our top story: president trump has attended a state banquet hosted by the queen at buckingham palace, as he begins his uk state visit. he praised decades of treasured friendship between the us and uk. but some politicians boycotted the occasion, and the leader of the opposition will attend protests against him on tuesday. pakistan is investigating whether medical malpractice could be behind a sudden spike in hiv. around 600 children have been diagnosed in a month. and efforts to change attitudes to high heels injapan has caught people's attention online. a petition calling for a ban on workplaces forcing women to wear high heels has gained nearly 20,000 signatures. the #kutoo campaign mimics the #metoo movement, playing on the japanese words for shoe and pain. that's all, stay with bbc world news.

now on bbc news, hardtalk‘s stephen sackur speaks to human rights activist iyad el—baghdadi. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. six months after the saudi journalist jamal khashoggi was murdered in the saudi consulate in istanbul, three of his associates received warnings that their lives could also be in danger. the source was the cia. one of those warned, iyad el—baghdadi, a long—time critic of arab authoritarian regimes, is my guest today. he lives in political asylum in norway, using social media to challenge what he calls the arab tyrants. after the demise of the arab spring, is his a lost cause?

iyad el—baghdadi, in oslo, welcome to hardtalk. thank you so much for having me, stephen. you live in political asylum in oslo, of course, norway deemed to be a very safe place to be and yet, just a few short weeks ago, you were informed that there were serious threats to your safety. tell me who the warning came from, and what did they suggest might happen to you? well, the warning came from the norwegian intelligence, who over here in norway we call the pst. they showed up at my doorstep and they took me to a meeting at a safe location, where they informed me that they were informed — a partner intelligence agency passed a tip to them saying that i'm a target. and, of course, it was later reported by the guardian that

confirmed that that partner agency is indeed the cia. you say they didn't describe the nature of the threat except to say that "i had crosshairs on my back." well, without wishing to be too sensationalist about it, that sounds really very serious. the threat itself was described as unspecified. but the seriousness of this is that — i mean, to me, as someone who is receiving this news, is that i'm a non—us citizen who does not live in the united states. and that was the question that rose to my mind. the cia passing a tip to the norwegians about someone who is not — who is neither american and doesn't live in the united states seems to me to indicate a certain level of risk, a certain level of threat. you say you're working on something, and you knew from the get go

it was something very sensitive and potentially dangerous. so what is it, and are you continuing to work on it? i've been working with my team at the kawaakibi foundation on a number of projects. i mean, i'm only cleared to speak about some of these projects, because there are other projects that continue to be deeply sensitive and deeply confidential. but i believe the most sensitive of these, and the one that's probably most public, and is most likely to have been the direct cause, the direct piece of work that actually led to the threats, is my work withjeff bezos‘s investigation team in putting together a report that went to federal authorities indicating that the saudis have first of all conducted a campaign againstjeff bezos, and also

have hacked his phone. yes, you talk about the bezos connection, and of course this is a complex connection. but in essence, jeff bezos owns the washington post. the washington post was the newspaper where jamal khashoggi wrote his columns. after khashoggi's murder, the washington post was perhaps one of the strongest media organisations demanding a complete review of us policy towards saudi arabia. the saudis, i dare say, were very much less than happy with the washington post coverage. sojeff bezos is connected to that whole story. is he financing you today? well, he's not, i mean, and our engagement with jeff bezos‘s investigation team did not involve any kind of compensation for our time or for our work. it wasn't a contractual kind of relationship. i mean, that said, i would simply add to your descriptionjeff bezos‘s situation here, is that i believe

at the time ofjamal khashoggi's murder, jeff bezos found himself in a bit of a quandary, in a bit of a complexifier, as he describes it. because this is a man who owned the washington post, for which jamal khashoggi worked, but he's also a man who had business ties and a kind of direct relationships with mbs. so, you know, he had to pick a side. yes, and we should remind everybody when you say mbs, you mean crown prince mohammed bin salman, the defacto leader, power, in saudi arabia today. let's talk more about khashoggi. because you were an associate of his. he was a man who consistently in the media called for fundamental reform and change in saudi arabia. you have done the same thing. your arab tyrant manual website and your blogs are consistently targeting saudi arabia as one of the arab countries that is most in need of an end to

authoritarianism and repression. were you surprised when khashoggi was murdered inside that consulate building in istanbul? oh, yes. i mean, i think everyone was surprised. i don't think we expected the worst case scenario to be a murder. and to be honest, when i heard the news, i thought that the worst case scenario, the absolute nightmare scenario, would have been rendition. i mean, kidnapping jamal, taking him back to saudi arabia and forcing him to read a statement on video saying, you know, "i returned home of my own — by my own will." we really never expected they would go this far. you have used your significant social media presence, twitter, various forms of social media and blogging as well, to in the wake of the khashoggi murder try and persuade people around the world to change their views of saudi arabia and crown prince mohammed bin salman in particular. would you accept that,

