a saudi prince who defected from the royal family slams the gulf war nikifor widespread human rights abuses and a violent crackdown on the opposition in exclusive interview with our take. saudi arabia's oppression of anti regime activists has intensified with the rest and long jail sentences leaving the number of political prisoners in the country at well over forty thousand. and the latest n.s.a. leaks reveal russia china iran and even some of america's allies are the key priorities for the agency's spy program.

so i welcome you watching r.t. this morning with me and three. now in recent weeks saudi arabia has launched an offensive against anti regime activists arresting many and sentencing is in jail the total number of political prisoners has now surpassed forty thousand according to some reports the crackdown has forced even a member of the ruling family to defect r.t. arabic spoke exclusively to saudi prince khaled bin. who accuses the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent. the government is obviously scared of the arab revolutions and they responded as they usually do by resorting to oppression violence arbitrary law and arrest the easiest thing they can do is deprive you of your salary or fire you altogether so the ruling regime is not guarded by justice and this is especially true of the ministry of interior

there is no independent judiciary that has both police and the prosecutor's office are countable to the interior ministry the ministries officials investigate crimes they call them crimes related to freedom of speech so they fabricate evidence don't allow people to have attorneys things like that happen all over the place they even put people under arrest for an indefinite amount of time even if a court rules to release such a criminal or the ministry of interior keeps him in prison even though there is a court order to release him there have even been killings killings and as for the external opposition saudi intelligence forces by means people abroad there is no safety inside or outside the country could you describe these people who oppose the royal family and what are their goals opposition used to demand wider peoples representation in governing bodies for more rights and freedoms but the authorities

reacted with violence and persecution instead of a dialogue and now the opposition wants this regime gone but we both know that despite the numerous human rights violations in saudi arabia your country seldom faces straight decision from the west and from the united states in particular when senior u.s. officials meet with their saudi counterparts basically economy any critical comments from washington visibly riyadh what the white house certainly does maintain a longstanding alliance with the leaders of saudi arabia cemented by common interests in the middle east to that end there are classified contacts between area in. the u.s. administration in recent time they've been employed to step up the government administered reforms but those reforms are not driven by the elites desire to empower the people of the kingdom but instead they are merely urged by reforms that the regime might fall unless it reforms itself oppression is widespread in saudi arabia there is no free speech no freedom of expression corruption is rampant in all areas for most

level bureaucrats to hiring officials every civil servant is very skillful in using bribes in their operations they said the regime's crackdown remains largely ignored by the international community leaving it free to advise other regional powers on how to move towards democracy artie's lynsey france takes a look at the country's own direct dealing with its own internal democrats. saudi arabia violently squash is the voice of any opposition and we see it sitting front and center in discussions of the democratic transition of power within other countries such as syria on the one hand it reportedly ships arms to the opposition in syria on the other hand peaceful opposition in saudi arabia is answered with prison sentences torture even death for people whose voice their own opinion in fact in october two thousand and twelve amnesty international calls on the saudi authorities to stop using excessive force against pro-democracy protesters here are

just a few examples from this year alone on june seventeenth meet cliff mari was convicted of sowing discord and other offenses through writings and exposure of human rights abuses he got five years in prison june twenty fourth seven men were convicted of inciting protests illegal gatherings and breaking allegiance with the king mostly by joining facebook pages and posting messages they each got between five and ten years in prison that we've got on the same day website editor rafe by dowie convicted of insulting islam and authorities through his website and during television interviews he was sentenced to seven years in prison and six hundred lashes in these conditions anyone with something substantial to say about the government society or religion would be blamed for keeping a low profile and this is where the man being called the saudi comes in no one knows who he is what he looks like or where he lives his prolific tweets denouncing the ruling family as corrupt and enriching themselves from government coffers have earned him over a million followers he is known only as much to heat i spoke with him over google

chat to find out why he stays in hiding because it's not for safety i asked him why you remains anonymous he said ironically anonymity boost his credibility and courage of people to follow him and talk about his stories without worrying i asked if this meant that people could pay less attention to his biography and more attention to his message he pointed out. there was sheen can destroy your credibility easily and deter people from dealing with you if your identity is public well to heat is forced underground a new monarchie backed religious diversity center has launched its own charm offensive in vienna according to its mission statement it encourages dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures king abdullah has also announced a donation of one hundred million to set up a united nations center for fighting terrorism one of its four pillars is to prevent conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism and ensuring respect for

