the new york times says it has obtained president trump's tax records stretching back two decades, which it says reveal chronic financial losses and years of tax avoidance. the newspaper reports that mr trump paid only 750 dollars in federal income taxes in the year he won the presidency. the president has dismissed the claims as fake news. the united states hasjoined russia and the un in calling for an immediate ceasefire between armenia and azerbaijan in the disputed territory of nagorno—karabakh. sunday saw the worst clashes in the region for many years with deaths from both sides. police say they've detained around 200 people following a seventh consecutive week of anti government protests in belarus. tens of thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of capital in minsk to oppose the regime of president alexander lu kashenko. now on bbc news... hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk. i am sarah montague. yusef salaam was just 16 when he and four other black and latino teenagers were wrongly convicted of the rape and assault of a white woman jogging in new york's central park. even before the trial, the then property tycoon donald trump took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty. the five served out their sentences before being exonerated when another man admitted to the crime. yusef salaam says their case is the story of the criminal system of injustice in america. but as antiracism protests continue, and with fears of worse unrest to come, is the chance of real change even more remote now than in the america of his youth?

yusef salaam, welcome to hardtalk. take us back and tell us what happened on the night of the 19th of april in 1989. what happened was young people hanging out in the park, a park that they looked at as their backyard, and all of a sudden, we fast forward to the evening and then the next day and we were accused of raping a white woman in central park, a rape that had not been seen by anyone of us and we were vilified from the beginning because we were looked at as criminals because of the colour of our skin and not

the content of our character. they quickly made a case against us and said that we were the ones who did this and as you can imagine, we were horrified as we began to be run over by the spike rails ofjustice and then as we look into the future, 13 years go by, and then the truth comes out and it shatters everything that the system had made people believe and yet even to this day still this cloud of suspicion that we had actually done this crime when we had not. let's talk to that night, because it was an extraordinary night with the number of attacks in central park. and you were what i think with a group of your friends in the park that night. actually the only person that i knew in the group was korey wise, and we all went to the park thinking that we were going to be hanging out, it was young people hanging out with older people, and as you can that is something that

usually never happens. most of the time when you are a young person, you have older siblings and your mother or father says you can go outside but you had to take a younger brother or sister with you. there is this desire not to want them to be with you but in this particular case, there was young people hanging out with all the people for the first time and we thought it would be cool to see what it is like and what made those people so cool, and of course one thing led to another and then almost all of us who were not involved in any of the mayhem in the park, we were like deer in the headlights as we began to witness terrible things that were going on, people being beaten up and robbed, people being assaulted. there were actually individuals who are convicted of those crimes that never became known as who we were known back then, as the central park five, they were convicted of those crimes and individuals that were picked out of line—ups and went to prison for those crimes. and yet the system still looked at those of us who became known as the central park five

as being guilty of everything that happened in the park that night. and the particular case though at the centre of this was a woman, trisha melli, 28—year—old white woman who'd gone jogging and was very brutally beaten up and raped. and not expected to live. absolutely. i think that really became the crux of the matter because if you can imagine in american history, american criminal history, we have been witnessing anytime a person is accused of rape, even back to the time of emmitt till when they said he had whistled at a white woman, anytime they cry, we die. so the story of lynching in america and the story of legal lynching in america often times is predicated on the premise of a lie. let's go back though because the police took you in the next day, and the five of you made confessions. yours wasn't video taped. but four were. why did you confess to the police?

i actually did not confess to the police. that is a misnomer that has been out there, that the police are putting out. and they want that misnomer to be out there because they want to have the public imagine that we, who were victimized, are the ones who were part of our own victimization. tell us what happened. what happen when you were in the police station? how did they treat you and what did they do? absolutely. i can definitely talk about that. it was one of the most horrible things you can imagine. here we were, 14, 15, 16—year—old children, i was picked up the next evening where raymond santana and kevin richardson were picked up the night of april 19, 1989. their interrogation started that evening. my interrogation started the very next evening along with korey wise. as they began to question me, i would hear them beating korey wise up in the next room. he was 16 years old by the way.

