the biggest protests were in moscow, where activists say eight 100 people were detained, including the opposition leader, alexei navalny. mosul‘s civilian population is continuing to pay a high price as iraqi forces step up the fight against so—called islamic state. thousands of people have left the city in recent weeks and there are conflicting reports about who was responsible for scores of civilian deaths in a single incident last week. britain's home secretary, amber rudd, has demanded access to encrypted messaging services in terrorism cases. she made the comments to the bbc after it was reported that the man who killed four people in london last week was on whatsapp moments before he carried out the attack. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. a host of countries around the world

still impose the ultimate punishment on the most serious criminals, death. what's it like to be in command of the machinery of state sanctioned execution? today i'm going to get a rare insight from allen ault, who spent years running the correction facility in the southern us state of georgia. he organised the killing of criminals until he could stand it no more. now he's an opponent of the death penalty. why? allen ault, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. it's back in the 1990s that you were the commissioner of corrections in the us state of georgia, and you were responsible for running the machinery of capital punishment. is that experience still with you today? it is still here. i still have nightmares, not every night, but on occasion i still have nightmares about it. it's a very hard pill to swallow. it stays in your psyche forever. it's the most premeditated murder possible. the manual is about that thick, and the preparation you go through to execute someone. i can tell from your words already that this is seared into your soul,

this whole experience. let's start with how you got involved in this element of the corrections business. as i understand it, you were a trained psychologist and you entered the world of corrections, the present system, believing that you were there to help and to rehabilitate. how on earth did you end up running death row and execution chambers? in the ‘70s, i'd never been into prison orjail, in georgia they had a brand—new maximum security prison, called the georgia diagnostic classification center. the only problem was they didn't have a programme. they hired me to develop a diagnostic classification system as a psychologist. they made me superintendent and warden of the institution. that was ultimately the institution and the facility that became the chamber of death. yes. many years later. listen, how did you get sucked into a system to the point where,

having been a psychologist, having entered the system as somebody committed to rehabilitation, you ended up as the chief who was signing off on and running a system of death? in the early ‘70s, when i started in corrections, the death penalty was unconstitutional and then it was later, in ‘74, that georgia wrote a new law that was determined to be constitutional by the us supreme court. but the actual executions didn't take place until many years later because of appeals. the first two that i executed had been on death row for 17 years. in fact they were 17 when they came in and they were 3a when they were executed. actually they were different individuals. let's talk about the case because i think it is important to get very specific here.

the 17—year—old that you mentioned, i believe he was called christopher burger, he was of limited iq. i think he scored something like 80 or so on the test, suggesting he was close to being mentally impaired. he also had been abused as a child. he ended up being involved in the kidnap, rape and murder of a young man. as you say, he was on death row for 17 years, you got to know him. yes. i visited when i was commissioner, i visited death row on several occasions, i got to know him. this was the first warrant i had to execute someone. i went down to jackson, about a0 miles from atlanta, where central headquarters are, so i talked to him and other people on death row. so it wasn'tjust a matter of executing somebody that was... that you didn't know... you said i think that

you saw the change in him, from a very disturbed young man to a man who, by the time he was approaching his end, you describe as being thoughtful and actually contrite. yes, very contrite. you know, to put it in psychological terms, when he committed the act he didn't have a fully developed frontal lobes which allowed you to make full decisions. he was a juvenile. he was. and the other criminal involved in the crime was also juvenile. they were now adults, they had been on death row for 17 years. they had educated themselves while on death row. they had received a lot of counselling and other services while they were on death row, so they were different human beings. christopher burger‘s last words

to you just before you gave the order for the switch to be pressed, were, "please forgive me." as i executed others, many of which i found out went on to filibuster. you had to cut them off. i would have done that too. his was very simple, please forgive me. how did you feel at that moment? it was your responsibility to give the order. yes. i was standing behind in another room with a glass, looking at the back of the electric chair. i was there with the attorney general for the state of georgia and we had phones hooked up to the us supreme court, the governor's office, the georgia pardons and parole office, and so then, when he checked with each of those entities which might grant a stay

or parole or commute the sentence, but when he checked with each entity and there was no stay, he indicated that to me. there was an individual standing behind me who had been my electrician when i was a warden at this institution. i knew him very well. when the attorney general indicated that there was no stay, then i asked the individual if he'd like to give his last words. he said, "please forgive me." then i turned to brad and said, "brad, it's now time." brad flipped a switch and we could see thatjolt of electricity running through this individual‘s body and it

snapped his head back. and then there was total silence. and i knew i had killed another human being. at the very beginning of this interview, you used the word murder. yes. do you believe in your heart that you murdered or were complicit in the murder of christopher burger? although it is state sanctioned, it is premeditated murder, the most premeditated of any. in most states, executions in the coroner's report are listed