human rights so while the kings clerics preach a hardline form of islam that often becomes a breeding ground for extremism saudi arabia is assuming a moral high ground in advising other nations in transitional democracy. activists sorry spoken ditto to r.t. about exactly what human rights violations are driving people on to the streets despite the fear of the rest. and trying to be human right and to know that we really have issues related to our. political and civil rights and freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. this is mean and that causes a lot of people. in action where you god forbid a few years of trying to acquire him i'm going to say all of this. would you ban by the government and what could we have seen is that there is who are more. equal. or. have at least and now that who are we kind of momentum

or are we were some reports. well let's discuss this further with pepe escobar correspondent for the asia times who joins me now live from hong kong thank you very much for coming on to the program this morning there have been protests since twenty eleven in saudi arabia there have been many arrests since then too but there hasn't been much global media coverage of this why do you think that's the case. well we should go to break down this strategy of the house of souled expanding on what your interview we said before basically it's carrots and stick carrots in the form of a sixty billion dollar handout program by king abdullah at the beginning of the arab spring in two thousand and one the saudis were horrified by the beginning of the arab spring in neighboring bahrain so they bribe their own subjects number one

number two this stick is against the shiite minority roughly ten percent of saudi arabia who lives in the eastern province that's where most of the oil is by the way they don't want to bring down the house of souled essentially they want more participation the judiciary that not answering to religious powers in basically more democratic freedoms this is not going to happen in saudi arabia period nor in the other g.c.c. gulf cooperation council petro monarchies as well how do they do it they stalk this sunni shiite divide inside their own country in saudi arabia they say that these shiites in the eastern province they are agents of the iran they don't recognize that these people have legitimate pro-democracy grievances against fuelled all seventh century rejean in fact so the problem is in the long run they are going to

have a mean a civil war inside saudi arabia as well just like there is one in bahrain which by the way they helped spreading this civil war because the interview in the bahrain for their cousins let's put it this way the al khalifa monarchy so it's an enormous a park or see they say to the americans and they sell the war that they are intervening in syria for a more democratic syria post assad and inside saudi arabia it's the sunni shiite divide and they go against ten percent of their own population and you'll newspaper is covering this but why do you believe there is not much global media coverage of this story. look the problem is the saudi lobby in d.c. is very strong so whatever they tell the americans and obviously compliant u.s. corporate media the europeans are also in the same boat and don't forget that the

saudis cointreau i would say at least ninety percent of the media in the middle east itself the other ten percent we cannot account for al-jazeera from qatar so they tell middle eastern publics and western public opinion that they want to fight it that's against the you run an infiltration on iranian disturbances asian and most public opinion in the west they buy it. i rationally effect there is no. this simply no critical analysis of what the saudis do in the region what they have done since the afghan jihad in the ny one nine hundred eighty s. where by the way they helped to destabilize afghanistan for i would say decades because they were basically supplying the mujahideen in denying it is there or the most radical of them or some of them became outsider or what the us tell us is al-qaeda global al-qaeda so they're doing the same thing in syria and we come back

to the contradiction inside saudi arabia the old shiite generation they didn't want to bring them on or two down there is a very very strong possibility that the younger generation some of them unemployed connected to the internet on facebook and google and everything they will want something more radical against the house of sao themself then there is an internal problem with the house of saga which is the future of the dynasty when you get a job already at the moment do you think most people that are protesting at the moment actually have. a good chance of succeeding because we hear about the crackdown but we also hear now there is a new opposition group called the sign to million so despite the crackdown you protest groups keep appearing so what do you think the future is for them could they succeed you think until. exactly it's

a very good question because the crackdown is not working at all against part of their own population they are in in qatif in eastern province and saw there ever there are demonstrations practically every week there is that there is a very important shiite cleric shaikh numerous numerous he is on trial at the moment and very very hardcore was abhi clerics in saudi arabia they are calling for his death penalty if that happens this is going to polarize the shiite community as a whole the old generation plus the younger facebook google generation as well it's extremely counterproductive because it's impossible for us essentially it's impossible for a few of those seventh century regime to reform itself there was obvious version of islam in saudi arabia is still seven centuries they will never never reform and they will never respect shiites they think that shiites are up of states in terms

