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now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. right now, venezuela is in the grip of political and economic chaos. two men are claiming the presidency, protesters are out on the streets, and the international community is divided in its response. well, today i'm in miami to meet christian zerpa. until december, he was a justice on the venezuelan supreme court. now he's one of the highest—profile defectors from the maduro regime. so does this erstwhile insider believe the socialist revolution is in its death throes? christian zerpa, welcome to hardtalk. muchas gracias.

let us begin with your personal story. here you sit with me in miami, and yetjust a few short weeks ago, you were a justice on the venezuelan supreme court. you could have stayed in your country to fight for truth and justice. you ran away. why? i understand very well that it is very dangerous to be an opponent of the maduro regime. dissidents, as you say, are imprisoned. you were not a dissident. you were an extraordinarily loyal functionary of the government.

you accepted a position in the supreme court and you were chosen because you had been so loyal for so long to the chavista revolution and to nicolas maduro in particular. you weren't a dissident, you were a loyalist. but this is important because it's important to get inside the mindset of people who still today in venezuela are working for the maduro regime. did you continue to stay loyal because you had, relatively speaking, a good salary, your family was being looked after, you were inside the system? so, in a sense, you couldn't — or maybe you felt you couldn't — afford to leave, to make trouble, to run any risks, is that why you stayed so loyal for so long? but with respect, your situation was very different to those venezuelans who are suffering real starvation. i mean, we see from the figures that have been put out by the un that up to 10% of children in venezuela today are suffering severe malnutrition.

we know that millions have had to flee their country because they are going hungry. according to one estimate, there are now nearly 3 million venezuelans who have fled the country. medicines are in short supply in many of the country's hospitals and yet you still sat on the supreme court, issuing yourjudgements, loyal to mr maduro. did you not feel that what you were doing was fundamentally wrong? while you tell me about the dangers of being a dissident and how difficult it is, i am also thinking that you sat on the supreme court at a time when the judicial system, with your court at the very top, was locking up many dissidents and opponents of the government. leopoldo lopez, for example, he was locked up. i could list a whole host of venezuelans, brave venezuelans, who dared to voice political opposition, who were imprisoned, convicted by courts, ultimately the supreme court. you sat there.

you are guilty, yourself, of putting dissidents behind bars. you're part of a system. and also, if you tell me, oh, i was involved with elections. the supreme court declared that the election of 2018, president maduro‘s re—election, the court was perfectly happy to accept that result, when every international observer said that the vote was rigged, that it was completely illegitimate and unacceptable. so even in your role supervising elections, time and again, you were avoiding all responsibility to tell the truth. are you saying to me that maduro‘s re—election in 2018 was legitimate or illegitimate? was that election free and fair or was it rigged? have you discussed with the us authorities — because of course now you're now living in florida,

in exile — have you discussed with them giving evidence and sworn statements about what you describe as the systematic corruption at the top of the regime? you've talked about the chiefjustice, mr moreno, you've talked about the president and the president's immediate family and his close associates, and you have suggested that they are all part of a corrupt system. what evidence did you see of wealth that was being acquired by people at the top of the government? do you also feel guilt, guilt that you served that regime that you now describe as illegitimate and corrupt? you served it for so long. how much guilt do you feel? let's talk about the situation in venezuela today. just a few weeks after you left

the country, juan guaido declared that he was the legitimate president of venezuela. now, he, of course, was the president of the national assembly, he argued that maduro‘s election in 2018 was completely illegitimate, which you today have agreed with, and he said, therefore, he was the legitimate president of venezuela. do you support his claim? but your former colleagues in the venezuelan supreme court have frozen his bank accounts, they have barred him from travel, leaving the country. he is under enormous pressure today. you know the supreme court very well and you know president maduro well. is it your impression that they will do everything in their power to destroy juan guaido right now? what do you think president maduro is going to do now? because of course, mr guaido has won the support of many nations around the world, including of course

the united states and many countries in latin america, but the response from maduro has been to talk about us imperialism trying to illegitimately remove him from power. he has said they are trying to get their hands on our oil, just like in iraq. he has said, if they try to overthrow me, get me out of power, it will be worse than vietnam for them. so do you believe maduro is committed to staying in power, confronting the opposition, and doing whatever it takes to maintain his grip on power? the truth is, there are long—standing suspicions inside venezuela of american motives and now that donald trump and his team have imposed punitive new sanctions on venezuela's state oil company, that's going to cost the country billions of dollars, it going to mean the desperate state of the economy is going to get even worse. do you support american sanctions? do you support america's talk of military options being on the table? but would you accept that

