european leaders have rejected a british government plan for the two sides to agree the terms of britain's status outside the eu, at the same time as negotiating its departure. the president of the european parliament warned britain not to take any unilateral action before it leaves the bloc in 2019. after 44 years together, britain officially started the process of severing its ties with the european union. in a letter notifying the eu of brexit, the prime minister praised european values and insisted that britain can keep its trade benefits with the eu, even after it has left. the ousted south korean president, park geun—hye, has arrived in court for a hearing that will decide whether to approve an arrest warrant against her over corruption allegations. if the court approves the request, park will be immediately detained. let's have a quick look at some of the front pages of tomorrow's papers. the telegraph reports jubilation as article 50 is triggered, but it reports immediate tension between britain and brussels. the metro focuses on the prime

minister's warning that failure to reach a deal with the eu within the two—year time limit could "wea ken" cooperation in the fight against crime. the ft says theresa may's letter was seen in brussels as conciliatory and flexible. while the mirror reports on the tension, with germany's angela merkel rejecting an early start to talks on a new trade deal. nigel farage beams from the front of the mail with a celebratory pint. the times says the row over future security cooperation marred attempts by mrs may to build bridges with the eu. and the guardian says her comments were seen by many in brussels as blackmail. and mr farage is on the front of the express too. now, and next, it is time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk with me, zennor

badawi, in florida, when high speed two psychologist james mitchell. he helped draw up and carry out the cia's enhanced interrogation programme after the september 11 attacks. he personally interrogated suspects using techniques like waterboarding. his critics say he is at porgera. he says he has nothing to apologise for, and what he did was harsh but legal and necessary. so this is your study? yes. the thing that is useful about a lie relate this is, for example, this is a book of sharia law from a salafist position. i have a couple of versions of the koran, because not all translations are the same. what sort of insights based on their

knowledge from these books and your training asa knowledge from these books and your training as a psychologist about what motivates the kind of people you have interrogated into carrying out the deeds or wanting to carry out the deeds or wanting to carry out the deeds that we know about? i've heard people say that these terror attacks that we are seeing in europe, great britain, and the united states had nothing to do with islam. but having spoke to many terrorists such as abd al—rahim al—nashiri, i can tell you in their minds it has everything to do with islam. there are interrogated and -- there interpretation. yes, they are salafist interpretation of islam. —— there. james mitchell, welcome to

hardtalk thank you for having me on. so there you are after more than 20 yea rs so there you are after more than 20 years in the us air force. you are working as a consultant for the caa. the september 11 attacks happened and you see to the caa that you want to be part of the solution. -- cia. why? it was an attack on our homeland. the main thing that influenced me to want to volunteer to help out was the death and destruction. the critical thing when they asked me if i would be willing to become involved in the interrogation programme really was the falling man and the people jumping off the building. i thought it was inappropriate and wrong for them to have to choose which way they died as a result of this cowardly attack that was done by these islamist that would try to destroy our way of life. so, obviously using your experience as a clinical psychologist, working with the american military for many years could help identify, recommend techniques that would work as part

of the enhanced interrogation programme. but how would you make the leap from that to actually carrying out, personally, some of those interrogation techniques?m the time they asked if i would do the time they asked if i would do the interrogations myself, i had received more than 90 intel briefings over the impending catastrophic attacks that were in the works. there was a lot of reliable intelligence to suggest that that second wave of attacks might involve a nuclear weapons. when they asked me, i was initially relu cta nt to when they asked me, i was initially reluctant to do it. you know? why we are reluctant? because i knew that i was not there to be a psychologist and more. i have no illusions about that. i am not go to practise any more. and i had invested a lot of my time in education into developing those skills. which were useful for what they did do, but i knew i was not to use them again. and one of

the senior people, along withjose rodriguez, who is the chief of the counterterrorism centre at the time, lead over and said if i wasn't at help, how could they are somebody else to. i had received those very in—depth intel briefings about potentially catastrophic attacks. but you knew what was being asked of you, and you are being asked if he isa you, and you are being asked if he is a carryout techniques such as waterboarding, slapping a terror suspect around the face, putting them ina suspect around the face, putting them in a small and confined space, that sort of thing. i had seen those things done for at least 11 years in my military career. i knew that they did not result in permanent harm, mentally or physically, and had been trained to apply the myself. in addition to that, i had experienced all of them. so to me, it did not seem like a big a jump to someone who you just stopped on the street and asked him to do that. would you

