balancing on the brink of a breakdown cyprus again weighs a levy on large bank deposits as a struggle to satisfy the e.u. to get a rescue package ahead of monday's deadline. british police investigate the death of a russian oligarch boris berezovsky who was found dead at his home after reportedly losing much of his money in recent years. no trial no food guantanamo hunger strikers enter their forty seventh day with lawyers raising concerns they're denied access to inmates as prison officials played down the scale of the protests. and among the week's top stories moscow and beijing seal a powerful partnership agreeing to double oil supplies to china as the new president visits russia on his first official overseas visit.

nine am in moscow i matter as a good to have you with us here on r t our top story in cyprus the clock is ticking it only has to monday to gather the money needed to secure a vital bailout and dramatic turn about the government decided it will try and dip into people's bank accounts those with deposits of more than one hundred thousand euros in the island's biggest bank the controversial move still has to be signed off by parliament in the troika of creditors as he steps are sillier imports the mood in cyprus is one of panic and frustrations. a week ago d u a group of the i.m.f. in brussels hammered out a bailout plan for the sox's the banking sector ten billion euros was the offer on one condition cyprus puts up five point eight billion euros how by imposing a one time levy of up to nine point nine percent on all bank deposits if not the deal was off the limit and why some protesters just outside the parliament secured

politicians voted a resounding no effective say no to the troika down to ten billion euros united we can turn to moscow it's believed that in russia businesses and wealthy individuals account for most of the foreign money is invested country but russia said its would not help cyprus out before it makes a deal. in the end cypriot officials made a u. turn and are now bending over backwards trying to seal that original bailout from want to put together a package pleasing enough to deploy they've agreed an imposing a twenty percent levy on deposits above one hundred thousand euros in the back of cyprus and four percent for big deposits in other banks while also passing bills to impose capital control on banks creating a solidarity fund and restructure its the backs of those produced a fresh wave of anger spilling over to the streets. all during that week of

dramatic political and economic maneuvering citizens were already on an emotional rollercoaster panicked cypriots rushed to a.t.m. stick trying to get their money out of the bank and some left empty handed as machines run out of cash. recipient stick to the streets shocked at what the larson felt was really a particularly journey over trying to rethink the site of the year in by. protesters condemned the so-called troika the european central bank e.u. commission and the i.m.f. for the first time to be cruising the street with the. demands a red line at the next one these are all going up like this particular instances that the european union the euro zone have taken a step forward beyond their previous policy where they always said individuals will not be harmed we will not take money out of the minds of pensioners and actually they don't matter what we see is that if you are big member then you will be left

alone and you will be bailouts and you if you are a small member you will be deleted arrest to further complicate matters banks of the country will remain closed until next week and the european central bank had given an ultimatum if there's no deal with the troika by monday the twenty fifth emergency liquidity funding will be cut off causing another round of panic as citizens feared the worst trying to get hold of whatever cash they could frustration mounts most conversations now are about nothing else but the predicament they're countries in north korea talk of the time. where you borders are. more familiar with the support from europe but there are reasons. to be able to. say you. believe it would you know what everybody else or company next. then you don't go before people so your

club. and whatever they could they don't think twice about joining the crowd. over time is associated with you know the you know. people unification in one city i think those are. all over the past few days many cypriots have been telling me that they've seen or read about the impacts of the economic crisis on the people of neighboring greece but it's not a really felt feel to them well not until the past week or so they share similar language similar culture and other wondering are they going to have to share a similar social try. well. tests are still you are to need to see a cyprus. cyprus as president treasury and chief will be in brussels sunday to meet the euro group and the i.m.f. to see if the numbers add up so they can get final approval for their plan robert oulds from the euro skeptic group says the e.u. is larger economies are bullying smaller members it seems that certain countries

