james comey, the man leading the investigation into possible collusion between his election campaign and russia. in a letter, mr trump told mr comey that he was unable to effectively head the fbi and new leadership was needed to restore public trust in the organisation. the democratic leader in the senate, chuck schumer, said it was now time to appoint a special prosecutor to take over the russia inquiry. otherwise, he said, the american people would be entitled to suspect that removing mr comey had been an attempt to stifle the inquiry. the new president of south korea, moonjae—in, has formally started his first day in office. mr moon is a liberal human rights lawyer who has called for co—operation with north korea and questioned the deployment of a us missile defence system. his inauguration will take place in a few hours time. now on bbc news as part of hardtalk‘s 20 year anniversary we broadcast an interview first transmitted in july 2015. stephen sackur speaks to the italian author roberto saviano. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. my guest today is a writer whose work has made him powerful enemies. a decade ago, roberto saviano wrote a best—selling book, gomorrah, which exposed the power and brutality of the naples mafia. the crime bosses put a price on his head and in the last ten years, he has lived in a shadowy world of safe houses and bodyguards. now he's written a new book about the global cocaine trade. why has he sacrificed so much to expose organised crime? roberto saviano, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. you have taken an extraordinary decision because here you are, a writer whose early decision to write about organised crime has changed your life and in some ways has cost you an ordinary life, and yet here you are, writing another book about organised crime. why have you come back to the same subject? i'm interested that you have described the situation in personal terms. you talk about revenge and a feeling of vendetta. let us go back to the beginning and see where the personal feelings come from. would it not be true to say that if you hadn't been born in naples, in napoli, one of the headquarters of one of the most powerful mafia groups in all of italy, things would have been very different? naples shaped you.

but what i want to get to is why you specifically decided you had to dig deep into the camorra, the local mafia gangs in naples. because, let's face it, your family lived peacefully in the city. your dad was a doctor. he made his life there. you had a mother and a brother. it was only you who was in the end filled with this rage and wanted to take on the camorra and describe exactly what they were doing. why? why you? do you think that the camorra was and is so pervasive in naples that every family is, in a way, morally compromised by it? you once said, "from the postman to the professor, just by keeping quiet, we become part of this mechanism that i wanted to expose." do you feel that it has spread

so far that everybody is somehow corrosively connected? let's think back ten years to your decision to write. you say that your book, gomorrah, is full of graphic stories and detail of how the camorra in napoli worked. and you went into real detail, you named names. it seems to me that you must have been aware that writing that book and having it published notjust in italy but around the world was going to create a massive problem for you. well, you have had to live with the decisions you took then for the last ten years and it seems to me that you are now a man who is filled with conflicting, difficult feelings, and quite a lot of regret. you have said that the impact of having the death threat upon you is notjust about you, it is about your mother and your father and your family as well, and you say that you can never forgive yourself for the impact it has had upon them.

does that mean that you wish you had not written gomorrah? what is it like? i'm a journalist like you. well, you are a writer and i'm a journalist. i cannot imagine the impact of having to live with bodyguards every day of my life, having every move i make monitored, having this sense that a threat could lie around any corner. are there times when you have actually found it impossible to live this life and feel sane? sure, and we know what happened. the two bosses were acquitted. they walked free from the court. you spoke, i think, to salman rushdie one time about how to live free even when surrounded by security and bodyguards and all of this paraphernalia. what is the secret to being as free

as you can be, in your mind? it seems to me the most damaging aspect of this threat that you live with is that you no longer, it seems, trust people, partly because of what you have learned in the research for your books in organised crime but also because of the way people have responded to you since you were threatened. you say that when you look at people now and you think about humanity, you see the monster in all of us, you see the shadow. and you hate yourself for seeing the shadows in people but you do it all the time. that must be very difficult. you've already suggested deep

disappointment with the way the politicians, the big powers in italy, have responded to your case. is that in your view because italy is still heavily dominated by the mafia, organised crime? well, berlusconi was prime minister for much of the period you have been in hiding. berlusconi said that your view of the mafia in italy was unnecessarily negative, that you were talking italy down, and maybe quite a number of italians feel the same way. i guess what this gets to is whether you really believe that

your words, and in particular your book gomorrah, changed anything. because if it didn't change anything, it raises the question of what the heck all of your suffering since has been about? and you have continued writing, and your latest book, zerozerozero,

