force in mali despite earlier claims that there aren't insurgency mission would be over in a matter of weeks. a detainee and hunger strike a allegedly tries to take his own life is inmates reach breaking point with the protesters now in its third month. russia's foreign minister once again warns america not to escalate the standoff between north and south korea as he meets the u.s. secretary of state john kerry. activists in bahrain protest a court ruling that sought to teenagers sent to prison for ten years saying they were tortured into confessing this is the government continues to suppress dissenting voices across the gulf state. even if you just joined us it's kevin owen here at the r.t.

new center tonight it's not just stuff to eleven pm here in moscow and our top story the pentagon is sounding the alarm over the french troops withdrawal from mali saying local forces are unfit to take over paris pulled the first contingent out of the volatile state on choose day they plan to withdraw three quarters of their force by the end of the year two but i've also sanctioned a thousand strong permanent deployment there france intervened in mali in january to drive islamist rebels out of the country and this test reports next a lot's changed for paris since the start of the mission. they say though that they still plan on continuing the induction of the four thousand strong military personnel currently on the ground and keeping these a one thousand troops they say will be part of a future un a peacekeeping mission however this is in stark contrast to what french foreign minister had said in january. regarding france's direct involvement it is only a matter of weakness later on if you come as barca but we have no intention of

staying forever. now the french have gone into mali a warning against the threat of as long as the extreme islam advanced in europe now clearly any plan of a complete withdrawal is off the table now this one thousand troops that they plan to keep on the ground falls under a call made by un secretary general ban ki moon in deploying about eleven thousand two hundred troops and one thousand four hundred forty two least on the ground in mali after major combat now bunking with one also when he wins a parallel force one that will directly deal with all cargo linked militants and extremists according to reuters and this is likely to be french troops as well while also spoke with a group of former french intelligence officer who had been stationed in northern africa and the middle east for about twenty years and he says the from the very start he had been doubtful the this operation in mali was going to be short the french army expel the. insurgents and from the cities ok

it was not so good. and so what they would do they were going to treat the people from justice to come back exactly as they did you know afghanistan against the with the soviets. in the one nine hundred ninety exactly as they were going to leave the euro when the last american said deal that's right exactly let's they did that as they didn't iraq when the u.s. troops. didn't so france is back if not before because i'm going to show god don't exist now where france well i had first announced this military operation in mali two thirds of the french people were in support of these actions now many observers and analysts have already said that if this becomes a long drawn out war public opinion could quickly change. well just as the first foreign troops from leaving mali france was engaged

a major offensive to wipe out militant hideouts in a previously liberated area of the country. can off examines the challenges throughout a campaign that stretched the military from the very beginning. miley has become yet another front in the global war on terror but this anti terror operation just may be too difficult to scale down so quickly first let's review what's already been done and more importantly how efficient is what this operation started with and support of ground troops from the skies has always been one of its foundation stones the first planes to battle the islamists came from here a french military base in chad helicopter support came from another base in. some of the aviation was a leader to the capital of mali and some other bases were engaged as well like the ones in ivory coast and news year but then there's the question of refueling the mission for pilots going out of chat for instance usually takes seven to eight hours and they have to be refueled five times along the way this is where the u.s.

and germany come in but if german planes have to come from sinegal an american planes have to come all the way from spain so all together this is quite a complicated combat scheme when it comes to ground troops the french got into this by themselves somalis army was and still is demoralized if four and a half thousand troops even can be called in the army and pretty much the only supporters that the french have and quite unexpectedly i might add are two thousand troops from chad and when it comes to the west well no one's keen on sending troops there directly britain is only looking at sending combat instructors to train troops with all this effort paris has managed to push the islamist to the north of the country securing key cities with fighting still going on in the mountains and a string of suicide bomber attacks in the several cities it's clear that the islamists are not exactly all out nor are they defeated which raises the comparison with another country afghanistan where the terrorists live in the midst of peaceful

civilians the also use so-called hit and run guerrilla tactics so the french have been combing through have valley north of golf believe that. many of the islamists can be hiding there but the question is what comes next if we look at the neighboring countries well their borders are porous and experts say the islamists could travel through them without any serious problems they also warn the past decades has shown that such interventions don't solve crises but deepen them and generate new conflicts there are rising fears nearby western sahara could turn into a new terror hub and right now it's really unclear who is going to turn who's going to take care of that problem and how if most of french troops to leave it's going to be a completely different game for the remaining thousand the un is talking about some additional attack force but so far it's merely an idea while the clock is ticking also journalist barry land those covered french policy in africa says paris

