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's just six weeks since bashar al—assad fled from syria to moscow, signalling the total collapse of a regime which systematically tortured and murdered its own population. what is striking is the relative calm that has characterised the country since. syria's new rulers, once regarded as jihadist extremists, are promising justice and respect for human rights. well, my guest is mouaz moustafa, a syrian—american who created the syrian emergency task force to campaign for freedom

in the darkest days of assad's rule. is optimism about syria's future justified 7 mouaz mustafa in new york, mouaz mustafa in new york, welcome to hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. now, you've had roughly six now, you've had roughly six weeks to take in what has weeks to take in what has happened to your native land. happened to your native land. i know that you flew i know that you flew into syria in the early days into syria in the early days after assad fled to moscow. after assad fled to moscow. you've had a chance you've had a chance to really reflect on it. to really reflect on it. do you think the country do you think the country is truly on a new path? is truly on a new path?

100%. 100%. absolutely. absolutely. on a new path that i think isn'tjust important for syria itself. it's a geopolitical earthquake for the better in the middle east. its reverberations on europe will be incredibly positive. and it's rare, you know, in this time and day, in this world, where we see so much darkness and war, to see good triumph over evil. absolutely, syria is on a new path. yeah, it's interesting, you're even talking with a smile on your face and yet i am also deeply conscious of the fact that when you were in syria on that visit just a few weeks ago, you devoted most of your time to an attempt to further the process of accountability for all of the terrible crimes committed by the assad regime. you went to one mass grave site, where it is believed there could be tens and tens of thousands of bodies of murdered syrians.

you'd campaigned on the issue for years. what was it like, finally seeing these sites? 0h, "surreal" is not a good enough word to describe it. i mean, i'm still, to this day, processingjust being at those sites and everything that's happened. and, you know, there was one mass grave, multiple mass graves we visited, one is called qutayfah, an area called qutayfah, where the third division of the assad regime forces was.

and so, you know, after thinking... you know, we located that location back in 2021, identifying it by working with the gravediggers, the mass grave workers that that dug and worked on these mass graves that the assad regime has all over the country. and notjust there, the place where caesar took the photos, hospital 601, military hospital 601, military hospital, to be there hospital, to be there and to have caesar kind and to have caesar kind of walk me through the location of walk me through the location on video call, and see that location that we shared with the world where, with the world where, again, thousands again, thousands of bodies tortured in of bodies tortured in the most horrific ways. the most horrific ways. to be there in person and to and transitionaljustice, to be there in person and to know now is the opportunity to give closure to families, know now is the opportunity to memorialise these places for notjust syrians, for notjust syrians, but for the world as but for the world as a never—again moment that a never—again moment that must never be repeated, must never be repeated, but also to have these places but also to have these places as a starting point as a starting point for the accountability process for the accountability process

and transitionaljustice, and helping syria move forward with justice and accountability. i'm going to stop you there, mouaz, cos there's a lot in that answer, and i do want to talk very specifically about the process ofjustice, but before we get there, our audience will have noticed you referred there to caesar, which is the code name of one particular photographer who was working for the assad regime, inside the killing machine, if i can put it that way. he was tasked with taking photographs of dead bodies, which had been transported from prison sites to military hospitals, and he escaped from syria, and he wanted the world to know what had been happening, and he has, i believe it's right in saying over 50,000 images of dead bodies, which he has handed over. i believe you've seen them. many other investigators have access to those files. but the truth is, there are uncountable numbers

of other syrians who have not been identified by photograph or any other means, and one of them is your uncle. did you make any progress in trying to find your beloved missing uncle? oh, you know... i know that, 99.99% chance, my uncle is gone. he sacrificed his life for this beautiful revolution and for a future democratic syria. but you live on the 0.1 chance that he may be alive.

showing my uncle was indeed arrested, indeed tortured, indeed transferred to another horrific dungeon, but no body. and that's why, in terms of these mass graves, securing them and then having the right experts come in to exhume these mass graves, to utilise rapid dna testing is so key to allowing people to move on, but also beginning that but also beginning that important important accountability process. accountability process. yeah, you talk about yeah, you talk about the forensic investigation the forensic investigation and the work that can be done and the work that can be done with dna on the bodies, but with dna on the bodies, but what about living witnesses? what about living witnesses? i know that your emergency task i know that your emergency task force is working inside syria force is working inside syria to protect a number of key to protect a number of key witnesses who, if there witnesses who, if there are ever to be trials, are ever to be trials, will offer key testimony will offer key testimony about exactly what happened about exactly what happened and who must be held and who must be held to account, but how can to account, but how can you assure — in the relative still chaos of today's syria — you assure — in the relative how can you assure the safety of key witnesses? of key witnesses?

