a presidential funds up to progress on syria's chemical disarmament lot of your putin phones bashar assad to discuss the elimination of his toxic arsenal in conflict and the prospects to end it. it's very easy to end one ton of it's hard to tell right now exactly how long we'll be down here doing this mission. went on a most still not twelve years as a terror of jail with the white house still failing to get it closed once and for all archie reports from inside one of the world's most maligned prisons on the future it may face. the tax haven on the take britain sends millions of pounds to prop up a rocky outcrop while taxpayers at home are in the dark about who gets it and why.

it's the armrest in the outskirts of moscow police are being something down along with illegal immigration every friday they go on rays of accommodation places of work looking for illegal immigrants it's friday morning we go in with the police one of those rights. you're watching live from our moscow studios i'm lindsey france thanks for joining me. russia's president has praised the cooperation between syrian authorities and the chemical weapons watchdog in a landmark phone conversation with the syrian leader vladimir putin became the first head of a un security council member state in years to personally talk to bashar assad the industry or now is r t is maria for national who's recently ben to the war torn country. you've sent you've been there a number of times as this conflict has broken out and carried on you know why is

this phone call so significant what we've seen president assad given many interviews to various international media but this is for the first time since the conflict in syria started more than two years ago that we see bashar al assad talking to the leader of one of the u.n. security council member countries and that means a lot this is very significant in terms of of course from. the inside of russia and from the u.n. security council to show support for all they knew that the syrian authorities are now undertaking to end the crisis in the country and mostly focused on the chemical arsenal the demolition of the chemical weapons of syria and to express his satisfaction with how things are progressing on the ground would hold so another important topic was the geneva two peace talks that despite some skepticism is considered by many as important a crucial step in resolving peacefully the tract of crisis in syria so in your

opinion what are the main obstacles to the continuation of the peace talks at this point well as they say it takes two to tango and this is where the main obstacle in solving the syrian crisis lies and has been lined since the beginning since the conflict started because syrian opposition has repeatedly rejected any dialogue with the syrian current authorities with president assad person. saying that they will never talk to him and they will never come back to dialogue. to he goes and. determine the president of syria is too so it is quite. sad. so we actually heard some opposition factions saying that they are now ready but i've been to syria many times including how rebel held territories and i've seen that the opposition is very much divided and sometimes fractions that are

fighting president bashar assad in syria are not doing connected to each other they don't even know both the charges so it's like even if we're hearing from one fraction but. it doesn't necessarily mean unfortunately that all their position all the forces are now ready for dialogue and this is why it's quite difficult at this time to talk about any peace between. the warring sides it's it seems like such an organized disorganized rather and chaotic fraction of the population and getting that all under control to move forward to something transitional such as the geneva two peace talks is incredibly difficult it is hard it is hard all right maria thank you very much. that they held key physicians in the world's biggest military and they want one tunnel present closed thirty eight of the united states most respected retired generals and admirals want the senate to take immediate

steps now this is despite pressure and promises the jail still reached its twelfth anniversary punctuated by torture and hunger strikes along the way and assess the church in its final report from the detention center looks at what its future may hold. when it comes to this prison the numbers speak for themselves since being set up after the attacks of nine eleven a total of seven hundred seventy nine detainee have been held at guantanamo today one hundred sixty four people remain. have been long cleared for release but remain locked up a total of six people is currently under trial alleged prisoners of war brought here since two thousand and two removed from the battlefield of america's ever expanding war on terror it's both the policy of the u.s. not to hold anyone longer than necessary but we also know that whenever we release

someone we assume a richness over a period of more than a decade the majority of detainees held here have been set free and if the men of guantanamo are really these superhuman monsters you know the worst of the worst are quote there cheney. they would have been. most of those still kept locked up have not been charged and are being held indefinitely what sort of a black hole of the existing in would the president of the united states simply refuses to say the innocent but u.s. officials say the law of war remains behind this barbed wire the idea is that in a war when you capture folks you as the capturing authority are permitted to hold people during the duration of hostilities. when hostilities and or if there's no longer any purpose legitimate purpose to to hold them and they must be released a tiny problem the war on terror has no geographic borders with men once held here repeat treated to a wider array of countries. who are only specific to guantanamo you call even you