underestimated the scale of the problem from the very start. they probably didn't realize what they were getting into remember call and powell warned your age bush on the eve of the invasion of iraq if you break it you own it and that's what the french and wound up there that's what they're confronting now they're getting into a situation that was much more complex and much more in the end dangerous than they thought it was going to be i think what the situation right now is that a lawyer who has tremendous political problems back home in france would love to be able to to pull out a mile eight as much as possible kind of like george bush you know wanted to leave iraq in. your kind of a mission accomplished speech and say ok we're leaving and the french in a way are trying to do that by pushing for the elections by most observers say there's absolutely no way that you can have honest well organized elections take place in three or four months time in july in maui

a huge country totally devastated they don't have borders unless they don't have the money really to organize an election they don't have the people to patrol it and gartrell polling places and they don't have a politician that's the most important thing the politicians that they've got are all politicians in the past the politicians who brought the country to the the this whole situation at its end today. folks in guantanamo bay now where a mass hunger strikes in his third month with around one hundred thirty detainees reportedly taking part clive stafford smith and lawyer for several the captives and he spoke to one of them by phone on tuesdays joining us now on the line from the u.k. hi there clive good evening to you just really live report the declaration that you broke down after that conversation your client called eunice your reporting has been very very depressed you said he's been cleared for a long time desperately misses his wife and family he's always preached restraint for the past seven years it's all the more surprising that he took part in this

hunger strike how is he first of all let's talk about why you're surprised he's taken part in that strike next. well he is very depressed i mean let's face it there are eighty six out of one hundred sixty six prisoners in graham time and i know i've been cleared for release that's fifty two percent now let us go a bit asserted us when we called grandson a moment. but over would you guess in your mind. that in soviet russia was never fifty two percent of the prisoners have been told they were cleared for release that were not allowed to be released and so it's a terribly depressing situation where these prisoners have no go because they've been told they can go on but they're still there eunice or i spoke to you last night there's been cleared for several years now and is not allowed to go home lisa soofi muslim for goodness sake he's not a violent. and indeed he's been incredibly compliant he's one of the people in the

whole we learn years he's only had one disciplinary and that's actually nonsense then the rest of us are and he's been incredibly well. he's got sort of cross that he has joined in the same distro. is he prepared in fact to starve himself to death again look at your report of about eunice you saying is not officially classed as a hunger striker because he's been accepting liquid nutri but he's passing that on to a friend there's a. in date or it although officially is not doing it is starving us all to death is he prepared to take it all the way well i'm afraid he has not been afraid a lot of the prisoners are well know what they do with some of the prisoners they force feed them and most surrender well you know but that doesn't solve the problem you know you can't take a piece of the true test like a hunger strike which is being done for perfectly valid reasons which i suspect ninety nine percent of the globe supports that if you are cleared for release you should be released you can't take that force feed people by stuffing tubes up their

nose and putting them through even greater agony and think that's going to solve the problem now with eunice he's lost thirty pounds he's not been eating the only thing he's eaten metamucil for goodness sake rich is a medication it's all these fat and even that's very dangerous for him to have so i'm very wary but he along with a number of my other plants are going to die either are you aware of the reports clive another lawyer we're hearing is received word that one of his clients tried to kill himself last month of yet any details of that alleged in suggest think about it is not another lawyer that's my client. sends one six eight he's allow he's from tunisia he did try and kill himself unfortunately i got the message we talked to him directly but also we talked through other prisoners he the united states said today in something that is typical unfortunately of the false it's that come out of that place that he didn't try to commit suicide but why did they taken to hospital for nine days which they did and then they took him back to camp fire

back which is the worst place and grant time of day and they took him there you know what do you do with someone who suicide but you put him in the very worst cell in the entire prison or i'm afraid that illustrates the really terrible lassitude the colonel said he knows how to deal with my client because he's got children that have well we'll check around and one of my clients said is we need to send the social services. around to check on this house because if he's treating his children the way that these prisoners are being treated there's a real problem. of the prisoners at all got anywhere with this so the authorities changing the way that they deal with them at all after this hunger strike they've only changed a little bit when that been true embarrassed so when they were cutting off water for the troops nose and some of the lawyers raise cain about that they did allow some of the prisoners to get work to back with some of the prisoners reportedly are still being required to drink water out of the tap and i got

a photograph just yesterday or something i have seen many times myself down in grams i don't know which is the sign of the taps which says this is not drinking worser and it's foul stuff that looks a yellow orange color so there are one or two minor minor concessions but i'm afraid that's not the attitude that are very very harsh attitude which is due to crew has created problems above a claim is he still committed to shutting down the facility disney why haven't the eighty six detainee's who work cleared as i've been saying for a least years ago not being sent home end of the day do you think well as politics is that the republicans that created a divisive issue over this and so these individuals human beings political point understand what is a very sad game and you know look i'm up american and you know that i apologize to the book frankly what we're doing but first and foremost i want to say that this is bad for america it's not just bad for these prisoners is burnt for america because we are losing our moral standing in the world when we behave this way live from the