of why they are not a rattle and christians or buddhist or hindu is rescued by you say they will never reform but we have learned that you have said that they will not reform but we've also seen and heard from the princes defected from the royal family what impact do you think that will have. well that's a very good question because we are middle of the transition into that family. dollar like i remember bob dylan and one of his songs that he has not busy being born he's busy dying that's hat that's what's happening he's busy that day and we don't know who's going to be. handed to the throne effect abdullah like to put his son and there's a conflagration between some of the most important branches of the house of sight among themselves including some of these i would say that top of the seven thousand princes some of them we used to see them in london you know when they import there

are big lumber guinea's and drive like idiots around the herald's all the time so some of these lived off the top echelon of the house or such and there is only an eternal conflagration so they have an internal meaning a civil war bringing the this crimean i guess their own shiite population there is a problem inside the royal family and they still don't know what they're going to do in the middle east even without american support we have to leave it that sounds very much for your opinion i this morning that said ask about an investigative journalist at the asia times life from hong kong thank you. still ahead few this hour yanking democracy washington's decades long program to broadcast its values directly to cubans goes off air after nearly half a billion dollars to spend on a signal no one was listening to. hungary's ready to push his

international credit is this setting its debts and this chief financial stability on an. exactly what happened i don't know but a woman got killed. piers lakers when i got arrested. for a crime i did not do. we have numerous cases where police officers lie about polygraph results you get innocent people to confess to police officers don't beat people anymore i mean it just doesn't happen really. in the course of interrogation why because there's been this is like meant no because the psychological techniques are more effective in obtaining confessions than physical abuse they were off taking they could do what they wanted they can say what they wanted and there was no evidence of what they did or what they said. the.

most of these voices the couple of the law for violence or fast. of the window climbed in and tried to start it. we pushed it a little way we were drunk. and soon we were you're an alcoholic nearly all of them are homeless orphans with no money to. buy you a gun and without me your school for a moment but there it felt like i was back with those street hooligans who could have beat me up at any moment. your letter to my back i couldn't help wondering why my safe. isn't a warden he's their adoptive father you could say that slava raises he makes normal people out of ugly duckling.

hello welcome back now we're looking at live pictures here at a protest currently going on in cairo and police in egypt have warned they are ready to disperse the city improvs testifies and supporters of the deposed president mohamed morsi raising the specter of more violence in the next few hours security forces plan to cordon off protests sites to stop anyone else entering morsy supporters are preparing to build a concrete barriers and have apparently bought gas masks to protect themselves against take gas bidens has been common since a military coup on engine on july the third with at least two hundred fifty killed in clashes involving the police and army well rip. reporter is in the region and closely following developments and keeping you up to date on twitter and you can also check the latest pictures from the scene at r.t.

instagram. right to see. her story. and i think. on our reporters. on. not keeping an eye on washington's own allies including the e.u. is a key priority for the u.s. national security agency just behind the likes of russia china and iran that's been revealed by german magazine der spiegel which has seen documents leaked by fugitive u.s. whistleblower edward snowden peter oliver now looks at who ranks where on the n.s.a.'s watch list. the latest information to come out about the n.s.a.

spying scandal is being published in news magazine here in germany now the. documents that were leaked by edward snowden and dated from april of this year now those documents outlining just the extent of how the united states was spying on e.u. countries now the twenty eight member states it says were looked at in terms of foreign policy international trade and economic stability none of those apparently security related but those were the the areas in which the n.s.a. pursued the hardest now there was also spying taking place and information being gathered with regards to technology and energy as well now also revealed in these documents that have been put forward in a news magazine show a breakdown of the countries which the n.s.a. targeted the most now they split into a couple of key is of importance now in the in the top to have countries like china

russia iran pakistan and north korea but just underneath that you have countries like germany france and japan all nations that consider themselves allies and close allies at that of the united states now these revelations as they continue to come out from those huge bottles and bundles and bundles of information that edward snowden brought with him when he when he fled from the national security agency from the contractors that he was working with continued to turn up a treasure trove of information about just what was going on and these most recent documents seem to back up previous leaked documents that showed that the n.s.a. was spying on the e.u. e.u. offices both in brussels as well as around the world now when those when that information was released and should be able magazine a few months ago well that caused outrage across europe and we're seeing more of that now as these latest revelations come out that the e.u. was seen as a key target for spying by the united states. the father of the man who one

covered washington's appetite for private data has been granted a visa to visit russia go to our website to find out when snowden plans to visit his in russia where he's been granted temporary political asylum plus it's a loan with heavy weaponry russia is a bank to stage a contest which sees. to the sporting field of battle you can get all the details at r.t. . it is a hoffa billion dollar transmission to nowhere for decades america has been beaming