here we are seven or eight months on, and you have failed? well, i mean, it's an interesting question, here. i think the world, when it comes to mbs as a reformer, i think that reformer image is just done, it's gone. it's gone. i don't think anyone today accepts mbs as a liberal reformer. the only reason why he continues to wield this kind of... i mean, the only reason why this — he continues to be unaccountable, is because the administration in the world that is most capable of holding him to account continues to be his biggest enabler and of course, i mean, two personalities, two particular people — trump and more importantly jared kushner in the united states. why do you say jared kushner is more important? well, i believe jared kushner, of course he's mbs‘s whatsapp buddy. i believe he is the key enabler here, because he has this direct relationship and friendship with mbs, and i think he is the gatekeeper

to trump in the end. you would like it, perhaps, to be personal and pin it on donald trump and jared kushner. but isn't it the truth that in the united states, and indeed in london and other western capitals, there is a recognition that fundamentally, saudi arabia remains a key strategic ally in a very turbulent region? you hear that in london. i spoke on hardtalk tojeremy hunt, the foreign secretary, just the other day about this. he was also extremely careful in his comments about saudi arabia, precisely because of that important strategic relationship. absolutely, you're absolutely... this is absolutely correct. i mean, this is actually the quandary over here, saudi arabia is a very important country, and it will continue to be a very important country.

it's a very important economy, it's a very important population, very dynamic population. and this is why mbs is that problematic. it's because he has dismantled this kind of consultative monarchy, let's say, and really established an absolutist regime. and he's now in the situation where the world needs to continue to engage saudi arabia. saudi arabia, as you mentioned, is an important country. but i think everybody now realises that mbs himself is a problem. well, do they really feel it as strongly as you suggest? because if one looks at what has happened in recent months, and yes, we can talk about donald trump's insistence on partnership, and similar words coming out of the uk government, but also look at the corporate activity. some of those big corporations that shied away from the so—called "davos in the desert" investment summit that the saudis were hoping to be such a big success last autumn, well, they've now gone back to saudi

arabia. i noticed the big entertainment conglomerate in the us amc is back building those cinemas in saudi. john flint, the boss of hsbc bank, he went back to saudi recently saying it is a privilege to be in saudi arabia. larry fink, the super investor from wall street. he is saying that the changes that he sees in saudi arabia are, quote, "pretty amazing." so the corporate world as well as the geopolitical world is still in there, in saudi arabia, and frankly still backing mbs. well, it goes back to the point of saudi arabia being an important country and being a society that actually needs support. i mean, i wouldn't want the status quo that ordinary saudis experience to deteriorate in this situation. mbs is using this very point, the fact that saudi arabia

is an important economy, is an important country, is an important ally, to really, you know, increase the risk of political — basically increase political risk, increase economic risk and of course, increase instability in the region. so i think this is really the quandary over here that is really posed to the world and, of course, people like me. to people like you, let's be honest, mr el—baghdadi, your message and it's captured perhaps in your own website, the arab tyranny manual, your message is that these — you call them "tyrants" have to go. but the world looks at what happened in 2011 in the arab spring, the arab uprisings and the toppling of authoritarians, whether it be hosni mubarak or whether it be muammar gaddafi in libya, and they see the chaos that followed. and eight years on, frankly, many people don't believe that the tyrants must go, because what comes after them might be a whole lot worse.

well, of course this is something that, you know, this is a question that i have been asked continuously since 2011. my go—to response, really, is to point to democratic transitions elsewhere. democratic transitions take time, and they're messy matters. you know, this is a 30—year project, 35—year project, ao—year project. we're eight years into it. i mean, if you ask the same question about europe, what did europe's transition to democracy look like? i mean, if you look at the arab region right now, you're going to see certain countries which are in freefall. you're going to see terror groups. you're going to see civil wars. you're going to see proxy wars. you're going to see authoritarian consolidation. you're going to see refugee waves. and also you are going to see popular resistance. let's not forget sudan and algeria

right now at this moment. what i submit to you is that this is what a democratic transition looks like and these arab dictators are really standing in the way of the future. the whole idea that dictatorship bring stability... you make a hugely important point, but what i submit to you is that hundreds of thousands are dead in syria, half of the country's population displaced, those statistics speak of people who cannot afford for your 30—year experiment, your 30—year gamble on something better, to pay off. you know, the humanitarian cost over the last eight years has been so high that maybe it's better to stick with the authoritarians that we see. well, imagine if we asked this question in 191m about hitler's germany. i mean, imagine if we asked the question, we say — when all of these figures about how

many people in concentration camps came up, imagine if the world said, "this is enough, let's stick with what we have." imagine that. well if you want to use that metaphor, then you have to believe that this is some sort of existential crisis for the arab world, where you're equating mbs and his authoritarianism with nazism. i would say to you that if you look at mbs, and in the round, his commitment to change in saudi arabia, you do see that he is giving new rights to women, including the right to drive, he's opening up the country, there is a different atmosphere, many visitors to saudi arabia comment upon it. so to assume that you can compare that brand of authoritarianism with nazism is frankly highly questionable. well, nazism is always, of course, used as the extreme example over here. but let me just say there are extremists who persecute religious minorities and behead journalists, and there are other extremists, in this case those who torture women's rights activists and run apartheid regimes and dismember journalists.