such as germany are we pushing their own agenda and those countries are to small and can't really stand up to the larger interests in the opinion the large financial interests of french and german banks of really pushed around and all bullied and do not get a good deal and this is. from the e.u. to try and take percentage of the savings of the. banks which is actually we could argue these are actually breaching e.u. rules on protection protecting the policy so it's actually very seedy and it's also bullying and he's actually counterproductive because it's now threatening the whole banking system in the new book because people see he's no brained of those who have tapings counts he's no friend of protecting deposits and bank has it's own but actually is this really of the why should be. separated finance minister was in moscow this week in search of a rescue deal but returned home empty handed as russian investors showed no

interest moscow says the door remains open and is ready to help the island reach consensus with the e.u. as our correspondent alexei airshow skee told r.t. as bill died earlier russia is now looking to bring its offshore money back home. well you know there's a certain stereotype in the west about the russian mafia keeping their money in cyprus offshore accounts well of course to some extent there is some illegal money there but definitely fundamentally it's all about the big businesses because almost just about every big business in russia has an asset an offshore account in cyprus and the biggest concern which is now there and was talked about by the by the president by the highest officials in the country does not concern the big businesses in the sense that russia has been striving to have the offshore money returns to the country the government believes it's now you countries are more stable you need to provide healthy environment to keep the money inside the country so this is not the concern here especially with the government and the president saying that it wants the money to be. earlier we spoke to the spokesperson of the

russian president and hear what he had to say about i don't recall mr president for the. russian economy. was made during his annual address the russian parliament this year and here still start to this idea. have to make environment and russian economy more comfortable or. to invest their money. and to keep the money here on russian soil the biggest concern in the biggest and fairness which president putin talked about here small businesses private who have the money in cyprus and we're talking here at least around forty thousand people who have their money in the offshore accounts there will suffer and this is something of course which is now being seriously condemned by moscow but then of course cyprus is in a very difficult position either it risks losing the bailout funds which of course

will keep the country buoyant if it goes ahead with that then of course it loses its foreign investment investment so what does it do the reason feeling that cyprus may be shooting itself in the leg in a sense that it's been living off the offshore and. for many years now and russians have already started withdrawing the money from the cyprus accounts they may be soon followed by the japanese the chinese also have loads of money in the cyprus accounts the world is a big place there always find another country to have their money there british police now looking into the death of the so for example russian tycoon in crime when critic boris berezovsky chemical and radiological experts are now at the home near london where he was found dead saturday they say as a precaution the sixty seven year old is thought to have lost much of his fortune in recent years from debts resulting from expensive court defeats it's also reported in britain he was diagnosed with depression more from archie sarah for use of the death broken by boris berezovsky son in law on

a social networking site thought he. asked them but not police haven't confirmed the name yet that they have said that they've launched an investigation into the death of a sixty seven year old man and that death is being treated as unexplained now as they can t. . the police and they told me that they usually have to wait for the formal id before they can confirm the name but that confirmation is expected at some point later on today and i also asked about the speculation around the body having been found in the past a lot of people reporting that they didn't confirm or deny that they did tell me that that information didn't come from then of course a huge amount of speculation surrounding this boris berezovsky the russian tycoon you know larger than life. there's been talk of health problems have been speculated about suicide and we can actually listen now to see some information

from a very prominent russian lawyer. the two people who called me bruce ascii had died one told me it was a suicide and the second person said he might have died of a heart attack i previously heard from people. that he was practically broken orderly depressed person i know called me and said bruce off key had even asked to borrow five thousand dollars for a ticket he was also serious. as he said there is a huge amount of speculation at this time surrounding the death right now the circumstances of the death the remain unclear he made his fortune after the breakup of the savior then we saw him have self-imposed exile and he sort of sighed and in person in two thousand now in the last couple of years he's had a very high profile court cases a month which is the spectacular falling out he had with fellow russian oligarch

