you're locked in a cell twenty four hours a day. i'm being treated like an animal. i got to the point where i realize that you know that's doing the total just shows me it was important to me is on the other side offense in how i get to the other side of fence. eventually perry got to the other side of that fence in two thousand and one and after serving nearly nineteen years of his life sentence perry was granted parole. once on the outside carrie turned his life around. he graduated from college and spent the next eleven years employed as an advocate for the homeless finding them housing and managing a soup kitchen. it was somebody who. was by all accounts doing extraordinarily well and was contributing to his community he was certain sitting on boards with elected officials and he had the support of the american or at hampton the chief of police of northampton and countless citizens who had just seen

them extend themselves to the least fortunate and most vulnerable members of the community a letter of recommendation from the mayor of north hampton said mr perry used the circumstances of his imprisonment and parole to forge a new life for himself and better the community he works in. and then on august third two thousand and eleven perry was arrested on his way to work when a state trooper found skoal in goods in this s.u.v. . perry insisted the i pad and other items were left behind by a homeless hitchhiker he was driving to a shelter. when donald got picked up that day i really honestly believed like ok so we get a lawyer we clear this up and you come home and i really didn't realize the impact that it would have especially since he didn't do anything so how could they hold you. at trial a jury found perry not guilty of receiving stolen property but because he was on

parole at the time of the arrest he was charged with a parole violation and returned to prison. the massachusetts parole board decided that not withstanding that acquittal that he was nevertheless in violation of is parole for reasons that i still have a hard. understanding despite his acquittal the parole board was able to revoke his parole and keep perry in prison it would be months before he had a chance to be heard again by the parole board. just across the state border in connecticut the parole board has just reached a decision regarding inmate in crawford and we are back on record in the case of alvin crawford number two eight to five. we make decisions every day that affect every man woman child in the state of connecticut and sometimes the cases are not so clear cut the high risk offenders the ones that make the hair stand up on the

back of your neck those are easy those are the ones where you just know ok put him under the prison you should never ever see the light of day the ones that are low risk those are easy it's the ones in the middle that can go either way where you sit and think. you know one you know if the planets line up just right you know will this guy kill somebody. oh no moving a motion to deny the role with no new hearing your denials for the following reasons your criminal history the current offense was committed while on probation and in adequate institutional programming to have a second favor good luck to you sir. and a quick word about that decision. high risk high stakes. he will hurt somebody. he started his criminal career with an assault he like nearly stabbed some kid to death over a bicycle. in the department of correction we have

a person who follows security risk groups gangs and mr crawford runs with this group so he's he still is very very risky so it's less of a sentence here in the morning and a half scary he's getting out of that to anyway getting out right you know they don't have licenses or the death penalty they are coming. after spending fourteen months in prison for a crime that the jury determined he did not commit perry is once again in front of the parole board. a month after his parole hearing perry is informed of the board's decision. despite his acquittal for receiving stolen property the parole board revoked perry's parole

forcing him to resume the life sentence he received for crimes he committed over twenty five years ago no explanation it was just didn't feel like i wind up in the alice in wonderland fairy tale like my life went right down the rabbit hole i wanna been thrown back in a mid is a what i had worked so long to try to get away from i mean and i mean isn't is insane. today there are over eight hundred thousand prisoners who have been released on parole in the united states we can say we're not going to worry about them and we're going to continue to pay for that through increased police through increased courts. and we're going to continue to have a correctional system that's just going to be a revolving door a very expensive revolving door. in two thousand and eight connecticut passed a series of criminal justice reforms to improve their parole system. we meet with

william carbone an expert on parole who has worked in the system for over fifteen years is currently on staff at the henry seeley college of criminal justice in new haven connecticut. i think the current administration's approach to public safety in general has been very smart. they have attempted to invest in what's called recidivism reduction and they have invested very heavily in trying to improve the information sharing so that what we know about any offender is available to the people who have to make a decision an important decision like the decision to release so now that old paper system has been replaced with something called the judicial electronic bridge and so they are available at all stages of the corrections process and the parole process. change can come at a price this and other innovations were introduced only after