grit your teeth when you had to do these techniques? i found them difficult to do morally, but it was a lwa ys difficult to do morally, but it was always a moral choice between trying to save lives and allowing people who were trying to withhold information that could potentially stop those attacks to continue to do it, especially since they had voluntarily taken up arms against us. voluntarily taken up arms against us. those eits were used in a short period of time. abu zubaydah was of course working with al qaeda when he went under these techniques. he was the first person that we had captured. he had given the money for 9/11, and he had moved money and people for them, and was running a training camp that they sometimes relied on. not all the time, but sometimes. so he was a person of

interest and 80s were used to him. —— advanced interrogation techniques. waterboarding was another technique you recommended. just described to us what it is like. cheering i was water boarded myself. in fact, like. cheering i was water boarded myself. infact, i like. cheering i was water boarded myself. in fact, i water boarded as many attorneys as i have terrorists. in the run—up to deciding if it was legal and did not violate any us laws or the constitutional treaty. i actually water boarded an assistant attorney general. it sucks. it is uncomfortable. it feels like you could potentially suffocate. you know you are not going to, but it is ha rd to know you are not going to, but it is hard to keep out of your mind. so it is not painful in the sense that you do not experience a loss of pain, but it is frightening. because it makes the person think that they are

suffocating or drowning. you feel as though you could, you do not feel as if you are. what you actually express yourself as the person who is carrying out the waterboarding? we would prefer that people just volunteer the information. and in fa ct, volunteer the information. and in fact, it is one of the deceptive things. abbottabad up who we spoke about was in custody for 1623 days. he received 1a days of eits. —— abu zubaydah. 1609 he received 1a days of eits. —— abu zu baydah. 1609 days he received 1a days of eits. —— abu zubaydah. 1609 days he cooperated with us. and did not receive any mistreatment. 0r with us. and did not receive any mistreatment. or any physical coercion or anything like that. so what we wanted to do was to take these people who were withholding information and put them in a situation where they would try to find some solution. and as soon as they try to find a solution, then we can swish to social influence stuff,

the kinds of things he would know as a psychologist and interrogator or any other kind of investigator. —— switch. so you can do passes. but especially a loser but they are —— a man like abu zubaydah, they are used to getting of information. we are not about the run of the mill islamist on the battlefield, we are talking about the top tier of people. that had you feel? jie xu makassar later was made duty. -- i felt that it was my duty. in fact, we started that way. anyone who is familiar with the way it was done knows that we would, in every time, start with a neutral assessment of whether or not the person was going to tell. and in those places where you use the 80s, as soon as we use them, we told them what will go to

asked them about the next time, and then the next time we started with a neutral assessment. so soon as the person began to co—operate, we. eits. eits, i should say of course, are advanced interrogation techniques. abu zubaydah was another person you interrogator. you also water boarded him. but he had a technique to resist waterboarding. it looked like magic to me. i don't know what was going on with his sinuses, but he swallowed some of the water, so the situation was we had to switch to sailing so he would not suffer water intoxication. and he would pass it is nose and out of his mouth. so waterboarding, although it into dreaded, was not really as effective on him as it was on the others. because with abu zubaydah, in one session you describe that he actually vomited.

that was the very service to per session. balague for the position said you needed to give him of hours or 1a hours. —— that was the very first session. you were not sure that he was breeding. you are concerned. -- breathing. he did tell at one point, but he vomited up is heard. i had to say, of course, as you outlined in your book, enhanced interrogation: inside the minds and motives of the islamic terrorists trying to destroy america, waterboarding was something that was authorised by the bush administration from the very top, from the department of defence and the department ofjustice, they had said that this was unauthorised. and vice president dick cheney said it was fine and did not constitute torture. so want to make that clear. but there is alternative point of view that says waterboarding does constitute torture. we know, for example, ba rack constitute torture. we know, for example, barack 0bama said it did

constitute torture. so by extension, your critics would say, that you are a perpetrator of torture, or to put it another way, you are a torture at yourself. what is your that? what matters is what the legal counsel says. they are the highest authority terms of making these decisions. torture has a legal definition. the total weight that we use the word torture, agassi what people think that. and that is the way barack 0bama used to. i personally think that late term abortions are torture. but it does not matter what jim mitchell thinks ought to make is or is not —— thinks is or is not torture. there was a several year—long investigation into whether anyone involved in the enhanced interrogation programme had tortured anyone. and in the end, a career prosecutor came back and said there

is no case to be made. so what do you say when people say to you james mitchell, you are torture, because you carried out waterboarding. she is rakhine state you are entitled to your opinion. but it is not mine. —— isa that you are entitled to your opinion. but it is mine. we stopped that second wave of attacks. —— i said. i don't feel that the tenbury discomfort of a person like abhishek muhamed does not shake the requirement to save lives. —— temporarily discomfort. they voluntarily decided to attack us and then the second time, and he is not aus then the second time, and he is not a us citizen. he was not captured inside the united states. he is not really someone who should be given the constitutional rights of an