i was not supposed to be interrogated without a parent but because he was 16, the american judicial system, the 16—year—old is adultified and therefore responsible for themselves. the problem with that is that he had a lower capacity to understand, and so his mental capacity may have been still on the fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, even though he was 16 years old. they would beat him up and then they would come back in the room that i was in and tell me i was next. all the while they were asking me "tell us what happened in the park" and i would tell them. everything that i saw, everything that i remembered happening, and then i would say that we left and we hopped on the train he came home. and they would get so frustrated with me because in their minds, i was concealing something and the truth of the matter is that we weren't

concealing anything. we didn't know anything about a woman that had been raped in central park. nobody had any drops of blood on them, nobody‘s dna was at the scene of the crime, nothing from the woman was on us. they had made the public believe that kevin richardson had been scratched in an altercation by the female jogger, and yet when they looked under our fingernails there was no forensic evidence to point to that falsification. so much seemed to rest on these confessions, though, and one of the prosecutors in the case said that this was not an alabama jail where two guys had been the partner's for years put a guy in a back room and doesn't see the light of day for three years, she makes the point that three of the five went home and had a night sleep before they were taken into custody, nobody under 16 was talked to until a parent or guardian arrived. it sounds like a fairy tale. sounds like a fairy tale. and i say that because if you can imagine, if you have seen

seen the documentary the central park 5 the central park 5 by ken burns, one of the most beautiful things that happen in that particular documentary where we get our voices back is that you hear korey, no, you hear ray santana stating what he said in his false confession. in his false confession begins something like this, approximately at 1900 hrs me and some friends began to walks out. then he looks up and says what14—year—old boy talks like this? this is what they had the public believe, that this 14—year—old boy had the capacity to say at 1900 hrs at 1900 hrs me and a group of my friends began to walk south. we don't even talk like that. but the public thought this was beautiful, this was a sealed case, the confession sealed the deal, and therefore there was no need to look at them as innocent until proven guilty. we were going to just go through the process. let's talk about the public atmosphere at the time. you have told a story recently where your mother, who was a professor

at parsons university, was coming home from work when a police car goes past and with the megaphones blaring "that is her, that is the that is the mother that dog yusef salaam." yes indeed. this is afterwards. we were getting death threats, all kinds of hate mail. it was predicated really on the heels of what donald trump placed in the new york city newspapers at the time. two weeks after we we accused, he had already created an ad that was going to be run front page on all of the new york city newspapers and that at essentially was ad essentially was calling for our death. it simply said bring back the death penalty, bring back our police. and into all of these... yes? do you think it made a difference, because you are a difference, because you were tried in front of a jury, do you think that add which was in four newspapers,

made a difference to the way that they saw the case? absolutely. in america, we are not seen as full human beings. in america, when they talk about to protect and serve, they are not talking about the people who have been pushed to the margins of society. because when it comes to black and brown folks, we are the ones whose rights are continuously trampled upon. we just saw that expression happened just recently in louisville where breeonna taylor's murderer is still not being charged with the murder. i will come back to that in a minute. let's stay with your story. there you are, a 15—year—old boy, going to the courts, before you were convicted, did you think that you would be found innocent? absolutely. i had not yet been awakened to the fullness of what the american nightmare is about as described by malcolm x. here we were going into this court system and i wholeheartedly believed that the system would find out that we didn't do this.

years later, one of the jurors was on cnn with raymond santana and he essentially was saying something very similar to what we were experiencing in the interrogation room. he said he was going crazy. once they got the charge that they were to deliberate and figure out whether we were guilty or innocent, he said he was going crazy, he knew that we hadn't done this but there was so much pressure to vote guilty, that he found some cockamamie excuse, in his own words. some cockamamie excuse to vote guiltyjust so that he can get out of there. i think that is a sad reality of the criminaljustice system that you are being pushed into a space where it is no longer about truth but more so about who can tell the best story, so when the verdicts came down and we lost in a very powerful and sad way,

it was the most horrible thing that we could have imagined because i had up until that moment believed that the criminal system was just, but i found out that there was the criminal system of injustice. you remember the moment you were sentenced? i do because i was free. i was going back and forth to court. i was on bail. so i was free to go home every single evening after the court proceedings had finished. and at that moment, instead of getting the opportunity to go back home, i was handcuffed, led into the back, i wasn't even given the opportunity to hug my loved ones, my mother wasn't in the courtroom because she had been barred from the courthouse, and i wasn't able to give them a hug, they led us into the back and we began to serve hard time. hard time. how did you cope with prison?