as a homicide. yes, i feel like i was very much involved in premeditated killing and giving the orderfor him to be murdered. how much damage has that done to you? we provided psychological help for everyone involved, the officers and warden involved, but then i realised the attorney general and i weren't receiving treatment and it got harder and harderfor me. the attorney general, he handled it by running for governor and talking about being tough on crime. but i don't think he handled it very well. i finally went and asked for treatment and received some

treatment to help me through it. help you through what? did you feel a sense of guilt? a large sense of guilt. at first i tried to rationalise this whole process that, "well, if i could save one human being by this process, then it will be worth it." you mean the idea of the deterrent effect? yes, the deterrent effect. but i already knew, i had already read the research on the deterrent effect and i had talked to so many inmates even before we had the death penalty, and rarely do any of the inmates ever think through to the consequences of their actions. so to say that it deters and... you know, there have been some

pieces of research that indicated it was a deterrent. but i don't think any reputable research would say that it has been a deterrent. even the family of the victim were in the institution. i didn't allow them to go into the room where the witnesses were at the execution. why didn't you allow them? i know, i used to work in the united states, i've covered executions and i know that in many states, in many situations, the family of the victims, those who were murdered, they are invited if they want to witness the death, the execution. we invited them to the execution but we didn't let them witness it.

but there are families who want to be there. they say it adds to their sense ofjustice being done. this word that gets used so often, closure. they did not receive the closure that they thought they would. i didn't want an execution to be revenge. i did not do it well. this is what i find most puzzling

about this first execution. you say you didn't actually even then believe in the deterrent effect and you clearly had grave doubts about what you were doing. but you went on to supervise the killing of more prisoners. four after that. how could he do that, how could you live with your conscience? could he do that, how could you live with your conscience ?|j could he do that, how could you live with your conscience? i didn't do it well. it was a small part of that job. i have 15,000 employees, a $1 billion budget. you were a top official in the prison system in the united states, but with all due respect it was not a small part of yourjob, because it was the moment in which you, in a certain sense, were playing god. you were playing with people's lives, and that's no small matter. it certainly is not and i spent a lifetime since then regretting every moment and every killing.

five, in total. it is perhaps too easy for me to sit here with you and go through cases and ask you difficult questions, but there is one other case that i really must ask you about. that's the black man who was convicted of murdering three women. right. that's right. he was sentenced to die. yes. it became plain, in that period between conviction and death that first of all there had been a significant racial element within the jury. 0ne juror described an atmosphere of intimidation, where the n word was repeatedly used for that minority ofjurors who were black, who were ultimately to decide his fate.

there was also evidence that this man was mentally impaired, to the point where frankly many experts didn't believe he was competent. to make a plea. you still, despite all of that, had him killed. yes. i was, without trying to excuse myself at all, i was the vehicle for the execution and i have no defence for that. why didn't you walk away? i did, but not them. it was too late. yes. for him it was too late. it was too late, yes. when you are doing the executions, you don't get all the history of what went on in the jury, looking back over all that information came out but you certainly didn't have that

type of information. but when you look at the research, black people who kill whites are about three times more likely to receive the death penalty than the other way around. certainly it's a racial thing. i found that in talking to many, many citizens, they usually have a stereotype in the back of their minds that they are frightened of. in the south, that might be a large black rapist, but there's always a racial stereotype involved. usually. and so when you are talking about an execution they are killing that stereotype, not the human

being that actually is there. and i have many compatriots who were directors who have gone through this execution. i don't know any of them that haven't shed a lot of tears over it. you talk about shedding tears. is that as far as it goes for you? or have you taken from your experience a determination to do something about it? there's a group of five of us, three who were former directors, the other two former wardens. one of them was the director in california one a director in ohio, and we have an organisation that we work, we're trying to stop executions. i appeared before several legislative groups, trying to abolish the death penalty in several states. so it's been an ongoing type of thing.

we've worked on individual cases. most of them not too successful, but i did have success last year with one case, of getting it stayed and then commuted the next day. and those are very personal experiences. this individual was a black man who was six foot nine. he had a good record until he was around 19 and somebody said, i wonder what daniel would do if he took this blue pill? they gave him the blue pill and he just went absolutely berserk for about four hours, stabbed and killed his best friend and stabbed one other individual who survived. and then the prosecutor went all out to try him and he went to death row and he was there 19 years. he, as big as he was,

he could have been a bully of death row, but he spent the whole 19 years trying to help other people. so i was asked to try and intervene in this case and i did talk with the parole board and we gathered affidavits from many of the staff who told how good he was, how great he was on death row. at the very last moment, about two hours before he was to be executed, they stayed the execution. in that sense, in that particular campaign, for that particular individual, did that seem like some sort of, i don't know, some sort of giving back, some sort of payback, for what you had done yourself in the past? i look at all the things i do now, i try to alleviate the sense of guilt. i've made two movies,

one for discovery channel, which was produced and directed by a british firm, because they wanted to do a nonpolitical film. well, i'm sorry, but the death penalty is totally political. i wanted to talk briefly about politics. you said this of politicians that you've had experience of as a director of corrections in the united states. in the field of corrections, you say, politicians played to the base instincts of the electorate. there's an awful lot of grandstanding. yes. you sound very cynical about politicians on this issue. yes, one north georgia chicken farmer told me about politics. he said, allen, i'll do whatever you want me to do. you want some more money in your budget or you want to change the law, unless it becomes between me and one of my constituents, and he said the name of the game is re—election. and certainly that's our us congress and most legislature. so many of them will tell me, we've got to just be tough on crime to our constituents. but that in a way is the point.

