this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. it is 50 years this month since the ira's murderous birmingham pub bombings, which precipitated one of the greatest miscarriages ofjustice in english legal history. at that time, paddy hill, who's my guest in this interview recorded in 2011, was a young northern irishman trying to make a living in england. the ira bombing campaign

on the british mainland was at its height. on the 21st of november 1974, two bombs exploded at pubs in birmingham. 21 people were killed, 182 injured. hill and five others were arrested within hours. the men, who came to be known as the birmingham six, maintained their innocence and accused the police of forcing them to sign false confessions. after 16 years, those convictions were finally quashed by the court of appeal. two decades after he was freed, paddy hill spoke to me in glasgow. what was the psychological impact of being falsely accused and convicted of mass murder, and had this wronged man been able to rebuild his life?

cheering. the police told us from the start that they knew we hadn't done it! they told us they didn't care who had done it! they told us that we were selected and that they were going to frame usjust to keep people in there happy! that's what it's all about! paddy hill, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much, stephen. it's a pleasure to be here. it's almost 20 years now since your release. do you feel like a free man today? no. never. uh, when you're injail, fighting your wrongful conviction and through the experiences of ourselves and, of course, other prisoners, you never think of the outside world.

and of course, everything is just geared up for getting to the court of appeal and praying that and wishing that you win your case. you don't have any plans, really, about the outside world. and of course, there's an old saying, stephen, "be very careful what you wish for, for when you get it you may not know what to do with it," and that is very, very apt for us. we are wishing to get ourfreedom back. and then suddenly you get it. and believe me, it is nothing like you imagine it. and if you'd have told me the day i got released that i would not be able to handle the outside world, i would have laughed in your face. after what i've been through, living in maximum security prisons, which, to be honest with you, are nothing more than war zones. violence is rife. life is cheap. they're cold, brutal places that are filled with nothing but anger, rage, frustration and violence. and then suddenly you get out.

and in prison, if somebody bumps into you in prison, the first thing to think about is stabbing them. because, you know he's going to stab you. it's all about face, macho. and you come outside and you walk down the street and everybody�*s bumping into you. and the panic attacks. we know nothing about money. we got £50,000 when we first came out, three weeks after we got out. i'd love to sit here and tell you i spent it, i didn't, i squandered it. i was giving it away. but it is 20 years now. yeah. i am amazed that the ferocity of your anger and the complications about your feelings, which you've just described, are still there 20 years on. yeah. because when we got out, of course, you found out so many things after you get out. and it fuels the anger. uh, when i came out, my anger was at this level up here, but that was in

respect of myself. i like to think that over the years, that anger has now subsided a bit. but in its place has come another anger. because when we got out, i've always said if what happened to us meant that no one else would be wrongly convicted and tortured and framed, you could walk away. but there is more innocent people in prison today than there was 50 years ago, 30 year ago, 20 year ago. well, we'll talk about that. we'll talk about your work with other miscarriages ofjustice. but before we get there, i cannot help but turn to something you said only a few weeks ago. you said, "every day all i think about is getting a gun. and killing cops. ..and shooting police." exactly. how can you say that? because that's what i think about. my worst time is the morning, i don't sleep. i went to bed this

morning at a 1.15am. i was in the kitchen having a cup of coffee at 3.25am. i went back to bed at 4am and back up again at 6.10am. we don't sleep, we just catnap. and i don't know what happens when i go to sleep. i don't remember what i dream about — very, very rare. sometimes i have little snatches, but i have people like gerry conlon, who's been in... gerry conlon refuses to stay in a hotel room with me. he says, "you're crazy when you go to sleep". gerry conlon�*s another victim of miscarriage ofjustice. another victim, and as he says, in my sleep, i'm killing people. i'm slicing people. i'm kicking and screaming. i don't remember any of this, but what i do remember is when i waking up, when i come round and the blood is pumping through your veins and the tension and the adrenaline flow, and all i think about is walking into that police station in queen's road and austin and birmingham, just like one of them, like arnie and what have you, and one of them films with a big machine gun and going, here, "take this" and shooting every one of them.

