big stories this hour the u.s. senate overwhelmingly approves a new round of sanctions against russia which president putin condemned as a violation of international. human rights watch claims an iraqi army position previously claimed by the u.s. as care about extrajudicial killings in mosul. and the two architects of the cia's post nine eleven tocchet program is set to go on trial in the u.s. we speak exclusively. of one of those men.

friday here in moscow this is alex international with me kevin and david good morning to you first that the u.s. senate's approved a new round of sanctions against russia iran and north korea an overwhelming majority voted in favor of the bill during the hearing senators emphasize that russia is being targeted for its alleged meddling in last year's u.s. election a strong message to vladimir putin and any other aggressor that we will not tolerate attacks on our democracy that's what this bill is all about this vote let us finally finally finally officially condemn and forcefully respond to that attack on our country for this stunning breach of all right as a sovereign nation not to have our elections disturbed by a foreign capital so putin's already lambasted the proposed sanctions which now only need donald trump's signature to come into force he says that if. they are

implemented moscow will respond jacqueline voters go more the short debate that took place before him was for anti russian rhetoric and again repeated accusations of russia having meddled in last year's presidential elections allegations that have yet to be backed up by real proof the sanctions against russia were included in a bill which also counter so-called aggression from iran and north korea but these measures have already received a lot of international backlash with president vladimir putin saying that the new round of u.s. sanctions against russia are extremely cynical and accusing washington of using it a little advantage for business purposes in the news of the sanctions are completely illegal they go against international law and the rules of the world trade organization being very patient and very reserved but at some point we will have to respond because we can't endlessly tolerate aggressive behavior towards our country and what you're actions can be perceived as an aggravation and i would even say exceptional cynicism just a distinction that now had to trump steps to be signed into law but it's unclear

what will happen given that the white house has sent muddled messages on the legislation many now see president trump as being in a tough position that either he must take a hard line in the kremlin or lead this party and try and go against the will of congress current or former u.s. air force left and then colonel she told us the sanctions bill is an attempt to limit the american leaders power. clearly the congress the house and the senate have overstepped their abilities to understand and influence foreign policy they don't understand the end fact of sanctions by extending this the sanctions to other companies allied companies that may work with the targeted nations that is really. the height of arrogance and also ignorance and the fact that so many of both parties voted both in the house and the senate only the independent thinkers and there's very few in fact we know who they are the three in the house and the two in

the senate that voted against these measures they're the only ones that are independently thinking about the impact of what these proposed sanctions will have i think it's important to see this is a congressional act intended to damage mr chung and his ability to conduct foreign policy very bold acts or there are also fears in the e.u. that the proposed sanctions would hit european companies germany's economy minister has criticized the u.s. over the plans she says that washington's abandoned assured position on russia sanctions and even suggested countermeasures cullom open asked new yorkers how they'd feel about having sanctions imposed on them. the economic minister of germany is saying he wants to put sanctions counter sanctions on a country in coordination with the world trade organization. russia may be the us. us then it's way i probably in the states on the united states all you know

well and how do you feel about that i faked that our trade policies under the present current administration has got it right i can't believe it because the president are trying to protect themselves with trouble being president you got to expect a lot of crazy things not good but we have to stand out it's not good for us and it's not good for the world we think that we can exist by ourselves we can the world is a much bigger place now with becoming less and less important it's a trade war a trade war between us and the jar and the germans us and the rest of the world it saves a lot of people i think voted for mr trump. because he was hoping not to keep our continual adventures in foreign countries to reduce the wars and what we're having here is just we're creating more of a worse situation in were and we're really needing our european partners as well and we're basically we've got

a congress imposing their own foreign policy without regard to impacts on europe nor really the considerations on the ultimate objectives of of mr president trump as well. nexus one a new report from human rights watch claims that iraqi soldiers have executed dozens of prisoners in mosul the rights groups say they were suspected islamic state fight is international observers cited in the report describe what they saw in the city. a group of iraqi soldiers that food naked men down an alleyway after which they heard multiple gunshots. these two through the doorway of a damaged house the bodies of a number of naked men lying in the doorway they said one of the dead men was lying with his hands behind his back and appeared to have been handcuffed and there was a rope around his legs to sixteenth division soldiers who scooted one observe and shoot the seven head of with the soldiers said was an american female isis sniper

