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now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. there are international laws and norm designed to prohibit states from bumping off their enemies, internal or external. but look around the world and it is clear those laws are being violated, often with impunity. my guest today is agnes callamard, a renowned human rights investigator who serves as the un special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing. given the scale of the problem, have her investigations become an exercise in futility?

agnes callamard, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. agnes, let me start with this grand title of yours. un special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing, based as you are in new york city. it all all sounds rather grand but isn't the truth that you have pitifully few resources? well, i do have very few resources but that doesn't stop me from implementing my mandate. and doing so, keeping in mind the victims, keeping in mind what the international community expect from me which is not to investigate every single arbitrary killing on earth,

but which is to bring to the attention of decision—makers and policymakers, killings which i believe reach a level of seriousness and impunity which demands their urgent attention and action. there are ways of implementing a mandate which makes it possible and hopefully not an exercise in futility, as you highlighted in the introduction. and i may say, it cannot be an exercise in futility whenever i bring to the attention of the international community killings that they were not aware of, killings that victims and their families have reported to me. for them, for me, whenever i speak up about a killing, i can assure you it is not an exercise in futility because speaking up, reporting, truth telling is already part of providing a sense of redress and justice. i do understand the importance

of truth telling so i appreciate that, but you just said to me that you get to choose which extrajudicial arbitrary killings you are going to investigate and i am just wondering on what basis you make that choice. absolutely, and this is why international, independent experts like me are being recruited. we are given the mandate to investigate and report to the international community on the basis of what we believe we think, based on our expertise and professionalism, must be brought to the international attention. indeed, from the very start, we are given the authority to determine what should be brought to the attention of the international community. i may say though that we are not the only actors bringing issues to the international

community's attention. here is the question in my mind, once you choose a case, you have to investigate it as best you can and gather evidence, forensically research it. there are clearly many regimes around the world, many places around the world, where the regimes are so repressive that there's no possibility for you to get their cooperation or do any sort of forensic research. so i'm guessing that you just, you have to ignore so many places where arbitrary killings are taking place because you simply cannot operate in those places. iwill, ah, no, this is not the case. the first thing i should highlight is that my mandate is predicated on international law. so while i have the authority to determine how i am going to implement it, which cases i am going to bring to the attention of the international community, i do that on the basis of a legal framework which is very clear.

the right to life is a foundational, it is the supreme right within international human rights law and the arbitrary deprivation of life must be an exception and it is very narrowly defined. i think it's important to bring that to the attention of your listeners. the second issue is, of course, there are many countries, many situations indeed, where i cannot physically be there but that does not mean that i do not have access to the information that is required for me to make informed decisions. and in many cases, what i will bring to the international community's attention are serious allegations which reach to a level of, where i have sufficient evidence to make me feel that i need to go forward and bring that to international attention.

let's get to specific cases then. you've been doing thejob since 2016. i'm just wondering, we'll get to specifics, why have you spent so much time on, for example, the case of the murdered saudi journalist jamal khashoggi? first of all, i have focused on the killing ofjamal khashoggi for a variety of reasons. one of which is journalists, media workers and human rights defenders are at the forefront of reporting on international human rights issues and they are on the frontline. they are on the frontline and they are targeted. through an emblematic case such as jamal khashoggi's killing, ifelt that i could bring a number of other issues and i could indeed unpack some of the dynamics that make the investigation into those

killings so important — corruption, abuse of power, disinformation, propaganda, complicity, nationally and internationally. all of those dynamics are working out in the context of a killing of a journalist and you know that forjamal. .. crosstalk. ..we know that for, yeah, you know that, so... well, believe me, as a fellow journalist and a man who's interviewed mr khashoggi in the past, several times, i totally understand that. exactly. let us dig deeper into the khashoggi case then. you, i know, had really rather unprecedented access to turkish intelligence materials. i know you spoke at length to mr khashoggi's fiance. you did an awful lot of work, a lot of research into this case. you came out with an explosive conclusion, i'm going to quote, "to be clear", you wrote, "this was a killing by the state". what makes you so sure of that? 0k.