so, first of all, these key witnesses, whether it's caesar, the photographer, whether it's, you know, the gravedigger and the bulldozer driver and the excavator driver, these are people that worked on multiple mass graves. we've brought them to testify before parliament in the uk, in congress in the united states and the united nations completely anonymously, without showing their faces

and i feel like we're at a place today, and they do as well, that they can actually show to the world these heroes that bore witness to these horrific crimes. but in terms of your question on inside syria — in the chaos, if that's the right word — look at iraq post the fall of saddam, the looting, the complete security unravelling of the country, or look at afghanistan as the americans pulled out and the desperation, the terrorist attacks and other things that happened. in syria, we saw none of that. i mean, ifollowed, city by city, as aleppo was liberated in two days, then hama and homs and damascus. we did not see massive looting by any means. there were very few even reports of violations,

you know, by fighters or anything. there was no displacement of civilians. and it's really an homage not just to those revolutionaries that liberated these cities, but to the syrian people as a whole. here's something you said a few days ago. you said, "no matter how long it takes, we will get every "single one of those responsible, "starting with bashar al—assad," and you mentioned iraq in your last answer. i mean, one thing that did happen in iraq was that, ultimately, saddam hussein was apprehended, and a form of justice was meted out to him. very brutal justice. syrians, at the moment, are not going to have an opportunity to see bashar al—assad brought to justice. there is no international forum, which, at the moment, looks likely to be able to bring him tojustice, so why are you so confident that assad himself will ultimately face a court? well, first of all,

i think i'm confident because what the syrians have learned in the past 1a years, and with the doors of the international criminal court, the icc, closed off to syria because syria wasn't a signatory to the rome statute, and every time we tried to get the un security council to refer syria to the icc, russia and china vetoed. and then, even in... and so, in that time, syrian organisations, syrian civil society, syrian revolutionaries, people that were working on documentation, had to find ways of trying to get steps towards justice without a court that was available like the icc. so universaljurisdiction, dual nationals, all these things were used. you saw the koblenz case in germany. in the united states, setf, our organisation, worked with law enforcement to arrest the brigadier general... sure, but the bottom line, though, and you know it much better than me, is that assad has one key ally,

and that is vladimir putin, and assad is sitting in moscow. there's no way, at the moment, the russians are going to give him up. again, i'm thinking of the future of syria and the sense of accountability. if assad can't be brought to justice, how do you deliver that ultimate sense that those responsible have been brought to justice? so, number one, you know, what happened in iraq was a foreign invasion and then kind of a kangaroo court in terms of... i'm not a legal, you know, super expert on this. so it's a very different situation. in terms of assad, i think he can be brought tojustice. assad is a liability for vladimir putin. he no longer gives him his warm water port in syria, he no longer buys his weapons or backs his worldview, you know, that it'sjust the imperialist west and somehow russia is not imperialist and it is just trying to protect itself. and assad has lost all the value that putin even saw in him, so pressuring russia and pressuring putin to give

assad up is something that is very realistic and can be done. i don't want to see assad poisoned off in some apartment in moscow. i want to see him come back to damascus, where, in damascus, a syrian court can try this dictator for the horrific genocidal massacres that he's perpetrated. ahmed al—sharaa, the leader of hay�*at tahrir al—sham, was, until very recently, seen by much of the western world as a jihadist terrorist, a man associated with islamic state—style militancy. why do you now place so much faith in his ability and willingness to move forward with a free syria, committed to equal rights for all? well, first of all, it's not just now, all of a sudden, you know, he's somehow changed hats and overnight he changed.

that's not what happened. i've watched ahmed al—sharaa and hts rule idlib for about a decade, a decade of rule under the management of only one group that's part of the joint operations command room that liberated the whole country. and i want to reiterate that we cannot reduce the entire revolution to one individual or one armed group. this revolution was won by millions of syrians across the board. i get that point, but the truth is hts is now in control in damascus. it is the clearly dominant military force in the country. it is ahmed al—sharaa who has chosen... ..i guess we can call it an interim government, and in that government, he has appointed a host of loyalists, whose position and loyalty sits directly with him. there is not the diversity which might reflect syria's