believe me, i sit there and i smile at it. and do you recognise that that is extraordinarily damaging to you? exactly, exactly. i mean, that is corrosive. you are trapped. i know i'm trapped, but one of the things that i can't get out of my head that triggers it all the time... what i can't forget is that i went into the police station. i've never been arrested. i went into a police station of my own free will to be eliminated from their inquiries. i'd already been eliminated by special branch at 6:15 at heysham police station. they told the heysham police to let us go. t14 — the security forces in the north of ireland told them to let us go. they knew who we were and we weren't involved. my brothers were in the british army fighting the ira then. and this, of course, happened in november 197a. 1974. but you speak to me as though you can still

feel the pain of that. you bet i can. you bet i can't forget it. you used a big word. you called it torture. we're talking about britain. we're talking about a country which has signed every single international convention against the use of torture. exactly. and still being used. you know, theyjust told... they told us right from the beginning what they were going to do with us. and that's exactly what they did. they had a free hand. do you remember signing the confession? i didn't sign. the whole the point of their operation on you was to get you to sign a piece of paper. that's right. they told me to sign under the right hand corner of the, at the top of the page, under the caution and the bottom right hand corner. i never signed it. two of us didn't sign. me and gerry hunter. the otherfour did.

they signed false confessions. and when you look at the confessions, a blind man can see that they're a load of rubbish. in one confession, there's a 12 or 1a bombs, and another one there's eight. injohnnie walker's, there's two brown paper bags or parcels. billy power's statement — the bombs were put outside the mulberry bush. but in actualfact, they were put inside. and what matters more to you? what damaged you more? because we've talked about the corrosive anger. what damaged you more? was it all of that that went with the gross injustice that was done to you? or was it then living in a prison system, which you've described as evil, as a living hell, for 16.5 years afterward, which was, in the end, worse for you to live with? the cops.

that's the hardest part. i can't speak on behalf of the other five, only in respect of the fact that the other five don't have any criminal convictions. i'd been in trouble with the police before. with the police since i came over to the country — since 1960. and violence was nothing new to me. you were a criminal.

no, i wasn't. i was fighting and, you know, the usual petty things, you know, uh, what you call it. so i'd been in prison for stabbing people and slicing people. so i knew what prison life was about. prison conditions you... ..so subtly, you don't even know you're being conditioned. it's like a soldier. the only thing is, a soldier has a choice. he joins the army of his own free will. but when he joins the army on monday, they don't send him to iraq or afghanistan on the tuesday. they train him for what he's going to be involved in to the best of their ability. so he knows what he's getting in. with us, we were just suddenly plucked off and then thrown into the prison system, and we were the most hated prisoners in the prison system.

prison officers were offering people hundreds of pounds to stab us, spitting in ourfood, urinating in it, you name it. we had it all — putting glass in it. when you went out in the exercise yard, were throwing outjam jars full of excreta, trying to smash them against your head when you walk by the prisoners. this is what we had to contend with 24—7 in the prison system. but as i say, you become conditioned to live in prison, and it's like a soldier who's living in a battle and in a battle zone. hey, sooner or later he adopted his surroundings. he has to if he wants to survive. and we have to do the same. and prison... not only that, but prison kills your emotions. you die a little bit every day, and then one day you wake up. don't ask me what day, but one day you were waking up, and you know that you are changed forever. you know that nothing will ever, ever hurt you again. you named, specifically named several police officers whom you say were specifically

responsible for manufacturing evidence, for using you. would it have made a difference to you if those individuals had been pursued through the courts? 0h, definitely. definitely. that's, you know, that's the one thing that we fought. and when we had five of them charged, two of them, the charges against two of them were dropped after, i think it was the third court appearance and the other three carried on. and after about the sixth or seventh appearance, they were appearing at the southwark crown court in london. and then after the sixth or seventh appearance, suddenly a magistrate from outside greater london sat that day, and he made a ruling that they wouldn't get a fair trial because of all the adverse publicity. adverse publicity?