is about the massive impact of the global cocaine trade. how is it possible to be an investigative writer, as you are, now that you are surrounded by police and bodyguards, when your name is associated forever with gomorrah and everything that came with it? how can you possibly maintain this investigative profession? but i'm just... there just seems to be such an irony here, that in a way you're telling me that you have more freedom to go to the favelas of guatemala or the drug towns of colombia than you have your own country, italy. would you say that, you know, having focused so heavily on mafia activity

in italy, now the organised cartel trafficking and cocaine industry around the world, you come across as a man who has a very bleak, dark view of the human condition and human impulses, and greed and cruelty, and the worst aspects of human behaviour. am i right? but the... the problem with that is that the truth is not winning. the mafia is not finished in italy. the cocaine trade is as powerful as ever across the world, as you itemise in the book. one thing you conclude in the latest book on the cocaine trade is that, in your view, the only way to beat the traffic is to legalise cocaine around the world. that is a counsel of despair. of course, if we legalised hard drugs they would become more available,

they would become cheaper, more people would take them. is that really the only way you can see of ending organised criminality connected to the drug trade? i want to end bringing it back to a personal level, roberto, because your life in some ways is not your own anymore. and itjust struck me as very symbolic that at the beginning of your latest book you write a dedication to the police bodyguards who have been with you for all of these years. i think you say, "we have spent 51,000 hours together. "and here's to all of the hours and the places we will be in the future." do you really feel that, for the rest of your days, you are going to live with bodyguards, in safehouses, never knowing where you might be sleeping the next week?

is that really the rest of your life? but you have no choice. we have to end there, roberto, on maybe that thought, that hope that you have.

thank you very much for being on hardtalk. hi there. we had some glorious sunshine yesterday across western parts of the country once again. these were the clear skies in abersock, north—west wales. we have had a lot of sunshine over the last few days across western parts of the country. but if i run through the last few days in the east, you can see rather cloudier weather in from the north sea, with pesky winds bringing cloud across much of central and eastern england in particular. it hasn't felt warm either

under the cloudy skies. however, the weather is going to change because the wind is changing direction. we're not bringing cloud from the north sea. the pressure is relatively higher on wednesday. the winds will be a little bit lighter. it will be sunny and warm day for many parts of the country. yes, warmth on the way but it will be a chilly start to the morning. temperatures start around two or three degrees in the countryside. there will be a few spots see temperatures below freezing in the coldest areas. cloudy in scotland. a bit of rain for the northern isles. 0therwise, mainly dry. we should see sunshine from the central belt southwards across scotland, northern ireland, england and wales, mostly starting fine and sunny with a few patches of cloud to start the day for east anglia. i think for most of us temperatures come up quickly with light winds and blue skies overhead. and that's really the way the weather will stay through the rest of the day. again, prone to a few spits and spots of rain across the far north of scotland but otherwise

essentially it is a dry picture with sunshine. and temperatures across parts of central england towards the south—west, eastern wales, could reach the 20s, so it's going to be warm and pleasant in the sunshine. heading through wednesday evening and overnight, we keep cloudy weather for scotland. and late in the night we might see just a few showers pushing in from the near continent. signs of a change in the weather on the way. temperatures overnight around 7—9 degrees, so thursday morning starts off something like this — most of us start off on a sunny note and then showers move up from the continent, some of those could turn thundery through the day. still, for many areas it is a decent day with dry weather, warm sunshine, temperatures rising, 19 degrees or so in london. but then through thursday night and on into friday it looks like we will see some thunderstorms pushing in from the near continent. hit and miss in nature. but some of the downpours might be intense. there might be some hail mixed in. the wind will start to get stronger and then it will be cooler for eastern scotland with cloud and rain here.

for the weekend we will have some relatively warm conditions. some bright spells intermingled with one or two showers. that's your weather. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: president trump fires the director of the fbi, james comey, the man leading the investigation into possible collusion between his election campaign and russia. leading democrats say the sacking reeks of a cover—up, and call for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor. the american people need to have faith that an investigation as serious as this one is being conducted impartially, without a shred of bias. south korea's new president says he favours more dialogue with the north. he will be sworn into office shortly. and fine—tuning one of the world's iconic buildings. renovation gets under way to improve

the acoustics inside sydney's 0pera house.