reality and might put at ease those syrians who do not share the worldview of ahmed al—sharaa. so, i would say a couple of things. just going back, the governance in idlib over that period of time, if you compare it to economically, electricity—wise, services—wise, to northeast with sdf or regime—held areas, or the turkish—backed groups in the northern countryside of aleppo, idlib was governed the best during these past ten years. but the governance of idlib at the time isn't the same... you know, it wasn't perfect, it wasn't a western democracy by any means, but as we saw hts now kind of, you know, consolidate the main positions that need to run the government, both in terms of technocratic government, a prime minister and a minister of energy, ministry of health, etc, for services and governance to take place, and then other positions like

foreign minister and others. number one, we haven't had elections yet, so, by everyone�*s admission, including hts, this isn't a government that has been chosen by the people, but one of the reasons that you saw the placements of people that they trusted in these locations, it's because there's a lot of fear, a lot of fear of a counter—revolution, of a potential military council that come in, this and that. but what's really important is, are they opening up or not, and how? and what we have seen is an incredible effort, city by city, village by village, to talk to religious leaders of the catholic, eastern orthodox, and kurdish, and shi'ite, and alawite communities, engagement on the local level, ensuring that people that liberated towns came from these very towns. the people that liberated aleppo grew up in aleppo. they were kids as they were bombed out by iran and russia and assad from it, and came back as liberators.

and the national dialogue that is happening today with the leadership of the new damascus government is one that does not at all ignore any geographic, ethnic, religious sect, minority at all. everyone�*s part of a national conversation... well, you're clearly an optimist. i mean, you're definitely an optimist, mouaz. i mean, i'm sure you saw, just as i did, that the new embryonic education ministry, now run by hts, was demanding changes in syrian textbooks which really pointed to an extremely — if i can put it this way — islamist worldview, not one that reflected the diversity of syria. when i looked back through... and there was some pushback, by the way, and based on the pushback, the government then, you know, amended and is being responsive to what the syrian people are demanding until we get to a representative government. but it was mostly taking out the indoctrination of,

"assad is the dear leader, "his dad is..." god knows what, and so on. and it was a lot less, at least from what the media represented it as somehow, you know, shifting the whole education to a very islamist curriculum. that's not the case. all right. well, that's your view. let's talk, if i may, let's now talk about the united states and the geopolitics of syria because, for 13 years or so, you've worked very hard to get us lawmakers and administration officials to take on the syria problem and confront assad in ways that you felt the american administrations over successive presidents failed to do. we speak as donald trump is taking over the white house. he has appointed — though we don't know if she's going to be confirmed — tulsi gabbard to be director of national intelligence, a woman you have accused in the past of being far too close to vladimir putin and not being interested in the suffering of the syrian people, so how can you be

confident that donald trump is going to pursue a syria policy that will please the people of syria and not vladimir putin? so, tulsi gabbard, initially, my big opposition to her was i was worried what her effect would be on syria, helping save or keep assad in power or take off sanctions from him or support his normalisation, but we saw very quickly assad is gone. the reason i advocate against tulsi gabbard's appointment is for the sake of the united states, for the country that gave me a home after leaving syria when i was young, and for the sake of our allies. this is a person that does not believe in the same worldview as democracies and actually supports the worldview of tyrants and authoritarians. and i'm confident... ..or not confident, but let's just say very optimistic that the senate will not confirm her, that she will not become the director of national intelligence.

but let's look at the trump administration now in terms of their policies in general. president trump put out a statement as soon as assad fell. his statement was way more positive than the initial statement of president biden. the biden white house put out a statement that said, "these are terrorists. "we have nothing to do with this "and we call on de—escalation." de—escalate what? the liberation of literal concentration camps where babies had their nails pulled out? the world should be celebrating what happened in syria instead of being critical about, "well, who's here and who's there? " we just got rid of a horrible evil, defeated russia and iran and hezbollah and assad at the same time, and i think only the ukrainians feel our happiness and have continued to be very good allies and now good friends of the new syrian government. the trump administration, i would say, has a lot of people that he has appointed, that i have worked with very closely, that actually are, probably, you know, very good on syria.

marco rubio, mike waltz, the special envoy for the middle east, witkoff, which has had a great success in getting the ceasefire... and when you say, "i believe this administration, incoming "administration is going to be good on syria," do you believe it is time for the us, the european powers to lift sanctions on syria, to end the designation of hts as a terrorist organisation? and do you believe it's time for all syrians who were displaced, who fled from syria — and we're talking about, what, 5—6 million of them at least — is it time for them to go home? is it truly safe for them to go home? yes. it makes me emotional to say it out loud, to tell you the truth, but absolutely, yes. number one, there are sanctions and designations, both state designate sponsor of terror and the fto — foreign terrorist 0rganization — designations on people like sharaa and hts.