the first ground for that conclusion is international law. there are very clear guidelines as to when and how you can attribute an act to the state. when you compare those guidelines, those and criteria which are, for instance, who are the individuals involved ? did they get resources to commit the act, the crime, from the state? were there orders given? how was it planned, how was it organised? all of those factors i looked into with great attention. and all of those factors pointed to the centrality of the state of saudi arabia. that was further demonstrated by what happened after the killing

which is saudi arabia sent a team of 18 people to so—called investigate the crime and what they did was to clean the crime scene. that too is demonstrating the action of saudi arabia in terms of its responsibility for their killing and the lack of investigation into the killing ofjamal khashoggi. right, but as you know, last december, a trial was completed inside saudi arabia. there were 11 men on trial, i believe five of them were ultimately sentenced to death for their individual roles in the killing of mr khashoggi. and of course the picture painted by thejudge and the saudi authorities after the trial was that this was a rogue operation, it had gone wrong, there was an attempt to apprehend mr khashoggi but there wasn't an intent to kill him until,

it seems, those individuals in that room in the consulate, acting without the orders of the state, ended up murdering him. now, you seem so absolutely sure that that isn't the case. ijust wonder how you can be so sure. you're not a detective and you don't have access to all of the files... well, i have had access to sufficient file that can make a very informed conclusion regarding the responsibility of the state. those 15 individuals who carried out the operations are all working for the state, they are working as security operatives for the state. they travelled with state resources. many of them travelled on a private jet. two of them had diplomatic passport. the private jet had diplomatic clearance. the team that came afterwards to clean up the crime scene, was also a team mandated by the state. the prosecutor himself, as i mentioned,

two of the highest level individuals which were not present in turkey but that participated to organising the killing, indeed, inciting the team to so—called bring back mr khashoggi. there is absolutely no doubt, no doubt, under international human rights law that the responsibility of the state of saudi arabia is involved. it is involved in the killing, it is involved in the lack of an effective investigation, it is involved in the lack of an effective prosecution and it is indeed involved in the travesty of justice that we saw in december when the five hit men were condemned but those that masterminded the killing, anyone with a little bit more authority within the state of saudi arabia, those were found to be not guilty. if this is not a mockery ofjustice, i don't know what is.

so to be clear, your contention is that legal culpabilities sits with the senior official saud al-qahtani and indeed the crown prince, the effective executive ruler of saudi arabia, mohammed bin salman. is that what you are saying, that legal responsibility must be put at their door? well, what i am saying is that certainly when it comes to saud al-qahtani, there is sufficient evidence pointing to his liability for the killing. there is absolutely no doubt and the prosecutor of saudi arabia himself has recognised it. when it comes to the crown prince, i did not reach, in my report, a definite conclusion. what i did say is that he is responsible and the nature of his responsibilities must be further investigated. i do not know whether he ordered the crime — something that the cia suggested he did. i do not know whether his responsibility resides

in inciting the crime or in creating the conditions that made the crime possible, or in turning a blind eye when he knew or should have known that a crime was being committed. all of those scenarios may apply to the crown prince. one of them surely applied to him. it was not in my mandate and indeed i did not have sufficient evidence to conclude one way or the other. all i can say is he is responsible for one of those scenarios. as you say, your mandate has limits. but not very long ago, you made it clear that you want to see the international community take more action to hold everyone in the saudi government all the way to the top, to mohammad bin salman, to account. you say, "the circumstances of the killing of khashoggi is so grave in terms the violations of international law that, in my opinion, it meets the threshold of seriousness required for international jurisdiction". and you called upon the un secretary general to take action. absolutely nothing,

as far as i'm aware, has happened since you made that call which brings us back to where we started, the degree to which genuinely you lack the backing of the un machinery to make yourjob anything more than, frankly, symbolism. so first of all, let me just explain a little bit why i believe that the killing of jamal khashoggi is that serious. of course, it is emblematic of many killings ofjournalists for which there is almost 100% impunity. secondly, that killing was quite exceptional in that it involved, it demanded the violations of many provisions under international law — the vienna convention on consular relations, the prohibition against arbitrary violation of life, the prohibition against enforced disappearance and indeed the un charter against the use of force by a state on the territory of another state.