mr guaido has to be careful. he has already spoken to donald trump by telephone. we know that today, here in miami, other venezuelan dissidents are meeting vice president mike pence. if the venezuelan opposition is seen to be too close to the trump administration and to the united states, that may well raise suspicions back home in venezuela. it may allow maduro to use this narrative about us imperialism? is that a danger? you talked about the venezuelan military and how important they are going to be in the next phase of this crisis. do you believe there's evidence that there are divisions in the military and that there are some who want to now come out and supportjuan guaido? here's what a former maduro loyalist, who fled the country in 2015, hebert garcia plaza, here's what he said recently. he said, "right now the venezuelan armed forces do not have the capacity or indeed the desire to confront the population in a massive protest." ie, he is suggesting that, if millions come out into the streets, the army will not use repression to try and keep maduro in power.

do you agree? what do you think is going to happen in venezuela? do you think the country is going to sink into civil war? but i want to end with this thought, if i may, mrzerpa. you talk of democracy. you were not a democrat. for many, many years you were a loyal member of the socialist government which in many parts of the world is described as a dictatorship. you served that dictatorship. now you talk about democracy. are you saying to me that, as far as you are concerned, the socialist revolution and the authoritarian government in venezuela is basically over, it is finished? you said a few days ago, "if i go back to venezuela right now, i would be a dead man." do you believe you will ever go home with your family? christian zerpa, i thank

you very much for being on hardtalk, muchas gracias. good morning. in the last few hours, we've got a weather front moving its way from west to east. it's bringing some rain, some of it quite heavy, but it will clear away from the south—east corner, perhaps leaving a legacy of cloud first thing in the morning and outbreaks of rain. behind it, quite breezy, with a scattering of showers into the north—west. so that kind of sums up wednesday's weather, really. we'll start of the morning cloudy, dull and damp with some outbreaks of rain across that essex and kent coast. sunnier spells online. the south—westerly breeze, so a mild source, but it will continue to drive in the risk of showers through northern ireland and western scotland as we go through the day, some of them pushing inland, 7—ii degrees the high. now, there's the potentialfor some of that rain to get up in the south—east a little later on in the day. we'll need to keep an eye on that. that weather front riddles its way off into the near continent, but it's a bit of a mess wednesday night into thursday.

it's joined by another weather front here as it moves its way west to east overnight, could bring in something a little bit cooler and the potential for some snow to higher ground as it moves its way through scotland. behind it, it's going to be a breezy affair on thursday with that westerly wind still driving in the showers along those exposed west—facing coasts. but again, it's still a relatively mild story, particularly in comparison to where we were a week ago, 5—10 degrees the overall high. now, as a move out of thursday into friday, it does look as though we'll see more of a significant area of low pressure starting to push in from the atlantic, and with that low plenty of isobars squeezing together, particularly on the southern flank, that is where we are likely to see the strongest of the winds, gale force gusts not out of the question. and some of the rain on friday will be quite heavy as that low pressure moves its way steadily north and east. so, by the middle of the afternoon, there will be up rates of rain, some of it heavy. the strongest of the winds perhaps into the afternoon, down towards the south—west,

50—60 mile an hour gusts not out of the question. and so, with the cloud, wind and rain, temperatures perhaps, possibly irrelevant, but nevertheless here they are, they are, 9—12 degrees. still relatively mild across the country. now, as we move out of friday into the start of the weekend, that area of low pressure will push off into scandinavia. but we'll need to keep an eye on another potential developing low into the south, which may well bring more rain to the start of the weekend. again, the isobars stay tightly packed, it stays pretty windy with it. so, for the end of the week, it's going to be a mild story but a windy one, and we have the potential to see some gusts of winds 50—70 miles an hour, with further rain at times. take care. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: it is just one hour to president trump's state of the union address, to a deeply divided congress. we are live in washington with more. actress and un special envoy angelina jolie meets rohingya refugees, calling for an end to the violence that has driven them

from their homes. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: ten years after one of australia's worst natural disasters, we meet the people still struggling to come to terms with the black saturday fires. mr neeson, are you sorry for what you said? and actor liam neeson denies he is racist, after saying he once wanted to kill any black man in revenge for a friend's rape.