a triple rape and murder by parolees stunned the quiet new england town of cheshire raising serious questions about the competence of the connecticut parole system. police say the suspects entered the pettit house as the family was sleeping the mother was raped and strangled the eleven year old daughter also sexually assaulted both girls were eventually tied to their beds down with gasoline and set on fire. when people found out that hayes or thomas who just had recently been on parole not only had been let out relatively recently and i just made it worse davoud to mari is a crime reporter for the hartford current who covered the infamous cheshire murders and. subsequent trials of steven hayes and joshua komisarjevsky. paige was never really or to be criminal and had been arrested twenty something times. she had been in jail the last time literally for stealing purses and out of cars. joshua was

a different story she was a burglar he wanted to break into people's houses at night. used to use night goggles when he broke into people's houses and sometimes you literally would watch people. at the tire to sentencing the judge had called him a. predator. in two thousand and seven after serving three years of a five year sentence for burglary steven hayes was granted parole. he actually told people in a halfway house for years i mean is it a given the. times he had been on prison. as for komisarjevsky he was four years into his nine year sentence before he was released on parole. because of a tragic bureaucratic oversight the parole board never received his original trial transcript. scripts are expensive and the state didn't want to pay it out all these transcripts for every single parolee going to the board so when josh appeared

before the three members on the carolled board at that time they had no idea what the judge had said there had no idea really what is history was going to was burglary. and komisarjevsky would meet in a halfway house and from there go on to commit one of the most heinous crimes in connecticut history. the catastrophic decision to release these two inmates put pressure on the state to replace the parole board and reexamine its policies to better protect the public from paroled criminals. one of the primary goals of the. system is to protect the lives of the public but what happens if a parole board makes a decision which unfairly damages the life of a parolee. donald perry rebuilt a life centered on rehabilitation and community service only to find it crumble

when the parole board decided he belonged back in prison. we had to springfield massachusetts to meet holly richardson a community activist who is leading a campaign to free donald perry. we were all surprised as community people when he was acquitted in july that he didn't go home and then initially we thought ok well he was a parolee and there must be some paperwork that has to be done in each step of the way as it kept happening that he was not going to be coming home and that he didn't get her out reaper all that we we couldn't even believe it. the perceived injustice of donald perry's case created a groundswell of support a petition created to free donald perry received over one hundred fifty thousand signatures. people that i didn't really know or even some people i knew from work a little bit really rallied for me and really rallied for him elaine arsenal is

a social worker and donald perry's life partner which people know about the old story you know he's basically a poster child for what a person should do on parole and he has reinvented himself. from what he was like honest twenty's the way he lives his life today is like you know he's honest he's caring compassionate he does nothing but give back to the community tell me how this is affected your relationship it's actually brought it stronger you know like when this all happened there was a lot of shame for me because you know i didn't tell lot of my friends and family he was on parole and then being public in the newspaper it was really difficult for me because like oh you know now it's all out there and i've had to learn to just kind of hold my head up and be like you know what we're good people you know he's a good man and he's my partner he's like my soul mate so we're in this together no matter what. oh. oh.

can you hear me ok joe this is donald mr perry how are you. i'm good i'm good you tell me tell me how you're feeling these days oh. well. but. you know what you want people to know about your situation you know what happened here. i was on my way to a board of directors. but as i'm pulling out of my driveway and getting ready to get on to forty seven i see as does person who's standing out on the road and he's

dumb enough is being known. as simmons who kissed. he asked me for a ride to drop hints in a place where people go in the mornings to shower how breakfast. when he get in my truck got his backpack into bags which is concept go people slip around with. have a notice a bunch of state troopers on the highway. take the exit coming on and off amp and i noticed this dude is going really fizzy to pull down at the like he says that i'm on him and he does jumps up. and the next i know the lies i mean pull so i hope. this state trooper comes up on the side of my vehicle he said to step out of the vehicle my man what do you talk about what's going on it. must've been a nightmare i can only imagine. the morning of perry's arrest two homes had been broken into and romped the police were able to track the