so for all those reasons, i believed that the killing of mr khashoggi raised to the level where it demanded to be considered as an international crime... but i understand that, my point is that donald trump and others... i understand your point. ..completely ignored your voice and donald trump had made a point of saying that mbs, crown prince mohammed bin salman remains a very good ally and that the partnership with the united states will continue unabated, so people are not listening to you. no, no, i do not agree with that. and it's not because i want to defend my work, it's just because i do not agree that the state of the world is as bleak as you present it. indeed, donald trump is protecting saudi arabia and mohammed bin salman in particular. this is not the case with the us congress. there is a bipartisan position demanding accountability on the part of mohammed bin salman and saudi arabia. i think we need to be very clear that, yes, the un secretary general has not acted upon my recommendation and neither has the white house, but a range of other actors have and we need to give them credit.

they are acting, they are resisting and they are taking action. it is clear that your work on this continues. let's quickly move on to the case of qasem soleimani, the revolutionary guard commander of the quds forces, who was targeted in a us drone strike — many call it an assassination. you weighed in on that, you said that, as far as you could see, it did not measure up to any legal act under international law, in direct opposition to the position taken by donald trump's white house and administration. you have to be careful with your political capital and the way you spend it. do you think it was wise for you to get involved in that?

yes, absolutely. look, i think the targeted killing of general soleimani has breached many international norms that are at the heart of the un system, that are at the heart of the un charter. the un charter was predicated on the notion that we should do all we can to prevent armed conflict and that the use of force should be very much narrowed down to very few scenarios. the targeted killing of mr soleimani completely swept away the standard related to extraterritorial use of force by a state. it targeted the state officials, while in the past it was mostly nonstate actors or only nonstate actors that had been targeted...

hang on, this is important. let's keep this as quick as we can, so your contention is that there was a fundamental difference between this targeted killing and, for example, the killing of mr awlaki, under the obama administration, when he was the leader of al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula, or indeed the killing of osama bin laden, because many legal experts say that, frankly, given the americans, in their national security interests, had labelled soleimani as a terrorist, there frankly is very little legal difference. no, i do not know who are those expert, but i beg to disagree and i think most of my colleagues will beg to disagree. there is a substantive difference between targeting a non—individual behind terror attack and targeting the person in charge of a legitimate state's armed forces... hang on, hang on... it does not matter that the us declared it a terrorist group... no, surely what matters, if i may say so, ms callamard, is the evidence. the evidence is that

general soleimani was working with actors inside iraq who had, in the recent past, lobbed mortars at the us compound in baghdad, had killed a us contractor, had plans for more military operations. how much evidence do you need that this man represented a threat? let me explain to you that, first of all, under international law and for the reason that i have pointed out to you, which is we need to preserve peace and security to the large extent possible. under international law,

a state can act to prevent an already existing attack. there is no evidence that there was an existing attack. the thinking under the us administration doctrine has evolved to suggest that maybe state can intervene to pre—empt an imminent attack. thereto, the white house has provided no evidence of an imminent attack. in their letters to the security council, they have highlighted attacks that had occurred in the past, they did not provide evidence of any forthcoming attack and, on top of that, they did not target the operational asset, which could have been identified behind any kind of attack. they targeted an individual, a decision maker. it is basically allowing any government to target a minister of defence or a minister of armyjust because of what has happened in the past or what may happen in the future. you know, i am not defending and i am not suggesting that general soleimani was not a human rights violator. there is plenty of evidence that he was,

there is plenty of evidence that many other people are, indeed, some of them are head of state. what are we going to do, go after them with drones? all of them? and start targeting them, striking at them? ijust wonder... this is a recipe for disaster. you have been in this business of human rights campaigning for a long time and, i dare say, nobody questions your courage and your bravery, but do you think things are getting worse, that more and more states around the world believe they can murder with impunity? i think we are living in a world that is extremely unstable. the multipolar, bipolar system that we are trying to establish has created waves throughout the world and there are regional conflicts, as we see in the middle east or in other parts of the world, so this great instability, alongside with the increasing inequity and inequality that the economic model has brought to the world, are creating