american citizen. and so i owe my fellow countrymen more than i owe khalid sheikh mohammed, given that at any point he could have simply saidi at any point he could have simply said i will tell you and stop the attack. 0ne said i will tell you and stop the attack. one of the criticisms is that there has not been a safework. but in fact, there is a safework. angie seth word is, a lens that question. —— safe word. —— and the safeword. donald trump city wanted to bring back waterboarding. he said he would take a position that he would do more than that. would you like to see waterboarding brought back, because of course barack 0bama stopped the enhanced interrogation techniques in 2009. some form of legal corps version is necessary. at the very top, people

like abu zu baydah, necessary. at the very top, people like abu zubaydah, they are not going to freely give up that information. general matters said, andi information. general matters said, and i have a lot of respect for the man, but he said gimme some beer and a pack of cigarettes and i could get more “— a pack of cigarettes and i could get more —— general mattis. a pack of cigarettes and i could get more -- general mattis. that is the rapport approach. but you have to ask yourself, would he give up information that would allow america to be attacked in an instant? he would not do that. the only thing standing between another catastrophic attack on some senior person is whether or not that person is willing to voluntarily give that information. you feel that because america no longer uses eits that it isa america no longer uses eits that it is a less safe place? we used law—enforcement techniques. the local maul cop has more choices for

interrogation techniques. america is less safe as a result in your view? yes. notjust this, but many of the things that happened in the last eight years. republican senatorjohn mccain, a vietnam war veteran. he wrote in the washington post in 2011, i know from personal experience that abusing prisoners sometimes gives good intelligence but sometimes bad intelligence, because under torture, someone will say anything he believes his captors wa nt to say anything he believes his captors want to hear. that is a response to your points. sometimes coercion does not yield the right response. that is true in some ways. if you ask leading questions and you, umm, tell the person or lead the person to believe that the only way to stop thatis believe that the only way to stop that is to, umm, to tell you what you want to hear, then you do get that kind of information, you do get

misinformation to be that is not out it is done. let me be clear with the. what happens is that we would say to the person we want information to stop operations. we know you do not have all of that, but we have some of that. that is what we want to talk about. and so the point would not be to tell them where we wanted them to go. there was the senate intelligence committee report, of course, into the practices of... yes. i want to pick up on that, chaired by the democratic senator, die—in a fine —— dianne. she said this is a stain on our values. do you not have sympathy with that? what you said was authorised and approved, but nevertheless it was a stain. was authorised and approved, but nevertheless it was a stainlj was authorised and approved, but nevertheless it was a stain. i have sympathy for it. but i reject the

idea that it is a stain. you have to understand... we are talking about a matter of days with the use of eits. 0ne matter of days with the use of eits. one of the ways i think about this is that we do, as do other countries, drone strikes. when we do a drone strike, we send a cruise missile or a hellfire missile into a family and kill the grandmother, we kill the kids, we kill the neighbours, whoever happens to be around this place. that is not a stain? in my mind, questioning someone, even stain? in my mind, questioning someone, even with some temporary discomfort, where you do not harm them, and then you go out and ca ptu re them, and then you go out and capture these are the people, it does a lot than these other things. —— other. does a lot than these other things. -- other. she also said in the foreword to the report that it

amounts to cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. that was the violation of us law. what you did, arguably, waterboarding, the other techniques, it did amount to cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment. do you accept that criticism?” accept there are people that think that way, i will not try to argue about their position. here is the thing to remember. it is that in those circumstances where there are catastrophic attacks coming, and there were catastrophic attacks coming, and people are withholding information, we were under no obligation to allow them to withhold that information and kill thousands of americans. we just are not. that information and kill thousands of americans. wejust are not. and the way the current set—up is that we are dependent entirely on volu nta ry we are dependent entirely on voluntary statements. you see it was entirely justifiable?”

voluntary statements. you see it was entirelyjustifiable? i am not saying the entire cia programme was justifiable. you warned yourself of the risk of techniques, and some people were interrogating with a handgun, a power drill. they did things that were completely not authorised, like keeping people's elbows together and taking them to their head and taping them up. in my view that violates the law because it does not go along with the justice department. and then the detainees, iraqi detainees, being leashed up in one day and people being detained without legal process and so on. —— guantanamo bay. 0bviously and so on. —— guantanamo bay. obviously you are not part of that.