i mean, i don't think we should always be imprisoned in this kind of false dichotomy between worse and worse. i think we can reject both. i understand what you're saying. i'm just thinking about where you sit. through no fault of your own, you used to be a resident in the uae. you were forced out, and you claimed and got political asylum in oslo. but it does mean you can fire off your extremely fiery web blog posts and twitter commentary to the arab world, telling arabs that they should no longer accept, for example, the repression of the sisi regime in egypt. egypt is a very interesting example, because sisi, thanks to what many call a coup d'etat, has imposed a form of military rule in egypt, but he has delivered economic growth. it will be nearly 60% this year. he has won billions of dollars

in new investment, particularly from china, and he would argue that he has replaced the government, the muslim brotherhood government, that was taking egypt down the path of chaos. well, in the case of sisi particularly, i mean, i've just finished sitting in the oslo freedom forum with a bunch of egyptian activists. and the fact is that, i mean, those figures really do not reflect the reality, the everyday reality, of egyptians. because even though gdp is increasing, and this is not only a problem in egypt, by the way, but in many countries in the world, inequality is still rising. the resilience of society, the resilience of this regime, is really being eaten away by this — you know, by sisi's authoritarianism. but i would also add some context over here. of course, the point that you led with is that it's easy for me to sound off these things from exile. the fact is that the majority of... let me just tell you that, for example, listeners on our podcast, the majority,

the top two cities, are riyadh and jeddah. the majority of people who consume our material are in the arab world. so what do you do, mr el—baghdadi? you say you are committed to build civil society, to create new institutions in the arab world that will help on the road to freedom and democracy. but in practical terms, in this repressive environment that we're talking about, what can you actually do? yes, so this basically leads us back to our projects. and of course, because we're a small team, we're a small foundation — i mean, maybe the word "foundation" gives this impression of bigness, but truly, we're funded by local organisations in norway, but also by our audience, so we don't have a lot of resources. so we have to be very realistic about what we can achieve. and this is why we always look for, you know, projects or investigations or things to work on which have — which are, you know,

very sensitive, very damaging to dictators, but also within our reach, within our capacity as a small team. can you give me some examples? well, a lot of these projects, as i mentioned, i've been instructed not to talk about, because they are sensitive and because there might be a reason why i am under threat. but one example, of course, is the bezos investigation, where we're helping the richest man in the world, a man who has been targeted by the saudi regime, by mbs himself, to put together a report which would go to the fbi and would actually lead to some kind of institutional action, because this is, as you can imagine, a national security matter. there are other projects like that, that we're working on, of course, and the majority of them are things we cannot disclose. but it's just — i'm very mindful, because i lived in egypt in the 1990s, and even then,

i'm mindful of the degree to which there was suspicion, perhaps fuelled by the state media, it has to be said, but suspicion of ngos, many of which received funding from outside the country, particularly the united states, but countries like norway as well. you know, you could think about the national democratic institute, and other organisations, which were portrayed as somehow being, you know, tools and puppets of western influence. how do you avoid that? well, i mean, this is a question, of course. there is absolutely a question that we think about very deeply, because we don't want to be integrated in this kind of think—tank kind of ecosystem. and this is why our — the backbone of our support continues to be our audience, i mean, the people who consume our material and the people who donate to us, you know, online. this is the backbone of our support. this continues to be the main funding source that we have. i'm mindful that, not

just in the middle east, but around the world, we are in a sense in an era of strongman rule. you know, one could look at the examples of china and russia and say that perhaps sisi or mbs are looking more to them for their political inspiration than they are to the democracies of western europe. do you believe that you can win this battle against strongman rule? i think the wind in our sails is history itself, let's say. i mean, as a dearfriend says, history is in good hands. i think the fact is that these dictators — since 2014, when we had this rise of a counterrevolution, an axis—of—arab counterrevolution, we were really concerned that, you know, what are they going to do at this point? because the arab spring represented a vision. it represented certain values, certain convictions, that people really went down to the streets and died for. i mean, when people actually go down to the streets and take bullets, and then go down to the streets again and chant again for liberty