huge "opportunities" for violence to erupt and for people to die. it is not in my hands to solve those multiple, multiple sites of horrendous violence, but it is my role, when i can, when i have that platform, to at least bring it to your attention, bring it to the attention of the international community. we have focused onjamal khashoggi and on soleimani — that's good, i am happy to do that. we were not able to focus on what is happening in nigeria right now, which is a pressure cooker, where people are dying in their hundreds on a regular basis. we have not talked about burkina faso, where similar scenarios are happening. venezuela, we know about the political crisis, we do not know that thousands of the poorest venezuelans are being killed in the name of the war on crimes. we have not talked about the afro—colombians being killed by cartels and so on and so forth. these are what are waking me up at night, these are what are driving me and i wish to highlight the fact

that we still have the possibility of acting, we do have norms, we do have institutions. they may be in need of reform, but we need to strengthen them. it's upon the secretary general‘s responsibilities, the security council responsibilities to speak up. it is the responsibility of our leaders to speak up. norms are dying because of the silence, norms are dying because of the complicity. values can only thrive if we defend them actively. that's what i want to do and i am

calling upon you and others to do the same. it's a very important point to end on. agnes callamard, i thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. the weather doesn't look like it will be settling down any time soon. rain in the forecast looks like it will be exacerbating problems in the western part of the country. we still have several in force.

although those levels have subsided somewhat. however, with more rain in the forecast piling wednesday and thursday, we will see the river level is rising again and we could be looking at more flooding issues. the heavy rain over the next few days will be focused more cross north—western parts of england and north wales, northern and western wales. now, today starts fine and dry, chilly, a little bit of ice around, but some sunshine before the cloud thickens up ahead of this weather system which will arrive in outbreaks of belly persistent rain for northern ireland, western scotla nd for northern ireland, western scotland commented north—west wales. further stray into lewd comment will be rather cloudy. damages 9— io degrees in the south, cool across the north. here continues to stay wet throughout and c note. the weather front continues to bring rain, particularly into north and north—west england, north and north—west england, north and north—west wales, this is where will start to see problems arising again. quite a mild night for england and

wales. something rolled across the northern half of scotland. so the weather fronts still with us as we head on into thursday. the good news is, as it starts to move through fairly quickly it will allow for a little bit of sunshine through the day on thursday, but quite a dan biggar contrast from thursday morning to what we will expect later on as the cold air moves through. the good news on, this weather front will move through fairly quickly across the country through the day. sunshine returning behind. a dry afternoon with some sunshine. that should help. there will be lots of jobs across the north. wintry on the hills as it will be chilly. a chilly day further south at the front moves through. they notice the isobars increase as we head on into friday. it will turn windy and there will be more the weather —— weather fronts piling we are thinking areas to the north of north wales and most of the rainfall, particular northern ireland western scotland could be very wet, it is north—west england and north wales stop to the south, should see some sunny spells. but

got the wind gusts on there. it will bea got the wind gusts on there. it will be a very blustery day. 14—15 mile—per—hour winds. on the plus side, temperatures in double figures for most. 11—12 degrees in the south—east. that's how was looking up south—east. that's how was looking up until friday. into the weekend, u nfortu nately, stays u nsettled. up until friday. into the weekend, unfortunately, stays unsettled. more windy weather with showers but also longer spells of rain for some.

i'm karishma vaswani in singapore. the headlines: hundreds of passengers quarantined over coronavirus on the diamond princess cruise ship are preparing to leave. as china struggles to deal with the virus, new incentives are announced for healthcare workers on the frontline. i'm nuala mcgovern in london. also in the programme: new york's former mayor michael bloomberg qualifies for his first democratic presidential debate on wednesday. black is beautiful, black is excellent. black is pain, black is joy, black is evident. music and politics.