but nevertheless you could be seen as part of this whole programme which, in some people's minds, really does denote... i can understand people thinking that way. and i accept there are people that think that way. you know? i don't know how to respond to it beyond that. i believe there are people who think that way. a lot of it comes from ignorance. some of it is based on the mistaken notion that we can somehow make the islamists who are attacking us like us. that if we just spent more time with the islamists, trying to convince them that... i mean, ispent years islamists, trying to convince them that... i mean, i spent years with khalid sheikh mohammed and other high—level, the 1a other terrorist that were captured, and it was clear talking to them that there was nothing we were going to do that would allow them to accept western democracy. in fact, they said western democracy and true shariah

cannot coexist. this man said of his time in iraq, when you become the torturer, something happens. it has a corrosive effect over time. it chases you and changes you. the reason waterboarding was not done more than it was was because the interrogators did not want to do it. we agreed to do it to these people to stop catastrophic attacks. 0nce we had enough information that we did not need to use it, we were not interested in it any more. waterboarding is not the first or best choice. we went out of our way to avoid doing that. and so i think if you... you know? it is one thing to put people in cages and nail

people to trees and crucify children and bury people and throw rocks at them. it is difficult to come back from that. was to four-year? i rely on legality. i am convinced that we did things in a way that did not produce permanent harm, mentally or physically. that is my obligation when i do get. i don't have any control over how people do it. you said you wondered about whether you should actually carry out these things that it would change your life as you knew it. do you regret going down that path? well, the only thing that i actually regret is that in doing that, you know, i am not

likely to be a college professor, you know, iam not likely to be a college professor, you know, i am not still doing consultation for some of the things i was involved in, i would, to the extent that having done those things sort of blackballed me from doing other stuff, i had regrets about that. but no regrets about doing it. because i do not think you need to be ashamed of trying to save american lives. i travel quite a bit in the us. and i have not personally run into one single person who was critical of me. i have run into people who disagree about the use of eits, saying i prefer it did not happen, but i can understand that you did it to stop these attacks. by the vast majority of people i run into are grateful that somebody was willing to do what needs to be done to protect them. —— but. willing to do what needs to be done to protect them. -- but. james mitchell, thank you very much for coming in hardtalk and thank you.

thank you. hi there. mixed weather fortunes for today's weather picture. for some, the warmest day of the year so far. for others it will be cloudy, damp and breezy. western areas will have rain today. rain coming from the south and west. across eastern areas of england, the air has been coming up from the near continent, and that is going to be bringing temperatures into the low 20s in the warmest spots. as i say, the warmest day of the year so far. a mild start to the day, then, for many of us with temperatures staying in double figures, 11 to 12 degrees as we start off. always the risk of some pulses of rain affecting northern ireland. western areas of scotland looking pretty wet. and maybe for cumbria as well. and in fact there will be some further pulses of rain coming and going across these western areas through the day on and off really

through the rest of the day. for the east, after a rather cloudy start to things, things will brighten up with some hazy sunshine coming through. now, in scotland, south—western areas the warmest. dumfrees and galloway. not too much rain towards the murray coastline. here there could be some brighter spells coming through. northern ireland, rain. there or therabouts for much of the day. but there will be some drier spells from time to time. western england and wales also prone to seeing some pulses of rain even into the afternoon. but further east, that's where we've got the warm sunshine. the sunshine will be hazy. we could see temperatures pushing up to 22 around degrees in the warmest spots. now, during the evening and overnight, there will be some more wet weather coming across western areas of the uk. the rain turning more persistent and heavier. there'll be some rather murky conditions developing over the hills as well with some mist and hillfog patches. but it wil be another mild night. temperatures 11—12 degrees for many of us. let's take a look at friday's weather picture. well, low pressure is in charge. we're going to see a band of rain moving its way north and eastwards as we go through the morning.

then the weather will try to improve as we head through the afternoon. so northern ireland brightening up. there'll be some sunshine spreading across much of england and wales. southern areas of scotland too by the end of the day. but it will turn quite windy for northern scotland later on. never that warm across the far north. but in the sunshine, temperatures pushing well into the teens. pretty mild for the time of year. and for the weekend, wel, it's an unsettled start to things on saturday. a mixture of bright spells and passing showers. temperatures reaching a high of 17 towards the south—east. and that's your weather. hello you're watching bbc world news. i'm ben bland. our top story this hour: europe wakes up to the challenging task ahead. as brussels considers a formal response to brexit, britain will set out its plans for post—eu legislation. welcome to the programme.

our other main stories this hour: crunch time for south korea's ousted—president — prosecutors are seeking the arrest of park geun—hye over a long—running corruption scandal.