stolen goods to i've had a purse and other items to perry's vehicle. perry was immediately arrested and thrown in jail. maintaining his innocence perry went to trial and hired luke ryan to represent him. when the police i think attempted to do was to try to tie. him and not only to these burglaries but to other burglaries in that area what eventually happened was they learned that the footprints and fingerprints that were found at the scene did not match donald perry's so what eventually i think they came to realize is all right well why don't we just stick with the easiest thing to prove which is receiving stolen property. criminal defense attorney and prisoner advocate paddy guerin believes the board's decision to revoke carries parole maybe indirectly tied to another inmate serving a life sentence in accent. similar to what happened in cheshire connecticut the

massachusetts parole board released a career criminal cinelli who went on to murder a police officer in a fatal shoot out in december of two thousand and we see a tremendous failure of the parole system the resignation of five parole board members has everyone talking the governor fired those responsible for supervising cinelli after he was released the results from massachusetts was a tremendous drop in parole rates for two thousand and eleven in two thousand and twelve and that cost the state a tremendous amount of money they do before it was very very reluctant to parole people especially lifers and really anyone received parole that first year after this in l.a. incident. despite donald perry's acquittal for receiving stolen goods in two thousand and twelve the parole board has kept him behind bars for almost a year but in march of two thousand and thirteen is granted another hearing and

another chance of parole you are now before the boy today to determine if you should be reprocessed i think when there are additional wrong going to greet your minutes. at that time back then for that very reason we have to cross our darr eyes when it comes to giving your. full hearing. before you reproach i'm truly sorry for the pain and trauma that i've caused all of my victims the moment that i just did i explode and defy my own humanity. that i became the more that i was d.d. turning into a pawn to be an asset to michael community the parole hearing last two hours unlike the hearings we've seen in connecticut perry won't get an answer that day. back in the cell kerry waits for the board's decision everybody was saying he's

going to get out still you know this went good and it wasn't until eight months later that we got a decision. the world's primary could change producing nation. is at the forefront of the war on drugs we're talking about serious organized crime as a country where reaching a critical point while some have made fortunes many others have suffered at the hands of this multi-billion dollar industry the author of this business will go on forever it will not change almost global policies of the who are the winners and losers of this illicit trade snow of the andes on al-jazeera in the deprived villages of northern argentina there's one man with the solution to every problem. for engineer a self-proclaimed inventor fernando and used drugs to ninety forty seven ford truck

no job and just too small village to far in his latest mission he construct a much needed refrigerator the drums and fire board if you find a latin america driving change on i just see it or. you're watching of his there on cell rob and there are these are all top news stories we have breaking news coming out of pakistan that at least fifteen people are being killed in an explosion now it happened in the western city of course and this as voting gets underway in the country's general election nearly one hundred six million registered voters have had a chance to choose their representatives in the national and provincial assemblies three main parties are contesting the polls in a race that has been plagued with violence and instability.

also rescue workers and are searching for hundreds of people reported missing after a dam collapse on monday it's a wall of water downstream flooding villages and sweeping away homes the billions of dollars down was under construction when cracks were discovered a south korean firm involved in the project to sent teams to help with the rescue reports. well it seems that many people are still missing following the partial collapse of this dam and southeastern laos on monday night beginning accurate figures out of the lao government is still very difficult getting access to the area for international media or for independent organizations is severely restricted by the lao government what we're hearing though from one of the companies involved in the construction of this dam remembering that construction had not been completed at the time of the collapse one of the companies involved is a south korean company called s.k.

engineering and construction it is saying that it first noticed cracks in one of the auxiliary or saddle dams on sunday night so that is about twenty four hours before the collapse occurred it says that it tried to repair the cracks but some of the roads leading to the site had already been washed out so getting the right equipment into the area proved very difficult clearly the situation became a lot worse in the hours after that evacuations were ordered immediately but it seems that they did not happen soon enough as this water went cascading down stream some five kilometers leaving more than six thousand people homeless the suicide attackers of the southern syrian city of saluted a new border with jordan more than thirty people feared the area is government controlled but there are pockets of territory held by those words the news headlines and back with more news in half an hour here on ars or next it's the system stay with us. they suspected money laundering operation but this time

it was different. an accidental discovery the war initial suspicion. president the scale of systemic international corruption people in power investigates a racket of such magnitude that its government redefined the rules of impunity. carwash. where every. despite donald perry's acquittal for receiving stolen goods in two thousand and twelve the parole board has kept him behind bars for almost

a year but in march of two thousand and thirteen is granted another hearing and another chance for parole you are now before the board today to determine if you. everybody was psyched he's going to get out so you know this went good. and then we waited for a decision and every. week i would go on the website they post the decisions on the website and i would look and i would and i would look and there was no decision. it was. eight months later that we got a decision. whenever i see something that has happened in the news my first reaction. is to say please god don't let this person have been someone. that we released on.