roman abramovich called cases very interesting to listen to there were pulls from people who were there in the courthouse when boris berezovsky was told that he had lost that case against him in a brother that. that he had so certainly that was a massive blow. it seems both personally but also financially as well of course and it does seem that the fall in on somewhat harder times over the last couple of years with these court cases now the russian president's press a cache. of has said that the president was sent a letter by boris berezovsky in which he asked her to give notice and return home so that's certainly an interesting twist on that but as we said it's been a tough few years and it does seem that there have been a lot of financial problems but of course this is all speculation what we do know

right now is that the thames valley police have launched that investigation they've cordoned off the area around his home while that investigation is ongoing no confirmation of the name yet but of course we'll stay the story and bring you the updates as and when we have. we're across developments following the death of boris berezovsky with updates for you online at r.t. dot com. well. back in year two thousand he became one of the kremlin's fiercest critics earlier on r t kevin know what it isa now we discuss the ups and downs of the tycoons relations with moscow in his recent appeal to return home he's a convicted criminal here in russia to put it simply not so much a controversial figure in the sense of of scandal surrounding him but controversal because it's flat out he does not get along with the kremlin sarah touched on this a little bit it was no secret he was an outspoken critic of the kremlin about the system in russia and i think the british gave him safe but didn't go to the russian rather to it didn't it and it hampered british russian relationship so it went

straight to the top it's very unclear to russia to this day why the u.k. so protective peters of ski lots of talk in past years that it had to do with his investments with his money which makes people more interesting because it's swaying that this is most likely had something to do with his debts with owing lots of money high profile court cases the most recent one of course. he was ripped apart by the judge was nearly wasn't his character he was indeed and this is been going on for some time so it's been it's been happening slowly this letter two months ago according to the two. main press men demetrius called that bitters also he was asking for forgiveness this is interesting asking for forgiveness for these convicted of crimes money laundering he's also involved with some shady people at least as a scene in russia in london. also in exile connected at least in russia convicted of being involved in terror acts he's a former chechen militants so it's

a very intricate. circle of people. well still to come here on r t energizing old allies china's new leader uses his first overseas trip to seel energy deals with a russian call for the two to work toward balancing world influence that's still to come also. a legacy of liberation and how the tenth anniversary of the u.s. led invasion of iraq was marred by deadly violence in a country that still remains far from secure. for we get to that a hunger strike at guantanamo was crossed forty seven days a critical point when health experts say serious repercussions could occur prisoners' lawyers are sounding the alarm but struggling to draw attention to a protest they call unprecedented in scope duration and determination officials though insists it's only a handful of detainees involved as are he's guy takes a look it's getting harder to verify information though. despair among guantanamo

detainees is growing as now even their lawyers are being denied direct access to them attorneys say they had a visit scheduled for early next week with one of the prisoners who's been on strike since the beginning of february lawyers have been informed by saudis that the only flight to the prison the u.s. military flight was canceled we're. told there are no other options there is no right. and this is. not only are the attorney struggling to find out the true extent of what's happening in guantanamo now but we journalists are as well this friday captain robert zubrin the spokesman for guantanamo responded to our inquiry he wrote us quote we have twenty six hunger strikers with eight receiving and total feeds meaning they get nutrition through a feeding tube last friday robert to rand wrote us there were fourteen people refusing all food while the defense attorneys had been saying there were many more

we cannot independently verify any of this at this point we're just relying on what the officials and detainees lawyers tell us we're certainly in touch with the attorneys and will continue to press the officials for answers in addition to the inquiries that we made with the defense department we also asked the department of justice for their perspective on what's happening and they basically told us that it's none of their business that the military oversees the facility and referred as back to the department of defense defense attorneys are telling us that these sorties have created conditions which make it nearly impossible for them to do their job and defend their clients so frustrating there is nothing that we can do we have sent e-mails to the department of berms to the commander. asking them. to talk to us about. her response we have been told by the department of justice that they will not talk to us they were. part of the. no remains talk to us in the meantime in washington the