and the designations on syria and the sanctions go back all the way to 1979. why were these sanctions on there, even the state sponsor of terror designations. why? it was because of bashar al—assad and his father, hafez al—assad. and the caesar sanctions, amongst others, these were tools that we advocated for, that the syrian people advocated for in order to help the syrian people beat this tyrant, short of military intervention. and so what message does it send notjust syria but the whole world that western countries will make positive statements, will support people that are calling for democracy, liberty, freedom, and trying to get rid of their authoritarian regimes and tyrannies? and then when the tyrant goes away, when the authoritarian is gone, then we debate whether we lift these sanctions or not? it should be no questions asked. these sanctions must be lifted. the reason for those sanctions is now gone. and gone, by the way,

without the help of the international community, minus some of these sanctions, gone by the people in syria that liberated themselves. and i asked you, finally, if the displaced syrians can safely return, and i guess it's a very personal question. i mean, yourfamily were forced out of syria. you left when you were nine years old. you're clearly a man very well connected in washington, but ultimately, you were born a syrian. are you going to go home? yes, sir. first of all, so many of my family members, some are in germany, some are in turkey, in jordan, in lebanon. those both in europe and those that are in the region are all making plans to go home. countless friends are going home. i was looking at some numbers in some reporting — about 50,000 syrians came back from turkey in a matter of a week. those that are in... you know, the people that are in germany, there are hundreds of thousands, all over, in the united states,

they all want to go home. i know a family in philadelphia that i was meeting on my way up here, i saw randomly, and i was like, "hey, what's your plan now?" and his name is mouayad, my friend, and he said, "me, my wife and kids, we're moving back. "we're moving back to syria." for the first time... ..oh, in decades, syria's now safe. you don't get arbitrarily arrested at a checkpoint cos you have the wrong name, or you're born in the wrong place, or the guy wants a bribe. corruption has been... how hard is corruption to take out of a society? corruption evaporated in syria as these security forces, and intelligence branches, and this mafia that ruled the country dissipated. and so now, today, syria is safe. mouaz moustafa, we have to end there. thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello there.

a rare red weather warning has been issued by the met office for northern ireland and scotland for storm eowyn. a red warning means that there will be significant disruption from this storm, even the potential for a loss of life. if you do not have to travel during friday, it is best to not do so. now this area of low pressure, storm eowyn underwent a rapid intensification during the early hours of friday morning. it's throwing a lot of heavy rain ahead of it and some damaging gusts of wind, some snow to higher ground, but it's here where the centre of the low is, tthat�*s where we'll have the strongest of the winds during the morning rush hour. so that's when the red warning is in force across northern ireland. that will continue until 2pm in the afternoon. and then the strongest of the winds transfer into the central belt of scotland. widespread gusts close to 90 mph, possibly some isolated gusts of 100 mph. we've also got amber weather warnings quite widely across the northern half of the uk. damaging gusts of winds here,

there are numerous weather warnings right across the uk. do go to the bbc weather website for further updates. but as we go through the day on friday, the rain across england and wales will ease quite quickly. and then it's a day of sunny spells and gale force gusts of winds. a rash of showers and longer spells of rain as the low crosses scotland. here it's going to stay pretty miserable, six or seven degrees — highest values of 12 further south. but as i've already stated, if you don't have to travel in those red weather warnings, it is best not to do so. if you do have travel plans on friday, well, be prepared for those damaging winds. there could be some disruption with power cuts, structural damage, travel disruption. tune into your bbc local radio station for further updates. now the storm will start to ease away, still windy day on saturday, but elsewhere it's a slightly quieter story, so we keep the gales into the far north and some of these showers will be wintry in nature. but elsewhere, it's a case

of sunny spells, lighter winds on saturday before more wet weather pushes in from the west, but it will be noticeably colder as well. that rain is going to sweep its way steadily east, so that benign, quiet weather story looks likely to be a thing of the past. keep watching the weather forecast for further updates.

live from washington. this is bbc news a judge temporarily blocks president trump's order to end automatic citizenship for babies born in the us, calling it blatantly unconstitutional. president trump threatens new tariffs while urging allies to boost defence spending in an address to business leaders in davos. and efforts are under way to contain anotherfire in the los angeles area, weeks after unprecedented wildfires there killed dozens of people. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. a federaljudge temporarily blocked president trump's order to end automatic citizenship for babies born on american soil. the judge in seattle said the order was "blatantly unconstitutional" and barred the adminstration from implementing it for two weeks. the case, brought by four

states, is one of several lawsuits challenging mr trump's effort to end birthright