u.k. clive stafford smith thanks ever so much for the lawyer for sever the quantum of beatty tenney speciated legal appeals and a mounting public outcry putting more pressure on the white house to deliver on its promises than to close the facility was going to account reports the pentagon's committed to pumping more cash into keeping it open. the time of each detainee in guantanamo costs us taxpayers eight hundred thousand dollars a year there one hundred sixty six captives on the island now half of them have been cleared for release so there's absolutely no reason to have them there but the u.s. still spends millions of dollars every year to keep them behind bars many find it even more puzzling in light of ongoing furloughs among public sector workers let's put this number eight hundred thousand dollars in perspective not a lot of people can boast costing the government eight hundred thousand dollars a year a prisoner in the u.s. cost the taxpayers twenty seven thousand dollars thirty times less that is the

average salary of a public school teacher here is fifty one thousand dollars one guantanamo detainee cost taxpayers more than the president himself he makes four hundred thousand dollars a year and if you think that the details of a luxurious life there you're wrong to quote general john kelly who is in command of one tunnel the facility is falling apart so there he was two weeks ago asking congress for almost two hundred million dollars to renovate one tunnel that should come on top of the one hundred seventy seven million dollars that the government spends every year to keep the prison running will the investment make the detainee's lives easier most of whom are there without having them formally accused of anything maybe not none of these projects would have their lifestyle if you will but some of the projects will curity. better ease of movement for them that will benefit the guard force not to detainees but on top of renovations there are

the costs and the taxpayers bill for keeping guantanamo open is only going to go up there aging as we all are and there are a certain lack of support facilities in that general area. and if we're planning on keeping them there forever there's an enormous amount of expense and terms of both caring for the inmates. and then also dealing with staff that's down there that has to do that. you know i think medical care is one of the biggest concerns this kind of investment suggests that the authorities do not plan to see the prison close they need time so the administration keeps saying they're committed to shutting it down but they never say way in congressman smith's matter for we've got you know not to use the cliche joe but it is the hotel california check in but you can't ever check out in washington i'm going to check out the u.s. military has barred the media from visiting the facility until at least next month

when our team is already in the queue there for early access of course in the meantime that will bring you comprehensive coverage of events at the detention center with testimonies from lawyers as well as commentary from officials experts and activists so on the web site r.t. dot com coming up here the jailing of two teenagers in bahrain puts the spotlight on the government's protests just after this break. well. sonny it's technology innovation all the least of elements from around russia we've got the future covered.

the book about international airport in the very heart of moscow. the standoff on the korean peninsula can be resolved peacefully says russia's top diplomat sort of a lover of statement came during his talks with the u.s. secretary of state john kerry in london ed of the gathering of g eight foreign ministers that is probably boyd reports now. we've heard. the saying today that

there is no disagreement between russia and the usa on the topic of north korea he was keen to warn that military maneuvers only serve to escalate the tension so putting a stop to these military maneuvers these intimidating tactics on either side are a welcome step but he warned at the same time in advance of the visit about this rhetoric that's taking place on both sides and how dangerous that really is for the escalation of tensions because he said that actually it's just as dangerous as flexing military muscles because. you said that counter threats and counter blame could lead to a very dangerous situation where one side backs itself into a corner to such a degree where they have to act in order not to lose face with the public and of

course it's not the first time that russia has been calling for calm this week overtly the north korean peninsula very notably on monday vladimir putin and issued a stark warning the russian president said that if military conflict takes place in korea well then the nuclear disaster of chernobyl will seem like a children's fairy tale so i really to ration of a call for calm here in london from the russian side today and of course will be following the g eight meetings as they take place. we will work to the korean issue south korea saying the north could test launch a missile at any moment as part of celebrations of pyongyang's main national holiday economist's states preparing to mark the birthday of its founder kim il sung on the fifteenth of april north korea typically uses a celebration is not to display its military strength washington seoul and japan all raise their military alert levels to the highest before war in the pacific

brian becker is an antiwar activist he joins us now on the line from the u.s. hi there brian north korea continues to maintain its on the brink of war with the south we've heard this now for the past couple of days we've heard today could have been a crucial day sushma password too much incident what's going to happen next are we at all really close to a nuclear showdown it's a horrendous thought is being bandied around but is there anywhere on the horizon. well there's no place in the world that's more militarized and more of a tinderbox than the korean peninsula the u.s. has twenty five thousand troops there the u.s. has brought in b. fifty two nuclear capable planes to simulate the bombing of north korea the u.s. two weeks ago brought in the b. two bomber which can drop thirty thousand pound bombs as well as nuclear bombs it just gave two hundred bunker buster bombs to south korea it's changed the military shape of its alliance with south korea in a way that makes it more ominous to north korea and every time north korea does anything to show its determination to defend itself order to make the perception at