officials tried to downplay the hunger strike but they seem to have a good idea of why these men resorted to such a desperate move and yet they have no solution to offer they had great optimism that guantanamo would be closed they were devastated when the president did you know backed off at least their perception of closing the facility that has caused them to become frustrated and they want to get this i think turned it up get it back in the media but it was not on the status of the detainees that general john kelly who's command oversees guantanamo came to discuss in congress he was there asking for money to renovate the prison the upgrade of the camp is estimated to cost taxpayers almost two hundred million dollars as washington schedules renovations at guantanamo the international community continues to call on president obama to comply with his own promises and to shut down the infamous prison you we have no right to hold people indefinitely without charges without a trial and without people having access to

a justice system that's against every principle of law which exists in the world the un commissioner for human rights responded to our request for comment and said they have quote repeatedly regretted that the u.s. government has not closed guantanamo bay four years ago president obama ordered to stop tortured guantanamo but the u.s. says indefinite detention itself is a form of torture british resident shakur armor was cleared for release six years ago yet he's still being held captive here's what he writes please to me in the old way here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks half of the men now in guantanamo have been cleared for release many others never formally accused of a crime three months ago the state department closed the office in charge of closing the prison there's a growing sense among the detainees there that the only way out of guantanamo for them is in a coffin in washington i'm going to check out. our day spoke with one man who was freed from the notorious detention camp omar deghayes was held at guantanamo prison

as an enemy combatant for five years he told us he was among many subjected to torture and never saw any actual evidence against him. there may be some bad things that happen there's a beginning is there's a systematic torture where everyone goes through where they are. stripped out of their clothes for example and then sometimes sexually abused they physically abused like myself and others we were physically beaten up until as you can see my right eye has been the sight in my right eye has been lost they tried to god's both in my eyes we never even were told what. a lead allegations against azhar we were questioned for hundreds of times and we were interrogated many many times and then released without any conviction we were never convicted we never had the chance to see the evidence against us the generals have set up.

cheney and all the other officials of the lawyers who legalized torture and they justified the methods of torture and they spoken publicly in defending this kind of torture i think of course we hold all these people responsible now obama and the all the other officials that taking over there the people there were serious crimes of committed inside montana most people don't realize their people were killed inside of them more than nine people were killed and people that i know inmates were sexually abused they were people who have lost the arms and lost limbs in amputated like of the desire some people were paralyzed throughout their lives and people lost their lives these are serious problems these are serious war crimes or crimes against captive people and these people have to come to justice if we lead these people at large what will happen is that more across these like this would take place and they are examples of criminals committing crimes and just not paying

back for their crimes. human rights groups around the world of long campaign to get guantanamo closed but the international condemnation hasn't resonated on capitol hill despite president barack obama's pledge to shut down the prison four years ago . takes a look at why the president struggling to make good on his promise. the story around the closure of guantanamo bay prison has stuck to president obama ever since he promised to shut it down and here are some of the key dates on the way thirst in january two thousand and nine when obama was inaugurated he ordered the prison to be shut down within a year and banned some of the interrogation methods after the u.s. government admitted torturing some of the detainees was calls another exactly since in me the same year the u.s. senate refused to fund the closure of the jail until the president provided more details as to what to do with the detainees then in egypt or would appear the situation had changed when the congress approved the allowed to some of the

detainees to be moved to the u.s. for prosecution but then it all you turned again at the end of two thousand and ten when the same congress approved the defense spending bill which prevented us trials for guantanamo detainees in january two thousand and eleven despite his campaign promise to close that obama signed the defense of the relation plan which ruled out shutting guantanamo bay down and prevented the transfer of prisoners from the camp in march obama also signed an executive order resuming military trials for more detainee's a move seen my many as a complete reversal of his former policies in december two thousand and eleven the president feel to veto the national defense bill in the way for prisoners to be held indefinitely and without charge and extending the ban on moving them from the camp and finally in july last year the pentagon voiced its plans to lay a forty million dollar fiberoptic cable from the u.s.