prison in many ways is a place where either you do the time or you let time do you. i read a poem in prison early on and it simply said prison life in many ways can be likened to the womb. if the life inside become stillborn, the womb becomes the tomb. it was about fighting. it was about trying to do everything in your capacity to remain free. free in your mind, even though your body was in bondage. so i prayed often. i read widely. i drew immensely. i also meditated. and while i was in prison, even though i wasn't able to see the outside as freely as somebody who was free, i had to imagine it, and in my imagination, i was able to make myself go where my mind was taking me. there were so many challenges to you as a result of what happened but one

was with your friend korey wise. i think he was only there to accompany you and he was the one who ended up with a much longer sentence, he was slightly older, and he ended up doing 12 years injail. yes. absolutely. i think the fullness of how he internalised that cannot be fully understood without seeing when they see us. part four really painted the picture... let me explain. when they see us is the netflix series that was made about the story and it was in 2019 and won many awards. but i wonder, you talk about understanding the story when you see that, are the two of you still friends? we are. we are, actually. if you google both of our names, you will find we were recently on the breakfast club, we are still friends, we still call each other, we still text each other, this journey has created a sacred brotherhood.

the only two of us who knew each other were korey and i. everybody else we met in prison. but all of us are brothers. so you leave prison, it is then and only then that somebody comes forward and says they were responsible for it. what was that moment like? you talk as if there is still a cloud hanging over you, but surely that is the moment it must have been lifted? you know, when we look at the juxtaposition of when they found that we were innocent, to when they thought we were guilty, it is an overwhelming reality that at the beginning of our case, it was a tsunami. there were over 400 articles written about us, ripping apart our lives. nobody came to us and asked us anything but yet were describing for the public who and what we were. 13 years later when the truth came out, it was a whisper, my mother described, in city hall, a whisper in city hall, a whisper she wondered if the rats in new york city had heard.

it was little to no fanfare. there was a cloud of suspicion that had laid in the minds of the people because all throughout our case, they would say things like dna evidence, but yet when the dna came back and it didn't match any one of us, that quickly was swept under the rug. and so when people moved forward with this case and especially the prosecutors and the people that were there to judge us, those individuals forgot that the fallacy of this case allowed them to move forward and overstep the bounds of justice. they overstepped the bounds of the law and in many ways they were complicit because a life that has been snatched can never be fully repaired. we were 1a, 15, 16—year—old children and i think that is the part that has to be magnified, because now we came back out and we were adults, without the toolkit to properly manoeuvre ourselves

in today's world. it is still a challenge. it is still a lot of confusion around it because donald trump becoming the president of the united states still says, "well, they had to be guilty of something, the police had so much evidence against them." we are talking about events back in the 90s when you were released. here we are in 2020, nationwide protests since the killing of george floyd by police and you mentioned breeonna taylor, she is the 26—year—old who was shot dead in her home. wejust heard a grand jury will be indicting one officer for his role but there is no charges going to be brought against the two officers who shot her. is that a form ofjustice? are you prepared to accept that is, that there may be other charges that will be brought, but this was, but that they should be effectively cleared ? when we heard the prosecutor,

the attorney general rather, heard him describe what was going on, and i'm talking about that night that breeonna taylor lost her life, when we heard him describe the activities of that night it sounded as if he was giving a play—by—play of a game or football or some type of sporting event. it was really a sad moment because what i knew and the world got an opportunity to see in a very real way is that this was institutional protectionism. and i think that is the hardest part to swallow. we always talk and speak to the heart, the humanity of us as a people, but america right now has turned savage when you look at the criminaljustice system. but you have been campaigning on this ever since you were released, on reform of the police. it the world, the criminal

justice system, no different now than it was in the 90s? it absolutely is no different. it is no different than it was when it was first imagined by the founding fathers. the system we thought was broken and in need of repair and then we found out that it is working exactly as it was designed, it is not broken. the system is operating and it's alive and sick as opposed to alive and well. and so it used to be as we were protesting and crying out that we were thinking about things in a manner, to put a band—aid on something, and that band—aid would have been reform. but now the heartbeat of america is crying out in the streets, the ancestors' wildest dreams have been saying it is no longer about reform, it is about abolition. what do you mean? explain. you are proposing abolishing the justice system,

replacing it with what? i'm saying that we the people that is found in documents of the constitution, it was never inclusive of black and brown people. we were considered three fifths of a human being. we are still considered three fifths of a human being. many of us have been relegated to second—class citizenship which is no citizenship. and we see that play out time and time again through the criminaljustice system. what do you think is needed to address that? what is needed is that we need to completely tear down what is in place and allow people who have been placed on the margins of society purposefully to be in included in the process of how we move forward. and that moving forward cannot be imagined in a five or a ten year plan. we need to imagine what it would look like generations from now, that we did something important in our lifetime