its message of democracy directly into key from a plane broadcasting over the island but the signal has been successfully jammed and washington is being forced to admit no one is listening. expects. old habits die hard having spent decades unsuccessfully attempting to undermine the cuban government the u.s. keeps trying washington funds a t.v. channel and a radio station that specifically target a cuban audience with programming that features prominent cuban dissidents what you were doing to an opportunity. and projects like toward democracy which the channel's website advertises as a how to guide for transitioning from dictatorship to democracy all done in the hopes that one day the communist leadership in cuba will fall how soon do you think that's going to. well i hope some probably do three years we need to work really

hard maybe the martine media are working very hard but the cuban public remains largely unaware of their efforts which have you ever heard of radio. no i know nothing about it. the marty itself acknowledges the limited reach of its radio and t.v. programs we'll have for any way to reach that with the information on the general queue of people became a government jams the martys radio and t.v. signals to circumvent that the us has employed a variety of methods one of them errol martini a plane that had been flying over cuba to transmit us broadcast system made nine hundred eighty s. the us broadcasting board of governors that oversees iraq marty has asked congress to discontinue the program two years in a row admitting it has been a failure it's hard to believe we're still wasting millions of tons paid dollars on beaming a gem t.v. signal to fewer than one percent of cubans can see from an airplane to the island

at a time when u.s. lawmakers cut funding on social programs for a low workers at a time when we hear calls to defund u.s. public radio and television washington still spends millions of dollars every. we're on a media operation to overthrow the cuban government in washington i'm going to check out. some other world news now out qaeda front group these are mixed state of iraq has claimed responsibility for a string of blast and shia parts of the iraqi capital baghdad the attacks claimed over eighty lives and left almost two hundred fifty injured militants said the attacks were a response to the security forces operations a recent spike in violence almost a thousand people killed in july alone. israel has given the green light for another one thousand two hundred settlement homes to be built on palestinian land the palestinian chief negotiator said it will hamper efforts to find

a two state solution during peace talks set to resume in jerusalem on wednesday despite settlements being considered illegal under international law israel refuses to halt construction the decision comes after the german foreign minister during his visit to the jewish state insisted the international community should not create any new obstacles to negotiations. and in colombia at least seven people have been killed after a truck plowed into a group of protesters the driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle when he was attacked during a rally miners were voicing their anger over poor working conditions hungary is about to pay off its debt to the international monetary fund and then wants the credit to go on the country was saved by the washington based group with a twenty five billion loan five years ago but isn't renewing the aid in order to avoid closest scrutiny of its policies let's see our share of ski looks it had

budapest is cutting lease. this can be aryan family can now enjoy picking a pram for their soon to be born child when the global recession reached the country they struggle to repay their mortgage but thanks to a government support program their flat now belongs to them and they've saved at least ten thousand euro in that time to their. situation. is now quite strong. there are not soft steps but look at hungary's economy of late and you'll be hard pressed to find much to be optimistic about the economy is now fading better than during the recession but still most of the important development figures are in negative territory while inflation is even higher than in the crisis years the country's opposition firmly believes hungry would stagnate without a good reason to be sepia off funds and this is very important ninety seven percent of the new developments today finance from money

however seeing what's happening in greece and spain budapest is not keen on grabbing the hands of the international lenders and in this case it goes beyond merely the bravado rhetoric often voiced by the country's prime minister. thirty steps between the building of the national bank of hungary and the head office of the international monetary fund in budapest but that is this close as they get a letter from one building to another at the end of july said that hungary no longer required the services of the i.m.f. and that its employees must leave the country as soon as possible the country's deputy economics minister is tight lipped on any kind of open to still a t towards brussels or the knowledge is that what the e.u. bureaucrats are offering is not so you have passed his message is we can handle it on our own but a greece that. according to g.d.p. after two hundred structuring and averaging is hundred sixty percent in hungary

eighty percent the european. averages know about eighty five percent we are able to finance the public that on the market will have to introduce the reference which make a country more competitive and that is what we have done in the last couple of years and i think they are the gold basis to have an independent economy policy next year hungary will host parliamentary elections and some say the hardline stance with the e.u. may be part of a political campaign by the right wing leadership but analysts are not ruling out that should be government be reelected the prime minister may take his standoff with brussels to a completely new level by initiating a referendum on leaving the european union altogether. auntie reporting from budapest in hungary i'll be back in about half an hour's time with more news coming up next tough questions and contrasting opinions into suffolk.