mainland to guantanamo not exactly a sign washington responding to wrap up its operations in the controversial center . more expert analysis and opinion on what's going on at guantanamo what r.t.d. dot com also there are the behind the scenes ties between the cia and syrian rebels are aboard on claims about the role american intelligence is playing in the country's civil war plus a flurry on the front line how ukraine's military has been sent in to keep the capital moving after a surprise invasion of snow. china stepping up its energy security with russia's help moscow agreed this week to increase oil supplies to beijing along with other multibillion dollar deals countries' leaders also pledge to work toward a warfare world order of a say or he's a really good go followed xi jinping as first official overseas trip. some of the major points that the chinese leader has also made of course was about the

cooperation between russia and china among other things that the two countries also agree on is the fact that it is about time to leave the old stereotypes behind he said that we're living in the twenty first century and therefore the cold war era is gone and over with and therefore the stereotypes and thinking along those lines also has to go and you also mentioned that russia and china are there cooperation will provide for a clearer world order you also mentioned of course the need to not just to move away from syria types but also to move towards the multiple world and the multiple areas the of the world is also one of the founding principles of bricks of course brics essentially was a trade and economic organization but it is now moving increasingly towards becoming a major geo political player and that is going to be one of the main subjects of discussions during the upcoming brick summit in south africa and yet despite of course there are many agreements on the political level russia and china still have

several things that they need to work on and the moment those things is the gas supplies deal from russia to china which has been in the works for ten years and it does look like during this visit russia and china have made some headway towards finding a solution but the details of the deal are yet to be figured out and it is expected that those details will come up until the end of the year but of course the chinese leader said that russia and china nevertheless are each other's biggest partner and are this the seeing eye to eye on a lot of issues and cooperation is something that the two countries are going not just to continue but we'll all start he said that his trip there is a symbolic significance by happening in march because the leave their hopes that he will see some very good fruits borne forth from the seeds that he has sown during this visit. exactly ten years on from the u.s. led invasion of iraq a grim reminder the country is far from secure an al qaeda linked group unleashed

a series of bombings that killed sixty five people in mostly shiite areas of baghdad tuesday possibly as attacks so far this year. more almost everyone that we've met here in iraq is deeply scarred and traumatized by war in one way or another whether was losses under the saddam era or the massive violence and bloodshed that's been unleashed by the u.s. war and subsequent occupation not to mention the sectarian and ethnic lines that that war has opened blood shed is unfortunately the new norm for most of the parts of iraq here where we're standing right now is actually the semi autonomous region of iraq a kurdistan is probably the only area in iraq that has seen life improved since the war in large part due to profits from the oil that's been found in this region but less than an hour away in the city of kirkuk where we went a completely different picture checkpoint after checkpoint blast wall surrounding the city it was quite dangerous for us to move around without a military escort and most of the residents complained of potentials of security

attacks almost at any moment so this is something that's really been reflected across the country and it's quite symbolic of course that on the anniversary of the ten year invasion iraq close that painful chapter much the same way that it began with bombs across baghdad but as for whether the people feel better off or not it really depends on fortunately on their experience their. ethnic affiliations their religion and what they've suffered during the past ten years. the situation of the country so that we do have a problem there is violence there are lots of explosions everything is ok the bombing it's. the way things are today for. groups of fracturing this democracy. we would feel free to go out and returned safely. but there's no guarantee that i'll come home so as you heard there the one thing that does seem to unite iraqis today is fear fear of when the next explosion or

attack may come. barack obama chose israel as a destination of choice for his first visit abroad since his reelection despite earlier words on bolstering u.s. arab relations he largely skirted the palestinian issue with a focus more on smoothing things over with israel's leadership artie's policy or has more on the u.s. plans for the middle east across this region the winds of change bring both promise and peril so i see this visit as an opportunity but an opportunity for who to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between our nations to restate america's unwavering commitment to israel's security. and to speak directly to the people of israel nothing about the palestinians the stalled peace process any pressure on television to stop settlement expansion to two years ago the message sounded a different.