the blowback from the parole of joshua komisarjevsky and steven hayes and the subsequent pettit family murders forced the connecticut parole board to change how they made decisions one of the major changes was that the legislature in connecticut demanded that the parole board the department of correction and the court support services division which handles probation in our state collaborate to come up with a dynamic risk assessment system. we have used a system called scores it's the statewide collaborative offender risk evaluation system looks at criminal genic domains directly related to a person's risk the scores a system uses a comprehensive questionnaire completed by offenders which evaluates critical factors affecting criminal behavior like criminal history and education. the data is analyzed to burdick how likely a criminal is to re-offend. i believe that had the board that was sitting at the

time that the two men who committed the murders were up for parole and they've been using a dynamic risk assessment system the decisions would have been very different i do not believe those two would have been released. each inmate up for parole today has been evaluated by the scores system as hearing is being conducted in consideration of the full application for walter right number two one to six it is serving a sentence of five years flat for sale of heroin or cocaine by non-dependent and a violation of probation utilizing the statewide collaborative offender risk evaluation system scores mr wright overall risk for receipt of a thing is very high mr right it is now your opportunity to express to the board why you believe you should be granted parole at this time i want to be granted because i've used these last two years to lane change a lot about myself as well those going to lack of judgment that is

a piece of my current incarceration i completely understand and i can no longer allow myself to pick up drugs is to sell it as a means of income support because i have no job what's on the ground. here is a day not actually from our freedom book but also as my last chance to get my life in order therefore mash and change is a nice grammy. mr ray. i want you to pretend for a second that you're sitting where i am and what you have in front of you is someone who had several violations of probation who was on probation when they sold drugs and ran for the from the cops this time a man who had a record of drug sales. with stealing a firearm an assault thrown in there for more than two decades would you release that person early. you know as well as i do that you are not a good. system looks at. another indicator of

it. right there. and work ok. for the purpose of. making decisions based on if you make decisions and you're only. half the time fifty percent better than chance however if we. if we look at what the research. goes up to seventy percent of the time. i don't know who wouldn't. post a five.

twenty fifteen. programming today. really as much as you have control over trying to. get something out of it so when you come back to them you can actually. play it for what you're going to do when you get out ok. all right. thank you. for being in prison for almost two years. once again went before the. months before a decision is made about being. sure what his role us but since some way he was connected to to breaking into neighbor's house and the parole

board can't tolerate it we meet with josh wall the chair of the massachusetts parole board which oversaw donald perry's hearing the first thing i would say about the fact that mr perry had a not guilty verdict but that the parole board revoked his parole is that this is not a situation that is unusual. parole boards operate under a different standard than a court of law yet the consequences of their decisions can be equally devastating there's no prosecutor trying to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. instead all the parole board needs to establish is that the preponderance of evidence proves that perry could have committed the crime. the important pieces of evidence are that mr perry had the i pad and he's being followed by the police. and when he's pulled over there is no hitchhiker there's no other person that he's seen and then mr perry does not say when he's pulled over oh

by the way i had a hitchhiker he doesn't say that. i asked perry why he never mentioned the hitchhiker to police and he explains his previous experience with law enforcement had taught him to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. when you put those pieces of information together. if you are experienced in these matters like parole board members would be who have assessed situations like this it wasn't a very difficult call to make. after spending over two years in prison and then waiting eight months for an answer from the parole board donald perry finally received a decision on september twenty sixth two thousand and thirteen one of things that was important to our decision is that we did conclude that mr perry does not present a current risk for phylis and i hope that we never hear about mr perry again because