couldn't even the case in the u.s. mainland because it would be unconstitutional and illegal the war on terror also has no end in sight and national security is a popular excuse to simply ignore the law. this by the rhetoric really isn't about national security or prisoners being so dangerous that they can't possibly be released and that can't be true after being locked up the legal process if any moves at a glacial pace in two thousand and twelve five detainees were transferred to had completed their military commission sentence two were court ordered released. detainees been repatriated and one was a suicide over the years countless detainee claims of mistreatment and abuse dozens of suicide attempts mass hunger strikes lost patience and hold just this year the majority of the prison population refused to eat for six months straight only to be force fed the. mandate that we have is being able to provide

adequate nutrition to preserve life washington has appointed a new envoy to close a camp that is a dark spot on america's image this comes after a massive hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have dubbed the gulag of our times even if close. to being a state in u.s. history forever it's very easy to end one ton of. you release the men that you're not prosecuting. and as you said only six men are being prosecuted right now the military prosecutor has made clear that he intends to prosecute a few more but he's also made clear that it won't be more than a few more direct obama promised to close the notorious facility on day one of his presidency he's now in his second term it's only a president can do it and the idea that it's you know that it's congress's fault is just not correct it is the president the top holding these men in detention some

the president has to come in and this. it's hard to tell right now exactly how long we'll be down here doing this mission. and stacy church and. one ton of movie cuba. now more than half of guantanamo prisoners are yet many nationals and for them to release from the prison may not mean the end of their misfortune it's the u.s. and yemen are discussing plans to build a new center to house inmates after their release that's already been labeled as a one ton m o two our correspondent lucy katherine has just returned from yemen where she met relatives of some of the detainees and she shared her experiences with build on. it's difficult to stay positive about these detainees coming home when you've been awaiting us long as over a decade as was the case with some of the families who we've met now yemen is in

a specific different situation for a variety of reasons than other countries more than half of the remaining detainees are yemeni citizens to fifty six of them have been cleared for release to get sent back from guantanamo not a single one has come home and in fact the last citizen to return to the country came home in a body bag and twenty twelve and that is the fate that some of the families that we met with worry could be in store for for some of their loved ones one of the fathers that we met said that his son told them everything was going well and then basically found out through news reports that his son was participating in quite ill from the hunger strike which we have covered here at r.t.e. interesting enough there were reports of a similar detention center being set up in yemen do you read into right so basically beginning government has been pushing for years now for a so-called rehabilitation facility which would basically take these detainees help them adjust to society and make sure that they don't rejoin with terrorist networks which is the main concern of the united states we're learning now is that the

united states and yemen actually had secret talks in rome about this proposed facility but there's very little details that have emerged and the issue really down to trust and money yemen has tried to use this as a political issue to get more funding from the united states in the past so the u.s. isn't necessarily willing to foot the bill actually the funding issue something that we spoke to with yemen's human rights minister his cost of money we want. to integrate them into society to intubate addictive element into society i'm sure that they have. any. yemeni government because they have the feeling that we. just briefly it. could actually be closed i absolutely would not read into about it at all where u.s. official. the key concern isn't the difficulty of reintegrating these former detainees into society it's the concern that these detainees will reintegrate into al qaeda networks and it's not

a completely not valid one we have to remember that al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was founded by former guantanamo detainees so it's certainly a valid concern this is going to be such a long way off i mean if we waited this long for it to close unfortunately i don't think it's going to be sped up just because of this idea. that our t. dot com watch our full series on life inside guantanamo well as more interviews with former prisoners and in-depth coverage the international pressure to close the facility. three attacks targeting shiite worshipers in eastern iraq have left at least forty one people dead the blast took place during events to mark a shura the most important day in the shiite muslim calendar more than seven thousand people have been killed by insurgency in the country this year sonny ramadani joins us now a political refugee from saddam hussein's regime who's now a senior lecturer in sociology at london metropolitan university sir thank you so

much for joining us now. their defiance there has rich reach levels that they were in two thousand and eight not something anyone wants to see happen why is this happening now and what can be done to tackle this sort of a situation. where there are a number of factors really for this. situation in iraq what sparked off it is due to a very very intense power struggle between various political forces with this so-called political process forces the represented within the government they are. struggling to get more of the share of power and this. there is also a conflict between the central government. could just regional government. and then. it is also the presence of several terrorist organizations. including the so-called islamic state of iraq and the love and syria

this is a group affiliated to al qaida terrorist organization they are very active in syria as well as in iraq and the conflict in syria has had an impact on the increasing violence in iraq as well so you have all these small the police city of factors out to eric. holder of u.s. or lower the world will know probably since the occupation of it back in two thousand and three by the united states iraq the so sad was heavily heavily damaged by the by the will keep a nation at the infrastructure was destroyed much of the social status is have been destroyed and we have these political groups which where mostly not all of them but mostly. called put eating with us led occupation