hey, before i even set foot in the court, you had the assistant chief constable, maurice bucke, on world television telling everybody, "we caught the people who'd done it. "they're covered from head to toe with nitroglycerine". adverse publicity? so, please, how does it work for cops, it doesn't work for us, the public? and remember one thing — we're all supposed to be equal under the eyes of the law. what applies to you applies to me. it applies to everybody right across the board. but in this country, no, there's two sets of laws, one for them and one for us, the public. but i come back to that word reconciliation. clearly these men abused the notion ofjustice and they abused you. but in the end, wouldn't it be in your interest, in paddy hill's interest, to get beyond that? maybe, maybe, even to find a way years after, to come to terms with it,

even to forgive? well, quite a few of them are dead now, so you couldn't do nothing about them, you know?. how, given the strength of that, how do you relate to family? how do you relate to friends now, now, that you are, and have been for a long time, a free man? uh, my own family, my kids, uh, when i, when i got out, you come and you see your kids, and they're just like talking to strangers. in fact, you'd rather be in the company of strangers because you don't expect nothing from strangers. you'd rather be... in the company of strangers than be in the company of my family. i realised that very shortly after i got out, and i felt nothing for them, and i had to tell my kids that, in fact, it came about through an argument and my daughterjust went into one and she started screaming at me and she was crying hysterically.

and she said to me, "dad, you come up here and you spend a half an hour with us". says, "and then, you go and you drive for hours to a prison to spend time with people". said, "i don't have many memories of you before you went away. "and i've waited 16.5 years for you to come home," she said. "and you've been out just over a year". said, "and let me tell you something, i'm never going to get you back. "i don't know what's happened to you. "i don't know where you belong". but she said, "you don't belong to us". could you say anything back to her? ijust stood there and i burst into tears and i told her, "i don't feel nothing for you". and i still don't feel nothing for my kids. and i feel so bleep sorry. i feel so sorry for them because they never, ever going to have a relationship with me.

never. but how can you know that? i mean, it is 20 years you've been wrestling with the deepest of feelings, but is there not a part of you that does believe you can reconnect? it's too far. it's gone too long. if i had some help when i first came out, maybe. but now, i don't think so. what about the others in the birmingham six? one is now dead. richard died five years ago. is there anything you get from talking to them? because after all, they are the men who've been through the same experience you've been through. no, because i hardly ever speak to them. gerry hunter, i believe, is living somewhere in portugal. i haven't seen... i've seen gerry once in about ten years.

and that was at richard's funeral in and ireland when he died five years ago, and johnnie walker haven't seen johnnie for about ten. i haven't seen him at the funeral as well. that was the first time. i've seenjohnnie in about five years, and i haven't seen him since. uh, hugh and i haven't seen at all for about ten years. and is that because you don't want to? i'm too busy getting on with my own thing and trying to keep myself together. and i know that they're all having their own problems. i hope this doesn't sound trite, but you know what's in my mind? an image of of nelson mandela locked up for so long by the apartheid regime in south africa who'd suffered terrible things at the hands of the government. he came out and his message was one of reconciliation. truth and reconciliation. does that mean anything to you? uh, no.

because the one thing you'll never get from the british establishment is the truth. the british establishment, as far as i'm concerned, is one of the most dirtiest, evillest, corrupted, perverted establishments in the world. and i say that without any fear of contradiction. but can you not in any way, after all this time, distance yourself a little bit from the terrible things that happened to you and understand why things happened? i mean, for example, in 1974, understand that in britain there was a profound fear of ira bombs. the police were under enormous pressure. dozens and dozens of innocent people were being killed. and that's why, in the end, the police were desperate to nail somebody from the crime of the birmingham pub bombings. does that not make any difference to you putting it into some sort of a context?

no. why should it? just because the police are under pressure, they can go and torture people and frame them and fit them up and send them to jail and ruin their lives, their families lives? does that give the people in ireland the right to go out and kill soldiers, which you condemn because they kill people in ireland? tit—for—tat. no way. it doesn't work that way. after all, you want to remember, we pay the police for to do a job and to do it properly. we expect them to be honest. we don't expect them to then become the terrorists and the torturers. and if they do, then something should be done about it. i want to ask you something else which is connected, but a little bit different. it's about the political mood and whether you see any parallels between the 1970s, when you were a young man from northern ireland trying to make a living in england at a time when there was profound public fear of northern irish terrorism in mainland britain. whether you see any parallels