he's successful perry would be we've paroled but not right away. although the board did not consider perry a threat to public safety they added what perry and his supporters considered a punitive measure by forcing him to remain in prison and then additionally year from the date of his parole hearing. according to the parole board's decision no one on the panel believed perry's side of the story. when you think about donald's account of what had. the thing that i think was was difficult for people outside the case to grasp is the first thing you hear is hitchhiker. i mean who hit shakes anymore but the fact of the matter is in franklin county behind elaine's property there is a significant seasonal population of homeless people and this was donald's professional life so the fact that there would be

a person on the side of the road with a couple backpacks a garbage bag that's the whole perry's population that he serves. after spending his final year in prison donald perry will be released back into the community elaine perry's life partner will pick him up from the surely correctional facility tomorrow morning. tomorrow will be the first day that he's been out an almost three years. to do anything to prepare for his own coming so i want to make sure that donald had you know new pillows and things like that like all he talks about is how i get to sleep in my own bad you know i get to sleep with my own she blanket and you know make sure all the tells her claim because those are really important things when you don't have good towels or you don't have

you know he's been sleeping on this little. oh man thing you just can't get comfortable ever. and i think. and i. keep thinking this might be the last call i ever have to get from prison. or you know yeah well we're talking about what it feels like to be on the count down here. oh well. yeah well tomorrow night you get to sleep in a real bad. well known who are in our power are. going to. water your bernard. do you want as long as you're home. you're wearing

a very. long. ok . i love you so. i think they think they yeah i don't sleep much last night that exciting yeah it's really exciting my my adrenaline's been going first i was getting them out so yeah let me grab his clothes an hour away at the surely correctional facility donald perry is waiting to be released elaine is allowed us to join her on the journey to reunite with her partner. who's there and. we stop to pick up holly richardson really. activists and friend who has advocated

for perry's release it's bringing in. are you going on today we made a fire again it was so i did. laugh we got. down three. well let's you know what i'm doing. right now and sweating and my mouth is dry at the same time. there we go. we are at the shirley correctional facility elaine is picking up her husband we are not allowed in the prison. so they said that they don't want any cameras on the premises at all that. everybody is going to have to leave. so

we're no longer on the prison grounds we had to leave the prison asked us to leave it's been very frustrating the entire way we were denied permission to film donald perry in prison we were denied permission to film him leaving prison we thought we were ok by just being in the parking lot and we were going to film him getting into the car but even now that's been denied and so we had to leave the prison and they didn't want any cameras around and so we're we're told over about a half a mile from the prison. a correctional officer from the prison tractions down lower waiting for perry to be released. so now they're kind of freaking out that we were shooting at all and so they're they're checking. whether or not they're going to let us. prison officials are concerned about our cameras and despite being away from the prison facility we're still technically in prison property and asked to leave. we can go.

donald perry has finally been released on parole we meet perry in the lane at the side of the road. to graduation thank you very much. so i want to hear what are your thoughts i mean three years taken from you. i can get off it was that when i started thinking. about. being one of the thing that made them how naive that i was and i mean they could just do. what i don't understand is if you're acquitted of a crime how can the how can the parole board still have jurisdiction over your life to determine that you should be behind bars that doesn't it doesn't make sense to me it doesn't make sense to me either and just by the stroke of a pen. i was thrown right back. so how was it out there.

come out that last mark your i knew it was really going to happen now. and i got the so. did you guys get it you know i thought you were getting out and i was going in the slammer. ok. this is the hearing of the canadian border pardons and paroles. back in connecticut a young inmate named joshua strachan has just entered the system. joshua is currently serving a sentence of three years for sale. well business stuff and why are they selling heroin. and of the only way. to do something and. i mean you're a young guy and you've never had a job have a starting their life and if you look for a job people don't want to hi amy. oh. that's a good question what is your thought that i was thinking about him. i had seen.

it had the chance because you're out there selling heroin how much money we make and. thirty. week. i want to. i want to be able to be a. family it's a little more. because you were helping your mom. having food or stuff like that now why not do what i did was wrong. your mom had six kids she was fire itself are you the oldest boy it always bored.

