Jedburgh’s Woodland Camp Outlasted a Texas Missing Alert

Kofi Offeh landed in Accra on 22 April 2026 after the Home Office confirmed his deportation from Britain. For months he had styled himself King Atehene of the Kingdom of Kubala, a three-person camp in woods outside Jedburgh. Relatives in Texas had reported Kaura Taylor missing. She told UK officials she was an adult, and not missing at all.

The people who actually had to move the tents were Mary and David Palmer, Scottish Borders Council, sheriff officers and, at the end, immigration staff.

Mary and David Palmer’s Title Fight in Jedburgh

Offeh, 36, a Ghanaian former opera singer, and Jean Gasho, 43, who is from Zimbabwe and called herself Queen Nandi, reached Jedburgh in late April 2025. Gasho later wrote that they arrived on 28 April with a tent, a few clothes, their shoes and a Bluetooth speaker. They first sat on a hillside above the town, then in woodland the Palmers own near an industrial estate.

The Palmers’ solicitor, Conner McConnell, told Jedburgh Sheriff Court they wanted “removal of occupiers on the basis of no right to title.” He also asked for an interdict, a court ban, to keep the three off that ground and off other Palmer land held under a separate title. None of the campers attended. None had a lawyer.

Sheriff Peter Paterson said he was “happy to grant a notice of eviction” with immediate effect on 12 September 2025. The group had already ignored an order to be gone by 5pm on 8 September. Scott Hamilton, the Jedburgh and District councillor and then deputy leader of Scottish Borders Council, said the Palmers had been left with “no option.” He asked residents not to approach the camp.

That was the dispute the town was actually in: titled land, a warrant, and neighbours who wanted the woods back. The global clip was something else.

Kaura Taylor Told Officials She Was Not Missing

Taylor, 21, from Texas, joined them as “handmaiden” Asnat, also called Lady Safi. She had been living with her aunt Vandora Skinner in the Dallas area. Family members say she first made contact with Offeh and Gasho in 2023, after the father of her child introduced her online. In May 2025 she flew to Britain on a six-month tourist visa with her daughter, then one year old.

Relatives filed Texas missing-person reports that named her, then sought help in Scotland once a Jedburgh resident passed them a police number. Skinner put the gap in plain words: she went missing in May, but she was not missing, she had left to live with these people.

Aunt Teri Allen, speaking from the Dallas area, said the stress broke their hearts. “We’re overly concerned about Kaura, but she doesn’t think anyone is concerned about her,” Allen said. Mother Melba Whitehead called the camp a cult, said her daughter had been groomed online at 19, and asked for her to be sent back to Texas. Whitehead said Kaura had wanted to be a lawyer.

To the UK authorities, obviously I am not missing. Leave me alone. I’m an adult, not a helpless child.

Kaura Taylor, video from the Jedburgh camp

On Facebook on 20 August 2025 she added that she was happy with her king and queen and had “fled a very abusive, toxic family.” UK officials treated her as a competent adult. A missing-person file does not, on its own, pull an adult out of a tent on someone else’s land.

What the Kingdom of Kubala Claimed

The three dressed the camp as a return, not a squat. They said they did not recognise local law, only the law of their god, Yahowah. Offeh claimed descent from David and called the stay a pilgrimage after 400 years.

WHAT THEY SAID THE LAND WAS

• Lost Hebrews: They called themselves a lost tribe of Hebrews come back to claim Scotland as a homeland.
• The 400 years: They said ancestors were pushed off the land four centuries ago and that a prophecy now brought them home.
• Elizabeth I: Gasho wrote that Elizabeth I had deported “native black Jacobites” and that Jacobites were Black.
• Jerusalem in Scotland: Gasho said that, according to Offeh, Jerusalem is in Scotland and that he is the seed of David, the Messiah.
• No earthly title: Offeh said the earth belongs to the father and that no authority owns the land.
• Tabernacles: Gasho said only people living off-grid in tabernacles would be saved as a “Millennium Kingdom of Kubala” began.

Hamilton told residents the heritage claims were false on their face, and that people should still rise above the insult. The camp also said it had been attacked, including a fire set on tents, and asked for calm from the other direction. Some locals sent food, clothes and new tents. Others wanted them gone the same week.

Offeh described a simple daily round, bathing in spring water, grounding in the morning, living in a tent without walls. “We are living a simple life of relying daily on the creator for food, shelter and clothing,” he said. They still filmed constantly. The group built more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and Facebook, and they often refused interviews unless visitors brought gifts for the king.

Sheriff Paterson Granted an Immediate Warrant

By then the file was civil, not mystical. The Palmers had title. The camp had none. After the 12 September warrant, Offeh spoke at the tents and called the court a “so-called court.”

The creator of the heavens and the Earth is the one with us. And we are not afraid of whatever the court, the so-called court, has granted.

Kofi Offeh, at the Jedburgh camp after the warrant

Asked if they would go, he said that if the creator wanted them moved, “he shall find us a place to go.” Earlier TikTok clips showed Offeh and Gasho singing and dancing as an official served papers.