with what we've seen in the last decade, profound fear in western westmoreland county community. of profound fear ofjihadi islamist terror and laws passed, anti—terror laws passed, policing operations undertaken, which some in the muslim community have claimed were discriminatory toward them. do you see parallels? oh, yeah. with the irish? yeah, i've been saying it for years. i've been saying it for the last ten years. the same thing is going to happen to the muslim communities. that will happen to the irish. the only thing is, as i tell people when i'm speaking, "don't do to the muslim community what you did to the irish". they allowed the irish communities in england to be isolated. don't do it to the muslim community because that only breeds terrorism. before we end, i want to just quote to you something that you said as you walked out of that court 20 years ago, high on adrenaline. you were very angry, and you explained to

the public how you'd been scapegoated and misused. but you also said, "now it's our turn". exactly. to tell the public the truth. and i've been doing it and telling it to the public since the day i got out of how rotten, evil and corrupt. and i'll tell you what, you see when i get people come to me as just a member of the family has just been, as they claim, being fitted up, just been found guilty and they're innocent, right? and i tell the people, "listen, you see the government, you see all the so—called good people, but when you go to them, you're going to be very, very shocked and you're going to be sickened by the response you get "from the good people, because the people that "you think are there to help you will turn their back on you. "but there's a good side of it. "you're going to get help from the most unexpected "sources you ever thought of". and that's perfectly true. and let me tell you something.

we didn't get out of court. we didn't get our convictions overturned because of the government or the courts. i'll tell you what we got our conviction overturned. public outcry. the one thing about the british public, when they see an injustice, they are not afraid to stand up and scream about it. and thank god. we were put into prison just to satisfy and to quell public outcry. and in the end, it was the public outcry that got us back out again. paddy hill, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. it's been a pleasure, stephen. thank you for inviting me. thank you very much. my pleasure. thank you. hello there. it might be time to break

out the winter wardrobe over the next few days. we are heading for a cold spell. as the air comes all the way down from the arctic, it will increase the risk of some snow and ice, and certainly some widespread overnight frost, particularly into the early hours of wednesday morning. the cold air not quite arriving to all, still relatively mild down in the south—west, but a bitterly cold start in sheltered western rural parts of scotland — temperatures way below freezing and perhaps even some freezing fog as well. but generally scotland, northern ireland, northern england and north wales will keep some sunshine clouding over from the south—west later on in the day, with outbreaks of showery rain here. we mightjust see double digits down across cornwall, but generally 6—9 degrees across england and wales. much colder further north — three or four. so the cold air is starting to push its way steadily southwards. but as this weather front moves in and bumps into that cold air, we could see the spell of significant snow —

mostly to higher ground, but perhaps some accumulations at lower levels across parts of north wales, into the north midlands, up across the pennines, perhaps into southern scotland, as well as much as five to 10cm of snowfall before that low starts to pull away. and even once it does, it could turn quite icy behind, with a wintry mix of rain, sleet and snow across east anglia and south east england for a time. windy with it as that low pulls away, and then we'll see a brisk northerly wind driving in some showers off north sea coasts. and here, they will be once again quite wintry. west will be best for sunshine on tuesday, but a cold day generally, with temperatures below where they should be for this time of year. and factor in the strength of the wind, it will be a bit of a shock to the system, i suspect. the cold air sitting right across us, the isobars open up, so as we get into wednesday morning, we could see a widespread hard

frost first thing.

live from washington. this is bbc news. joe biden gives ukraine the green light to strike inside russian territory, using long range us missiles. the us president pledges more funding to fight climate change, during a historic visit to the amazon rainforest. and hezbollah s media chief is killed in an israeli airstrike on central beirut. hello, i'm carl nassan. in a major us foreign policy shift, officials say, president biden is lifting a ban on ukraine using american—made long—range missiles to strike inside russia. that's according to our us

media partner cbs news. the bbc has reached out to the pentagon and white house for comment — we have yet to hear back. the move follows north korea deploying troops to help moscow's war effort. the authorization would allow ukraine to use army tactical missile systems — or atacms — to defend its forces in russia's kursk region. atacms are missiles with a range of up to 186 miles — or 300 kilometers. this is a step further from the last time the white house eased limits on its weapons. back in may, president biden allowed ukraine to use shorter—range high mobility artillery rocket across the border. ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky has long urged the us to lift the restrictions on long—range missiles. however during his evening address on sunday, mr zelensky didn't confirm the reports. the plan to strengthen ukraine as a victory plan which i presented to our partners.