ok just i want you just sit tight relax a little bit we're going to deliberate about your case and figure out what we're going to do with you in that we're going to come back on the record and take a vote ok. we are back on the record has the board reach a decision we have so mr shanklin i'm going to make a motion to parole you for july ninth two thousand and fourteen that you're going to have the following conditions so you are going to a halfway house and area also your parole is going to be contingent upon you completing good intentions bad choices you understand all of those are. just some of the good intentions bad choices what we're trying to do is help with your criminal thinking if it is true that you were selling drugs for two to three years before you got caught that means you have a criminal thinking down pat and you're really good at it so your your release is

contingent upon finishing that if you don't finish it we're telling them not to let you out to understand. if you were to get yourself some skills and use resources in the community you'll be able to expand the opportunities that you have only twenty two there's hope for you you can turn this around. good luck to you thank you very much. tell me why did you guys go the way you did he didn't have an adult criminal history this was his first adult arrest and he is an offender that if given the right programming in the right dosage with appropriate supervision could actually overcome his risk. donald perry has been caught in the system for over thirty years even though he was released from prison today will remain on parole for the rest of his life. in springfield massachusetts harry meets with his parole officer who fits in with

a g.p.s. ankle monitor that he is required to wear. my new assessment i know you are jealous this is a g.p.s. monitoring device. any time i'm in a building. and all of the forty five minutes forty five men kind of hold that amount size when we connect unless i'm at home i have your word that all the time constant one twenty four is that most women know about i guess emerges so how long do you have to worry that we're right right now that this in three years. after getting out of prison one of the first things done perry wants to do is get a haircut in his old springfield neighborhood where he grew up. i don't think is going to find the right name. once we got to springfield. at that time it was like some of us. as

a little kid my father was very abusive. i was developing like this bill and the small of the beatings. i basically gravitated to everything that. i remember coming up as a youth you know wishing that i had someone there was there would advocate for me. my job as an out least worker. was always try to connect with people and see how i can serve them. well you know. if there's a like helping people. for the past almost thirty years i worked hard and everything changed so i started finding me. and the more i found me the greater lash on the life of the normal now going normal not normal not not not yet. but

they're back and i'm back back there's like there's my guy via. i strive to treat the people on the screen or in person as human beings who have maybe you know made some really terrible mistakes a lot of them come from very tragic backgrounds. we have to understand the narratives of the persons that were making the decisions about. what donald was able to do should be celebrated because his transformation is genuine it is a then take it is real it's inspiring to people. thank goodness we still. don't we. wouldn't. say you have a good first like that only deal you have and they spit on me that i love being home with my bed and one of the things i was so it sounds like a little kid at christmas i woke up like one of two o'clock in the morning i just

couldn't believe it was like i was you know i wasn't dreaming you know i mean i was you know that it was this real thank you want it all for being here and for helping all of us through this process and this is a happy happy occasion so thank you off. based on false allegations against me in the last couple of years there's been a number of high profile exonerations of the wrongfully convicted based on police and prosecutorial misconduct you can check check much well i don't really buy i don't have any going to do nothing if the prosecutor is going to seek convictions for the sake of seeking convictions a prosecutor is dangerous exploring the dockside of american justice system with job on al jazeera. al-jazeera is a very important source of information for many people around the world when all

the cameras have gone i'm still here go into areas that nobody else is going talk to people that nobody else is talking to and bringing that story to the forefront. not see a fifty degree reported in the last two days forty seven yes in the southwest of it wrong one sushant iran but not where is hot in there in the caspian beyond our picture really so it's more like a cloud free right back to the as training costs attempt is here about the middle thirty's middle forty's in iraq high forty's danding kuwait the breeze still blowing not quite as strong as it was as been a fairly strong. no particular dusty woman running out kuwait dancer qatar of the into among temperature wise again forty seven forty eight in some parts of my more typically middle forty's warmer than in russia it's

a hotter city in mecca or medina there is still cloud around the coast among not quite so obvious on the mall but it comes back against us a lot of still enjoying the friday the humid the damp of the drizzly where that produces all the green. so enough should be largely drug using a few showers recently developed around so big and some parts of south africa and it's quite possible this cloud will bring a little bit drizzly rain summer where around the western cape the certainly a breeze and the north cold seventeen in cape town about the same unit is johannesburg. we understand the differences and the similarities of cultures across the wound. so no matter where you call home al-jazeera will bring in the news and current of