to change the trajectory of the criminal system of injustice in america to a system that was about fairness and inclusion and about true justice and about equal rights. how are you getting from one to the other, can i ask? how are you seeing that happen? it is incremental, and it is about us doing everything that we should be doing, a part of it, a large part of it is participating in the current process, but never ever taking our eyes off of the prize. sometimes when we get into the system, we participate and we become comfortable and we think we have made some strides. and then all of a sudden, we are snapped back into reality and that reality that we are in the american nightmare and not the american dream. because if we were living the american dream, everybody would be afforded true freedom, justice and equality. so what happens if donald trump gets another four years as president and remains in the white house

after november? i think we have to prepare ourselves for... we should hope for the best and we should prepare for the worst. and more importantly, as i was alluding to, it is not about a five year plan or a ten year plan. it is about a generational plan. and so if we began to really understand what is at stake, we begin to understand it is about us organising and it is about as unifying, they don't care, and by they i mean the system of oppression does not care whether we cry out in the streets. whether we march or whether we protest. what they do care about is whether we organise ourselves in a manner that is meaningful. you have a large majority of people who cannot use their voting rights because they have been placed by the margins of society, granted second—class citizenship. can i be clear, the organising you're talking about is organising to get people to vote?

no, i'm not talking about just that. i'm talking about the total strategy, it has to be inclusive of voting, because that is what we are dealing with right now. so if we do not participate in the current process, nonparticipation is participation, we have to look at what we have and we have to imagine that and reimagine what it would take to live in a world where we are talking about the total inclusion of the kaleidoscope of the the family, of a human family. so if we're looking at the totality of the human family being able to walk in the dream that dr king imagined as an example, and we are talking about complete inclusion, not talking about white supremacy... in one word, will that happen in your lifetime? i think we will see incremental changes, but i think that it is more important for us to be received

and to provide the water so that that can happen, perhaps in our lifetime but definitely our children's and definitely in their children's lifetime. yusef salaam, thank you very much. thank you. good morning. some potentially turbulent weather on the way later in the week, and that's after what is a fairly placid but also pretty cold start. many of you started the day with frost around, temperatures freezing through some parts of northern england and southeast scotland. we saw the best of the sunshine yesterday from eastern scotland down through parts of wiltshire, somerset. it's here where there will be

frost on the ground. sunshine overhead to begin with, cloudy start in east anglia. cloud will be thicker in northern ireland. the rain and clouds present a western scotland in the morning and during the afternoon to eastern scotland through wales. many either side of this, we will see some sunshine at long last, the winds ease. and it will feel warmer than recent days. this weather front will be pushing eastwards to take us into the start of tuesday, and it may become confined across east anglia, producing some cloud. elsewhere, a bit of patchy frost around. not as cold as monday morning, but there will be a dry and sunny day for many. temperatures on monday and tuesday around levels they should be for the stage in september.

but the first turn to something more turbulent. into wednesday, most enter through the south of iceland, more in the way of active weather and stronger winds. 0nly slowly pushing its way eastwards. some eastern areas start the day dry and bright and some will stay dry in daylight hours, but rain will spread through as we go into wednesday night. starting to feel a bit cooler with the cloud, the wind and the rain. a cooler feel still as we go into thursday, and then as a jet stream really fires up through the end of the week, we start to see this develop at the potentially stormy area of low pressure. the position will be crucial to who sees the wettest conditions, but there is the risk that we will see some disruption. after bright and frosty start, cool through the week. midweek spell of rain, but potential storms to watch out for as we head towards the weekend.

this is bbc news. very good to have your company. i'm rich preston with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the new york times says it has obtained president trump's tax records dating back two decades — which it says reveal chronic losses and years of tax avoidance. it is totally fake news. fake. we went to the same stories, you can ask me the same questions four years ago, how to litigate and talk about it. totally fa ke to litigate and talk about it. totally fake news. fighting breaks out between armenia and azerbaijan in the disputed region of nagorno—karabakh, with casualties on both sides. tear gas and mass arrests as tens of thousands march in belarus against president lukashenko. and an overnight curfew in melbourne has been lifted