a political process started by that political process had within its own landmines own problems and this sense that the united states wanted to separate told the iraqi forces and to play on sectarian divisions as nic divisions exasperating and not sure those differences and eventing them and trying to muster t m clashes but there is also this presence of the terrorist organizations. which is in an atmosphere of conflict between these political organizations and groups represented within the government yes of course and your political refugee under saddam hussein's regime how does life there now compared to life you had to lead then. one for most iraqis who are not pretty politically active i was active against saddam's regime i campaigned against. horrible human rights

violations but for most iraqis who were not politically active or not known to be. there i don't want my life you know people have families and children they had clean water and the main electricity was running the roads were not completely destroyed despite said jane yourself this if you're a sag machine against any state on arabs for thirteen years the united states. was leading the horrible economy sanctions which led to the death according to united nations figures how five million iraqi children died because of these sanctions so really it was the iraqi people who were being the targets rather than. dictatorship and often the be patient the water itself destroyed much of iraq's infrastructure we still don't even have electricity back to normal people most people get only a few hours a day and i can cause my quality

a massive city like baghdad by six and a half million people not having an electricity. is a terrible situation especially for poorer families women in particular look enough to children trying to get to madison they have said it was more or less education system has suffered there anything little things that electricity is back in iraq as well of course and it's electricity is a perfect example of something most of us can only imagine having to deal with especially after all of these years when the u.s. swept in and and it is still an incredibly fractured place thank you so much for joining us say that funny ramadani the senior lecturer in sociology at a london metropolitan university thank you so much sir. party has launched a joint online project a documentary rocks innocent deaths and to highlight the tragedy faced by civilians there are to dot com has more information on the attacks that continue to claim

lives. later in the program opium is on the up. there's been a dramatic surge in production in afghanistan the share within almost a decade of fruitless international efforts to stop the drugs lethal spread. zacky what happened there i don't know but if i killed. piers later is when i got arrested for. for a crime i did not do. we have numerous cases where police officers lie about polygraph results. people to confess the 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 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. you know i do. think they could talk freely. through the if you do risk of being intercepted whether by agencies about other states or even by private enterprise and it's crazy. welcome back you're watching our to live from our moscow studios i'm lending france thanks for the. and me in brittany you are never far from feeling the tap on the shoulder from the tax man but not everywhere under her majesty's jurisdiction gets forced to fund the crown's coffers in fact it can be quite the opposite artists are

celia knows just such a place. have you ever heard of care. ok not. ever heard of pitcairn. island or you. think of the pacific so why. do you know that part of your taxes go to that island . have you ever heard of pitcairn. if you've never heard of pitcairn and you're an e.u. citizen it might be well worth knowing for that swear part of your taxes are go a. bit as one of britain's overseas territories a small island in the south pacific with a total population of about fifty people now locals don't pay taxes and the islands main source of income include tourism and postage stamps but it's still heavily reliant on british and e.u. eight well let's break down the numbers here in the ninth european development fund

or e.t.f. received two million euros in aid allocated for infrastructure building in the tempi v.f.p. it can receive two point four million that's a total of four point four million in thirteen years about six thousand eight hundred euros per person per year but that's not all earlier this year it emerged that the u.k. had sent about ten million pounds over four years proponents of development aid the importance of maintaining quote solidarity and peace in developing nations said the european commission has indicated its attention to strengthen the focus of the e.t.f. on the world's poorest countries but details are scarce on how that assessment of the allocation will be done but critics in the e.u. well particularly in the u.k. have long been voicing their disapproval on the government's money management which is essentially protecting what's given to others while slashing budgets for those at home now a two thousand and twelve you gov survey says that fifty four percent of the

british public think that the british government should not be giving very macho overseas aid. regardless of what public opinion surveys say for now the status quo remains in place reporting from london i'm tests are cilia. reaction now from an independent member of the european parliament godfrey believe. he should be some of the u.k.'s transferring cash to pay charon an island of just fifty fifty people but the question is you know what does it actually get in return . what we've got of extraordinary situation in the united kingdom where we pay one billion pounds a month and i was cs aid which is a very significant figure indeed a billion pounds and we are actually in the process of closing our own hospitals closing our own costing down our police services cutting down our social services to an extent well we're beginning to scratch our head in the united kingdom and