things that matter to you. al-jazeera. on the atlantic coast of west africa communities are at risk. as rising sea levels and a manmade disaster of frightening people's lives. on land and at sea. al-jazeera wild expose the impact of climate change and a catastrophic human error. on senegal sinking villages. august on al-jazeera european muslims today are facing the consequences of having their faith linked to armed attacks even though they two of victims of the bombings the largest multi-sport event on the continent asian games in jakarta will host athletes competing in a mix of traditional and the olympic sports a vibrant new series of character led documentaries from immigrant neighborhoods across europe as a rainy and brace for u.s.

sanctions due to get back in place on the sixth the buddhist al-jazeera will have of the developments from town wrong in a three part series al-jazeera uncovers the motivations and impact of the brutal feelin exploitation system then laid the foundation of today's global powers ogust on al-jazeera. a blast a near a polling station in pakistan kills more than twenty people as voting gets underway in a tightly contested general election. i'm. hundreds of thousands of troops have been deployed to protect polling stations across bucket don.

alonso raman you're watching all just our allies my headquarters here in doha also coming up i still hits back with a string of suicide attacks in a pro-government town in southwest syria dozens of civilians have been killed and the latest on the rescue and recovery operation in laos after a dam collapse floods a string of villages plus. i'm a clock reporting from inside the arctic circle on how the greenland ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate for centuries. welcome to the program we begin with breaking news coming out of pakistan where we are seeing the first signs of violence during what's being described as a hotly contested general election there's been a suicide attack near a polling station in questar that's the provincial capital of baluchistan millions of voters are casting their ballot to elect their third straight civilian government let's get the very latest from our correspondent. who is outside

a polling station in the capital islamabad that reports of clashes beginning in the northern province and now this attack in a southern state the tension that the authorities were worried about seems to be breaking out be it isolated. absolutely sure they were already hired. and that might not be forgotten just a few weeks ago the leader of the day to get dollar bond buckhurst on what's in a drone strike off their way to go to new leadership and that they were floored launch a campaign to try and disrupt and separate. additive ange for. losing their lead but importantly what we are nor what we are told at that point that this was a motorcycle. incident happened in an area called the. good

health but we are told that a number of victims include the policeman and also a number of people who would be coming toward for the election. to do that did you like need to go up and also about the clash in type of book room while provence what we are hearing a. political party the national the national party and the budget on. exchange five. hundred dollars of that one party will go watch. your mention attend to fed but as you can keep behind me there's a high turnout people in islamabad are coming out in large numbers they are bringing their families read them women are also actively participating in the elections i thought and that city is going to end but we have all the door that intel wabi again and. had. a ruling that

no woman will be allowed to war. is going to be a major setback and for tat doesn't happen but as you can see it's pretty normal as far in this concern and indeed in the lead up to the the election. paining has been very vocal and certainly the trying to get people to come out and vote and support the right political parties that they want to has been a very tight race it's hard to distinguish who might who might be in the lead. absolutely you look at the role of the media all these young people that you see walking about everybody said forne everybody getting what they did the political parties have been high put a active in. trying to galvanize the border television jordyn are all about politic political parties. and for the first time they did the great dinner

when they did why perhaps the election commission of get on the thing that day may be. done now despite the trade and all of that in this particular government and governments and politicians past and present have often been told with the allegations of corruption and pakistan is still learning how to go far enough to decades of military rule it's a steep learning curve for any civilian administration to do the job without the specter you might say of military oversight in the wings. where you're right do not make. the owner don't respond to bring a detour doyle's don't fall on the political body to bring to go full frontal more on it keep it going need to shape within the party that did not the. leg that lead them unfortunately here in pakistan or don't go away and be

a one man show or dennis tito have played their role in. any politic but things are changing and i think at the end of the day no matter what political party he became about them and how great your do to make your team that is going to depend mostly on the people of pakistan and despite the fact that they're not a cure nation that may be trying to engineer the ball at the moment the thing they're going to me and i think that would take on that election come out any way you wanted to go so far getting appointed. by the women wore during the ground and. anywhere to go. and no one knows it cured me afterward is going to be there concluded it will be monitoring events with you and of course with the somber in in lahore of course monitoring what happens from the election commission once all those votes have been counted