least that it can defend itself then the united states treats north korea as the ultimate provocateur are so both sides have climbed the ask elation letter in a very tense part of the world and i think we are at a very dangerous point right now anything could trigger some limited military conflict which could quickly escalate the worry is of course that we just heard from probably the north could back itself into a situation that obviously can't go on forever and ever say we're going to do this would you do this war is the point i guess it to to keep credibility with its people at least or maybe to gain something back from the west it has to deliver what it says it's going to do who is responsible for the situation ending up where it is now or is it always one of the other side. no i think it's i think we can see and i think the american people don't know it because of the thorough going propaganda campaign has been quite effective in the united states but the obama administration unlike say the clinton administration in its last months of its

second term where it tried to normalize relations with north korea sent madeline albright then secretary of state there to meet with kim jong il there seemed to be a thaw the obama administration is taking the bush administration policy of provocation escalation increased tension to a whole new level and i think the obama administration is designed a policy that's intent on carrying out regime change in north korea and i think this is crazy because the north korean government has made it clear that it won't go the way of east germany to be incorporated swallowed up by the pro western second part of its country and now we see a growing confrontation the obama administration doesn't want a war they want to carry out regime change that's why they've been huddling. sanctions how do they think it's going to help them with. well they they want to they want to create pressure on china to break china away from its historic relationship with north korea by creating a military confrontation or

a near confrontation the united states is saying to the chinese look the stakes are very high time for you to change time for you to abandon your your ally in north korea and i think they think that they have that could be the the prescription the precursor to regime change in north korea if they could break china away china doesn't want to do that although you can see a debate going on right now within the chinese establishment as much as the north has been born in the south of the past couple of days to get away from the air in case there's a nuclear war should the north koreans be concerned about a preemptive strike of some sort. well i think we can see from the south korean military there are divisions and debates and factions within the south korean military too it was a military dictatorship for thirty years it killed all the progressives the communists said it would always liberate north korea from the communists there are sections of the south korean military vet are egging things forward they have an economic interest and a philosophical or ideological interest in creating more tension of course there's

a big part of the south korean population that would prefer peace or a peaceful road to reunification rather than analysts who are school of thought to is no bra and i guess that is in america's interest to keep it dangerous north korea there on the put it to have a reason therefore for rebalancing the asia pacific region yeah well indeed i mean ever since president obama went to australia and announced the so-called asia pivot us as loading up the pacific with its aircraft its nuclear capable aircraft and a large part of its navy of course they need provocations they need tension it's good for business of course it's it keeps the mega profits coming into the military industrial complex but it gives the pentagon an excuse a pretext to do what it wants to do which is basically to encircle china or i don't see where activists brought back a few thoughts we're watching this story of course closely think of your report to . human rights activists in bahrain are up in arms over

a court ruling last week that so two teenagers sentenced to ten years in prison under an antiterrorism law the boys aged fifteen and sixteen religiously tortured by terror gators before they confessed to attacking police during anti-government riots but raids authorities have been cracking down on pro-democracy protests for the past two years arresting sounds of activists i spoke about when these from the european by radio in a zation for human rights he says both sides still deadlocked. yes and the iranian government used use of such laws to crack down on activists and brutally citizens that go out in the streets asking for democratic rights we don't see any any improvement in the situation in bahrain or the ongoing crackdown losing greasing late the just to these two days the crackdown has started against the activists and protesters just pretty much of the formula one that's going to happen this month. that we documented fifty years and others we have it's a six between kidnaps and their rights to activists and protesters. t.v.

within the dialogue as well you can say that there is no actually a platform for such a dialogue with human rights violations being committed every day i mean as an interest of the allies of of the government of bahrain such as the united states especially that we hold the fifth fleet at the moment and the united states is no actual stance on this special that they want us to if we can but i mean and their security in the region but they're not giving any any i on the human rights violations committed them but i think the what any going to be backed up by the they are lies they are backed up by the international double double standards the big deal with the pain of my own nation. cover stories you might want to check out on our website tonight are costly killers you can find out from us how u.s. pharmaceutical giants have made over seven hundred billion dollars over the past decade by overcharging senior citizens stories online from

a bus to mega upload to kim dotcom is now demanding apology from the new zealand government find out what subset the hacker to billionaire called as well. shortly people about his cross to a gas will be discussing if the likes of a rat in north korea really pose the biggest threat to the world the western antagonists we try to get some answers in a couple of minutes and our next program. he became a symbol of the nine hundred ninety s. he personified the russian mafia in the kremlin. he was

a twentieth century arrest buton. in just a few years he rose from junior was a multi billionaire and senior politician. is decline was as rapid as his meteoric rise and ended in exile his death is now as mysterious as his life. better. on r.t. . into silence. invisible. every day is a struggle. for our children.