, the intensive care unit. so i was starting to think, this is not looking good.

this he's not going to pull out of this. three days later, shaun's life support was switched off covid denying his family the chance to be with him in person. his death left schneid with unanswered questions. why had the hospital not anticipated he might harm himself with the belt? was isolation a factor? was he being supervised? i had all these questions. hejust said, i'm really i'm always going to wonder how he went from no, no, i don't want to die, no, don't,

to being dead. what happened ? well, i'm still not clear. figures collated by northern ireland's health care regulator, the ikea show 14 mental health hospital inpatients have died by suicide here since 2017. sean's death, like each of the others, was subject to an independent investigation ordered by the trust. police also began to investigate. questions around sean's death went right to the top. this is a letterfrom the department of health to the trust, which raises concerns. another bluestone patient had attempted suicide in a very similar wayjust seven months earlier. in the earlier incident, the patient had used a window fixture in an attempt to take their own life. as a result, the window fixtures were changed in another part of the hospital, but not on the ward where sean was being treated.

now, what raised concern with the department of health is that sean used the same method. what i would say is that reducing access to a method or removing a method is one of the things that we can do to prevent a death by suicide. and that's a very effective way of of preventing suicide is reducing or limiting the access to a method of suicide. the investigation began to look into the removal and return of sean's belt. remember, the staff member said that the belt had been taken away from sean because he may have posed a risk to staff and other patients. this perceived threat wasn't based on the way he had behaved on the ward, but on reports of his behaviour before he was admitted. according to the investigation the belt was given back because sean asked for it and the staff member, they felt they couldn't say no. the investigation report

is silent on why sean was no longer considered a risk to others. it found there was no fixed policy in place at bluestone when it came to the removal and return of a patient�*s belongings. it makes no criticism of the staff member for giving sean his belt back, but recommends the southern trust develops a clear policy on the removal or restriction of personal items. colin hughes is a former mental health nurse. he's now a lecturer, training the mental health staff over the future. he says generally, the policy should be that such important decisions are made by a team. the patient may have said, well, i want my shoelaces back or i want my belt back. and that would be discussed within the team environment, and the team should make that decision. i personally would not want to be the one individual to make that decision. the report also uncovered another issue which led the police to start investigating the apparent

falsification of records around shaun's care. around sean's ca re. shaun and other bluestone patients were supposed to be observed once in every 15 minute period. it's a common policy in many psychiatric hospitals. last year when i worked undercover at the eden field psychiatric hospital in england, i saw bad practices there, including failures to carry out those regular checks. are these patients supposed to be checked on every 15 minutes? i've been inside here for 35 minutes. the observations are also supposed to be recorded to show patients are being properly monitored. we take record on the patient notes very, very seriously within the health service,

because they're supposed to be a record of the assessment of an individual. but if something then happens, of course, they're also the record that gets looked at on an exam and if an investigation is required. so, yeah, they're really, really important. at bluestone, the 15 minute patient checks became part of the investigation into sean's death. the investigators said they could not be confident shaun could not be confident sean was observed as prescribed within every 15 minute period as written on the observation sheets. this is because a member of nursing staff said in a written statement and an interview they had seen shaun walking into his room at 3:a0 p.m., less than 15 minutes before he was found asphyxiated. this site's encountered as a check on shaun's welfare. but the ward cctv camera told a different story. when questioned by the police, the staff member said

they had made a mistake. sean had not been checked for 28 minutes before he was found. the investigation, ordered by the trust, said even if this check had been carried out, it might not have prevented sean's death. they cannot be confident that sean was observed as required. and this is a document that's given to his family. is that acceptable? no. if your policy says we will observe everybody every 15 minutes, then you should observe everybody every 15 minutes. now, leaving aside, there's always the possibility that this patient could have killed themselves within a shorter window. there is a potential that if that member of staff turned up, they could have interrupted his preparations. they could have picked up on the change in mood. it could have been prevented. now, there's lots of ifs in that. but the reality is none of that had the possibility of happening because the nurse didn't turn up. that's not acceptable. the investigation report recommended the trust review its procedure on observation to ensure that it is fit for purpose. the staff member faced

disciplinary action, was suspended for six months and according to police notes we have seen, they have been deeply impacted. academic, dr. collette ramsay has spoken to nearly 50 hospital staff about the effects of patient suicide. you've spoken to staff members who who've been working when a suicide has taken place on a ward. what impact as it had on them? they really wanted to, i suppose, get across the impact it had on them as staff members and how often they had relationships with those patients. but what i find is that they very much blamed themselves. so it wasn't, you know, managers or anybody was in any way blaming the staff, but they blamed themselves. and that kind of goes along with how families often feel when there's a suicide. a file has been passed to the public prosecution service. but from the police notes we've seen, the psni don't seem to think there is enough

evidence for anyone to be charged. we put a number of questions to the southern trust. it said sean's tragic death is the subject of a coroner's investigation in which it is fully engaged and a psni investigation and was unable to comment on specific issues as a result. the trust offered its condolences to the family and said it will continue to offer them support. it said it has implemented a range of measures in bluestone to improve the quality and safety of care. in the years since sean's death, sinead boyle doesn't think the questions she has have been fully answered. two and a half years can ijust say is actually a long time. this process has been so long, so slow.

i don't really know why, but in that time, i have fought for the truth. sean. what's life like without him? life is a... ..lonely. it can be lonely because he was so full of life. and he was my child. he was my baby. i was his mummy. and he's not here any more. i have to change my way of living because i can't change what happened and i can't change him not being here. the sad part about this is it didn't need to be like this.

hello there. the weekend is getting off to a mild start. certainly saturday is going to be a mild day. while there will be some spells of sunshine, there will also be some heavy and thundery showers. sunday, a little bit cooler, nothing too drastic and it will be drier for a time as well. so saturday morning, starting with some outbreaks of more persistent rain pushing up across southeast england and then into east anglia. also, this band of rain swinging across northern ireland and into western scotland, particularly heavy in the far northwest, in between some spells of sunshine, but a scattering of heavy thundery showers with temperatures generally ranging between nine and 1a or 15 degrees, just a little bit cooler across shetland where we will

see some rain arriving during saturday night. elsewhere, some areas of cloud and some mist, but most places by sunday morning will be dry and clear and a little bit chillier. there could even locallyjust be a touch of frost into sunday. a lot of dry weather around some spells of sunshine but rain into northern ireland and eventually scotland later in the day.

welcome to bbc news — i'm anjana gadgil. our top stories: wanted for war crimes — the international criminal court issues an arrest warrant for russia's leader, vladimir putin, for his alleged role in deporting ukrainian children to russia. thejudges issued the judges issued arrest warrants. their execution depends on international cooperation. china's president, xijinping, is to visit russia next week for talks with president putin. tiktok reportedly under investigation in the united states — over allegations the video—sharing app spied on journalists. plus, the benefits for babies of eating peanut butter. how a spoonful could help prevent an allergic reaction.