wonder why we're giving one billion pounds a month away and the point that you just illustrated there and pitcairn islands is a need of strace and of the terrible waste of this billion pounds and of course it's not just pick an island there's millions of euros going to old french polynesia as well father european union forty percent of british overseas say goes via the european union and a lot of it goes to those old french colonies and of course it's all about politics geopolitics influence money and who's actually getting back handers who's dealing here who's dating that so the whole thing is actually fundamentally corrupt as well well you know pecans budget has been growing over the years worth of money actually going can you tell me about. well i looked it up and checked it out at least seems most of it's gone on a road now quite how they need such an expensive road for fifty people i don't know

but if you look across into the other places french polynesia for example they've built they've built a new airport control tower and they've built one and two other bits and pieces all of which cost millions of euros but of course what this is all about really is getting access to their fishing waters there's over six thousand tonnes of tuna pulled out of some of the areas in and around french polynesia through fifteen european union executives living in fiji doing very nicely on big salaries sitting on the beach this is all about corruption while ordinary hard working people trying to scrape to make ends meet pick up the tab this is typical of the european union i'm afraid absolutely typical nobody knows where the money goes we've been nineteen years now we haven't sold it to the accounts that the european union we don't know where it goes the whole thing's not a solution and it's poor little people to end up picking up the tab well let me ask

you this are there other pecans with british money heading overseas that taxpayers may know nothing about i mean are there other cases like there are there at all it's happening now it's happening. oh well funnily enough this is the least worst example i would argue. my problem is that when it goes for example british aid was going to going to india two hundred eighty million pounds a year and yet they can fund their own space program they have nuclear aircraft carriers we send money to pollack is told to buy f. sixteen aircraft three supporters of f. sixteen aircraft we send money to nigeria who also would you believe nigeria has a space program we've also sent money via spain they've sold twenty mirror's fighters which is good for russian industry i know but twenty minutes trying to to go to argentina with all the history of the conflict that we've had that there's no

wood it trailed nobody seems to know what's going on nobody knows why the money goes there and it's absolutely a national it's a national disgrace it's a european national disgrace but of course what they're doing is buying influence if you go down to those french polynesian islands and you could buy the entire town council for a few hundred euros and then you could rate their fishing waters and i think you'll find this is what it's all about so there is that is a factory fishing boats absolutely that is a scary list your reeling off there it's a long lesson it's a long list of very expensive thing is the government is sinking its money into thank you so much for joining us and giving us your thoughts a great topic about three bloom british m.e.p. for yorkshire and humber it's been a fertile year for afghanistan's farmers but that's bad news opium cultivation has hit record numbers meaning huge profits for local warlords and hundreds more lives

destroyed by the drug. but the latest u.n. report says the poppy production has spiked in some regions by more than a third in just this year with thousands of tons of opium annually afghanistan provides ninety percent of the drugs total global production for the farmers though it's a lifeline it's the only realistic chance for their families to earn a living wage traditional agriculture just doesn't pay in this war ravaged state parties ghana chicana looks at the roots of this huge problem. opium production has increased forty times in afghanistan since nato started its war on terror in two thousand and one and now the drug money goes to fund terror and god knows what else not to mention of course thousands of lives taken by heroin consumption every year but expect more drugs coming out of afghanistan because the value of opium is so much higher than any other crop available to afghan farmers that afghans are not planning on giving up on poppies anytime soon even though the tribal leaders in the

afghan government publicly denounce opium production according to afghan farmers they still manage to peck's them for that and this is what one former. government officials grow opium themselves and if they don't grow it themselves they rent out their land to farmers who grow it if the officials don't care about the law there is no reason for us to respect it that's according to this farmer for more than a decade nato and the us of course of the government that it had put in place in kabul every fuse to impose a clear ban on poppy growing possibly thinking such a ban would turn more people against the u.s. but here's how u.s. officials explain it this is just trying to eradicate property and the opium it's also trying to give people an alternative mechanism to live and to feed their families but there is so much money behind narcotics that even with alternative ways to make a living it's very difficult to imagine that such massive drug production will stop

unless there is a clear cut then on it in washington i'm going to check on. a tax first hand accounts of one of the second world wars most brutal episodes. you know i love these rare moments where. action of something totally sounds positive to share with you the f.d.a. is working to ban partially hydrogenated oils which are the leading source of trans fats and foods and possibly the cause of up to twenty thousand heart attacks per year across the usa according to f.d.a. commissioner margaret hamburg as you know i would like the chemicals in my food kept to a minimum but the thing is the people at the f.d.a. are surely aware of all the hormones in beef and gitmo is being produced why does this band have such a very narrow narrow focus in fact when you look at all the the things.