in this extraordinary change of heart you've had, and the journey you've made, you're missing out one element, are you not? that is the united states is very proud of its democracy and every poll in the us to this day, even though the numbers have changed somewhat, shows that a majority, a clear majority of americans, believe in the death penalty as the ultimate deterrent. and as long as that is true, don't politicians have a duty to reflect that? well, i don't know. they also have a duty to inform their voters, the constituents, an example. connecticut, they had a research that was done over four decades by donohue, from stanford university, a law professor. they had every little case judged by independentjudges. because people thought the most egregious cases were on death row. it turned out somewhere around 47 or 49 of the most egregious cases,

where they'd cause pain or rape or whatever, only one of those cases was actually on death row. when that and some other things, the expense of it, is tremendous, the connecticut legislature last year did away with the death penalty. to end, let's bring it back to you. you wrote not so long ago some very powerful words. you said, no one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, shame and guilt. yes. is that what you have been sentenced to? absolutely. every time i think it's behind me, then something happens and it all comes back with a rush. i was out at the lexington airport,

i had a 6:05am flight and the 6am flight left. by all rights i'd always been on delta airlines. this morning, i was going someplace else and was another another airline. i checked in with all these people. the plane crashed and killed everyone of them. i had to go again, all those feelings came back. all those faces came back. all those nightmares came back. just had to keep re—dealing with it, re—dealing with it. well, allen ault, i thank you for sharing your experience with us. thanks for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much. hello again.

it is not often that we get the best of the weather over the weekend, but that seems to be the case this time round. on sunday, we had a temperature of 20 degrees in highland scotland, aviemore, for example. but, for many of us on sunday, the skies were not quite as blue. we had some high cloud contaminating things. now, there is some cloud coming up from nearby france, but we are also filling in the north sea with low cloud, and it is that that's heading our way right now, particularly into parts of northern england, down into the midlands and wales. still got the high pressure in charge at the moment, and it is going to be pretty chilly, despite a bit more cloud. temperatures a bit lower

across the southern half of the uk, where that stronger wind has now finally relented. any frost in the north will tend to lift fairly quickly, i think, across mainland scotland. one or two mist and fog patches, perhaps, but the sunshine coming through. a little bit more cloud by morning, perhaps, in northern ireland, and a change for england and wales, where we will start off a bit grey, misty and murky across the likes of north—east england, perhaps into the midlands and into east wales. this is the main area of low cloud, spilling in from the north sea. south of that, the odd patch of mist or low cloud, but some sunshine as well, and most of us will see the sunshine burning through that cloud. it does take a while, though, where it has moved in off the north sea, and the odd patch may linger through into the afternoon, especially across the north—east of england and south—east scotland. so here, that low cloud will peg back the temperatures. 0therwise, with some sunshine, the numbers are similar to what we had on sunday. highest temperatures again in highland scotland, and this time in the south—east of england, where we don't have that cold, easterly wind.

over the week ahead, though, we are going to find more cloud arriving, and the chance of some rain, especially in the north and west of the uk. but southerly winds, mind you, so still decent temperatures by day, and it won't be as cold at night, either. but the high pressure is shrinking away into the near continent. instead there is a massive area of low pressure out in the atlantic, and that will dominate our weather, to bring with it showers or longer spells of rain. and the first signs of rain really arrive on tuesday. a bit of a dull start, ahead of the showers moving into the south—west, wales, northern ireland, later the midlands, northern england, and eventually southern scotland. north—east scotland still rather grey and cool, with the onshore breeze. maybe one or two showers in the south—east and east anglia, but some sunshine here as well, and this is where we will see the highest temperatures, and many places will be dry. and it could be that way again on wednesday. weather fronts coming in around that big area of low pressure threaten to bring more organised rain into the western side of the uk, but ahead of it, still

largely dry and warm in the south—east. hello you're watching bbc world news. hello, you're watching bbc world news. i'm ben bland. the us condemns the arrests of hundreds of protesters in russia and calls for their release. it follows mass rallies across the country and the detention of alexei navalny, one of president putin's fiercest critics. welcome to the programme. our other main stories this hour: australia's four—year inquiry into institutional abuse draws to a close. we'll be live in sydney for the latest on the landmark investigation. resident in the uk but living in limbo. we report on the uncertainty facing millions of eu citizens based here. i'm sally bundock.

in business, extending the cuts to oil production.