English company records sit a long way from that hillside. Companies House listed Jean Fadzai Gasho as a director of Black British Entertainment Ltd, with Offeh appointed on 20 April 2017 and resigned on 6 March 2018. The firm was dissolved on 4 June 2019 after a compulsory strike-off.

In July 2024 Offeh and Gasho appeared in court in Stockton-on-Tees charged with child cruelty. They denied the charges. The case was dropped. Gasho’s April 2025 note about clothes “from prison” matches that remand, not a Scottish sentence.

THE THREE IN THE WOODS

Gasho is a mother of seven. Taylor’s child had been in the camp; Whitehead said Scottish officials would not hand her granddaughter over. Adult choice and child welfare ran on separate tracks, and the public file never fully joined them.

The Tents Moved Over a Fence

Sheriff officers enforced the Palmers’ order on 16 September 2025. The three took the tents down and carried them over a small wire fence, a few metres onto ground that turned out to belong to Scottish Borders Council. On social media they posted that the Kingdom of Kubala can never be destroyed.

The council started a fresh case the same month and told them to be off by noon on 22 September, with a ban on return. That afternoon they were still on the fire, singing. A council spokesman said the legal process to remove them from council land had begun and that officers would move through the next steps as fast as they could. Hamilton said nobody is above the law, “no matter how long this takes.”

On 1 October, at Selkirk Sheriff Court, Sheriff Paterson banned them from going back onto the Palmers’ plot and awarded expenses against them. They were not in court. A week earlier the court had already barred them from council land in the area, including the new pitch. On paper they had nowhere left to sit. On the ground the tents were still up.

A Convoy Went Into the Woods at Dawn

The removal that stuck was not another civil shuffle. It was a joint run by Police Scotland, sheriff officers and Immigration Enforcement.

THE JEDBURGH CAMP CALENDAR

1. 28 April 2025: Offeh and Gasho arrive in Jedburgh with a tent and a speaker, per Gasho’s later Facebook post.
2. May 2025: Taylor leaves Dallas on a six-month tourist visa and later joins the camp as Asnat.
3. 8 September 2025: Deadline of 5pm to leave the Palmers’ woods passes with the tents still in place.
4. 12 September 2025: Sheriff Paterson grants an immediate eviction warrant at Jedburgh Sheriff Court.
5. 16 September 2025: Officers clear the Palmers’ ground; the three move a few metres onto council land.
6. 22 September 2025: Council noon deadline passes; they stay by the fire and sing.
7. 1 October 2025: Selkirk Sheriff Court bans a return to the Palmers’ land and awards expenses.
8. 2 October 2025: Immigration officers, police and sheriff officers clear the council woods from about 08:00.
9. 22 April 2026: Offeh arrives in Accra; the Home Office confirms the deportation.

A police cordon had been in place from the early hours of 2 October. About 08:00 a convoy of cars and vans went through it. Drone pictures showed a long line of uniformed officers on the path. The camp livestreamed its own removal. Offeh and Taylor were handcuffed by immigration officers on suspicion of immigration offences. Gasho left with her head covered, lying low in the back of a pick-up. The cordon lifted about 10:00. Council workers stuffed blankets, clothes and food into a refuse lorry. There was no kingdom left on the floor of the wood.

Hamilton said he was “very much relieved.” “It is the absolute right outcome today. The locals have had to put up with a great deal with this,” he said. He pointed to the industrial estate next to the trees, and to businesses he said had been under pressure for months. The council, he added, had had to work through the courts, and that takes time.

Clips of the camp had already travelled as a joke about Highlander ancestry. The quieter problem in Jedburgh was three people on land with a recorded owner, beside firms that still had to open in the morning.

Offeh Reached Accra After the Home Office Acted

Taylor was later released. Offeh stayed in the immigration system. The Home Office confirmed in April 2026 that he had been deported to Ghana. Local crews filmed him at Accra’s airport on 22 April. He said he had come to take over Ghana because he was the King of Kubala, and that chiefs, police and even a president would bow. He talked about surveying land around Sunyani and bringing people from other countries to join him.

Hamilton called the deportation a “huge relief.” The same councillor has also spoken for Jedburgh regeneration work in the town, the ordinary civic track the camp had drowned for a summer. Scottish Borders Council had said, while the tents were still up, that it was working with Police Scotland and had offered housing options and other support. The three did not take that path.

Gasho kept posting for a time as “Queen In The North.” In late May 2026 she and Taylor shared clips that claimed a return to woods they named Mambaza. Later videos had the two women talking about joining Offeh in Sunyani. Those posts are claims, not proof they were back on the Palmers’ title.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The camp: The Jedburgh woods were cleared on 2 October 2025 and Offeh was deported, with the Home Office confirming the removal.
• Taylor’s status that day: She was arrested on suspicion of immigration offences and later released.
• The title: Sheriff Paterson’s orders stood; the Palmers and the council had the court file, the camp did not.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Taylor now: Public records do not show a later UK charging decision or a confirmed US return.
• Gasho’s country: She was not named in the Home Office deportation confirmation that covered Offeh.
• The child: Whitehead said officials would not give her custody; later care arrangements were not published.

Offeh told cameras in Accra he would take dominion wherever he landed. In Jedburgh the Palmers already had their warrant, and the council already had its woods back.