and for dignity, these are convictions, these are no longer slogans. we thought, you know, now that they're back in control, they're going to actually work on presenting an alternative vision, and they have failed. they have not presented a vision, or whatever vision they presented, really, or whatever social contract they put on the table, is really something which does not inspire the average arab citizens. this is why you see a continuation of the arab spring. you see it in sudan, you see it in algeria. so this is not over, the story is not over at all. interesting you say the story is not over. one running through theme through this interview has been the importance of saudi arabia. are you seriously saying to me that you can imagine revolutionaries on the streets of riyadh and jeddah? you can imagine the monarchy being toppled in saudi arabia? and, if you can, what do you think replaces it? well, i mean, let me

qualify that first. i think there's an arabic saying, and i'm going to say it in arabic and then loosely translate it. speaks arabic. it means the last remedy, the last cure, is cauterisation. it means — what this means to me is that revolution, popular uprising, is really the last remedy. in an ideal world, you don't want to go there, you don't want to get there. it's really when all avenues of change have been closed in your face that you actually go there. ideally, we would have a change, you know, a more controlled change. we would have actually, you know, serious reform, where the ruling elites in certain countries realise that this is not good even for us, this is not stable, this is not sustainable. that's what we would like to see happening. because, you know, let's face it, popular uprising is a very, very dangerous gamble in the end, and you only go there when all other avenues are closed. and, talking of danger, we must end, but i want to ask personally — we talked about the perceived threat to you.

i happen to know you have at least one child in school in norway, and that created some fuss when the warnings first hit you a few weeks ago. what would it take for you to feel that this fight you're in is no longer worth it? this is a really, really difficult question, stephen, because this is very personal. and you brought up my son, and i want to raise a son who realises that dignity is worth our life. our dignity is worth our life, and this is a message i sent him when i first arrived in 2014 in oslo, in a speech i gave for the oslo freedom forum. our dignity, or we die trying. our liberty, or we die trying. and, again, this is not a slogan. this is our life's mission. not for me — i am only one person, i am only one voice here. there are thousands of people like me, even millions of people like me, who simply don't have

this kind of platform, and don't have this voice, and i have to channel that voice. iyad el—baghdadi, we have to leave it there, but i thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk. hello, if you want to adjourn weather to come with sunshine and warmth, this isn't the forecast for you. but if you want some rain on the garden, we are in business because during tuesday most of us will see some rain at some stage of the day. as of the system comes in from the south—west extends that ran further north and east as the day

goes on. or at least tuesday starts some of that ran into parts of wales and southwest incan. bit of sunshine in some spots to start the day. fairly chilly for some of us being clear overnight, single figures in places. let's look at the story of tuesdays weather. to start the day, heavier bursts are possible as its early extends its way north and east. there may be a few thundery burst across parts of south—east england and east anglia. thunder possible in highland scotland had of the arrival of the rain. the final it will save many drivers to breezy out there, it's not as windy as it has been over the past couple of days, messy temperatures as high as 21 celsius and sunny cells —— sunny spells developing a south—east in that. belfast just 12 spells developing a south—east in that. belfastjust 12 degrees on a cool that. belfastjust 12 degrees on a cool, wet day. this area of rain extends further northwards as we go through tuesday night into wednesday. rotates around those scotland, northern ireland deposit

northern incan. these other starting temperatures on wednesday. we still have a bit of rain on wednesday morning. as the day goes on, it will become confined mostly to northern scotland, elsewhere there will be sunny spells to be had and if you show is developing. it could be heavy, possibly thundery, slow—moving and fairly light winds out there. temperatures are just out if not a bit low average for the time of year. maybe a bit of rain reaching parts of eastern england and the weather system in the north sea was still some rain it northwards into thursday, more significantly and deposit northern england and scotland. havisham is developing into parts of england and wales. there will be a bit of sunshine here and there, not doing a huge amount for the temperature. and as we take a look at the big picture at the end of the week, another area of the pressure, late friday to saturday brings potential for more significant rain over a larger area, so we significant rain over a larger area, so we give an eye significant rain over a larger area, so we give an eye on significant rain over a larger area, so we give an eye on that. over the

weekend, the pressure is still close by so it is still unsettled. so this is the picture for the rest of the week, entered the weekend, jude warmth, there isn't a great deal of it. wet, there is was to sometimes.

welcome. i'm kasia madera in london. the headlines: on the first day of his visit to the uk, president trump is welcomed by the queen at a state banquet at buckingham palace. i offer a toast to the eternal friendship of our people, the vitality of our nations. but will the pomp and praise be overshadowed by protests? a quarter of a million anti—trump demonstrators are expected on the streets for day two. i'm rico hizon in singapore. also in the programme: it's 30 years since this protestor tried to resist a brutal crackdown on china's pro—democracy movement. we talk to some of those who were there that day. pakistan investigates

a sudden spike in hiv.