for the moment kemal thank you. all of the top stories that suicide attackers have hit the southern syrian city of near the border with jordan according to the government at least thirty eight people have died dozens have been injured let's join stephanie decker who's in the occupied golan heights what more do we know firstly about the blast and also we saw clashes on the ground on choose day and the fallout of. the syrian jet i mean what more can you tell us about that impact as well. i'll start with sway does you mention it's north of journeys about one hundred kilometers from here it's under government control it is a majority druze area as most of the golan heights and we understand there were multiple attempts one suicide bomber managed to detonate himself in a marketplace as you mentioned at least thirty eight killed mostly civilians from what we understand and according to syrian state media two other attackers

potential suicide attackers were killed but it just highlights still the precarious security situation even when the government is making more and more advances they've been in that area certainly for a very long time but if we look at where we are and again just behind us is the only pocket left of opposition control in this area it is a group affiliated with ice and we've seen intensive air strikes in the last hour or so a lot of sound of jets in the sky and as you mentioned the jet yesterday we were here when that happened we saw burning fields actually just behind where we are a whole field has been burnt because of the jet went down in this area syria says there will be a harsh response it has happened before speaking to people here they don't think the syrian government is going to do any retaliatory measure and just briefly the word from the government here is that it was a violation of israeli air space even though this is the occupied golan heights

they monitored the jet for around two kilometers before shooting it down with two patriot missiles the jet landed in that area and from what we understand according to russian sources the pilot has died for the moment of course when the servants with you through that i thank you. rescue workers are searching for hundreds of people reported missing after a dam collapsed on monday nights and a wall of water downstream flooding villages and sweeping away homes the billion dollars was under construction in a remote southeastern province a south korean firm involved in the project has sent teams to help with the rescue let's get the very latest from wayne hay hughes in neighboring bangkok in thailand what more do we know already wayne about the sort of rescue and recovery operation this is a huge logistical challenge. yes it is slowly but surely we're getting a picture of how serious this incident has been very difficult again to get information out of laos but they are the government. releasing information slowly

through their official state news agency the latest that they're saying is that nineteen at least nineteen people have been killed by this disaster and around one hundred believed to be still missing and they're saying that thousands are waiting to be rescued still there are people still sitting on rooftops clinging to trees surrounding surrounded by this muddy water that cascaded downstream from this burst dam on sunday night and went some five kilometers downstream also again highlighting the fact that this is a difficult place to get to laos in general at the best of times difficult place for international media for rights groups to get to get access to that may come to fruition again in this case we're hearing that a thai group of search and rescue personnel is trying to get in at the moment they are on the tile our border waiting for the green light from the lao government to

go and so we assume that this will very quickly become an international search and rescue operation with assistance from neighboring countries of course when you touch on assistance from neighboring countries only what a week or so we saw the international community help thailand when they had those young football team stuck in a flooded cave what wonders what sort of help lao would ask for from its neighbors considering it is quite a closed country and it is difficult to get access to it. yes it is it's notoriously secretive government it's a one party state a communist government and the pressure will certainly be on them now to allow the search and rescue personnel to come in from neighboring countries and from other countries around the region and indeed around the world we know that as you mentioned the south koreans want to send a delegation there they are doing that because they are very much involved in this dam project which was still under construction a south korean company was the major stakeholder in that project and they have been

the ones that have been released releasing most of the information really about what happened saying that they first saw some cracks in this auxiliary dam on sunday evening so that was about twenty four hours before the actual incident occurred they say they tried to get in there to fix these cracks but the road was damaged by the rain by the flood waters and they did issue a warning to the local authorities and they're saying that an evacuation process did begin at that time but clearly did not happen soon enough or maybe it was a case of people not heeding those warnings and again this will come to what we were talking about regarding information from the lao government down the track weeks and months ahead when it comes to an investigation into this there will be concerns about just how transparent any investigation may be or for the moment where it will leave come back to when the situation develops thank you well still ahead.