whom the hard to care pretty heated it was not clear whether the decapitated her alive in iraq to her death this is one of a series of reports that human rights watch has issued on the final weeks of the battle in mosul against isis and in these reports what we have seen is numerous extrajudicial killings by iraqi forces of men that they say were linked to isis without any judge without any trial simply executing them on the battlefield really all the iraqi forces that are involved in this fight against isis have been committing rampant abuses including war crimes we have yet to see a thing the incident be properly x. investigated by the iraqis or any commanders to be held accountable the report claims the executions were carried out by one a rocky unit played a significant role in the liberation of mosul they'd also received american training and assistance while fighting icily in twenty fifteen broca's field from

here rights watch again says it's unclear whether the iraqi troops is still being supported by washington. the u.s. has publicly for a long time publicized the work that it's done in training the iraqi military sixteenth division sent column on its own website has press releases up highlighting the training and support that the us has given to this specific division now we as human rights watch do not know if support to the sixteenth division is ongoing but we have not seen anything being to suggest that that support ended in the recent past. torture of killing allegedly carried out by the iraqi army have previously been documented by a cameraman embedded with one of those units he claims to have filmed abuse and extrajudicial executions some of which he said were also recorded by the officers themselves another photographer recorded the devastated city resident as he was in

mosul in the last days before the complete liberation of the city showed his impressions with us. in the last couple days we witnessed there was really just this tremendous push to just just crush the remaining fighters who were very deeply entrenched i guess in the city there's this vast tunnel network i guess that is sort of existed for thousands of years you know dating back to mass but tamia but the spiders have also dug in their own tunnel network system underground in mosul and there was just this and it was a very aggressive push by both the iraqi forces and the coalition to just pretty much and i await their remaining fighters kind of you know will result in being kind of heavy civilian cost i think that what you know what the mainstream media sort of sort of does they try to they try to generalize you know the conflict in what's happening they try to package it into these very easily accessible headlines you know like most of those liberated and so you know you read that headline and

you think oh you know the battle is over you know the operations are over and you know everything must be tied up and tidy but that's just not the case so i guess that that was one of the biggest shocks to me was that you know there's this this narrative that you know the fight is over and you know it wasn't the case at all and the scale of destruction in mosul is just you know it's an unimaginable hell the city is littered with. you know unexploded ordinance from you know from airstrikes and it's just going to take you know decades to rebuild this city. to military psychologists regarded as the architects of the cia's enhanced interrogation program will discover later today whether they'll stand trial over their participation into what ship it said bruce jessen and james mitchell created and personally tested torture methods and formed a company that profited from the agency's program the techniques have been used on suspected terrorists held facilities such as go antonymous twenty fourteen told

should report released by a senate select committee found that some of those who subjected to the brutal interrogate. were innocent and hadn't been involved in any extremist activities michael cohen said what with one of the psychologists had devised a program to help us servicemen. he says his work was used by one of the men to develop new romo brutal to watch it and. the resistance to interrogation program we don't actually use the word torture in the training however there are torture techniques that are used to certain levels during the training this is all part of a program that's called sere s e r e survival evasion resistance to interrogation and escape so what we were doing were protecting those operators those people on strategic reconnaissance flights doing operational work of around the world to collect intelligence and also those that were operational and working in counter terrorism how to resist enemy interrogations and those techniques were educated to

fill a very precise and were not used to hurt or harm the students and every student had a stop code a code that they could use at any time to have all activity stopped so again torture in the mind of a student is different from being tortured for days and days and weeks which is what we're hearing about the bush she torture program all of the activities that one on by the cia were grossly beyond anything at the school standards for my opinion please understand that i retired from the u.s. air force in one nine hundred ninety one only in two thousand and six or two thousand and seven did i even have an inkling that these people that i haven't seen for dozens of years were doing this roger aldridge bruce jessen and jim mitchell were the people behind the torture program it was the people that i worked with for several years that had taken and reverse engineer. the harsh part.

and turned it into the high tea the enhanced interrogation program. brutal techniques the lawyer of the two psychologists in question says his clients are innocent and should be viewed like the supplies for instance of poison gas to the nazis. one former cia agent a whistleblower told us that they received eighty one million dollars for their work. the reason why mitchell and jessen were put in charge of this this terrible this important program was because the cia simply had no experience in this kind of thing nobody in the cia was trained in interrogation that's an f.b.i. job but the cia wanted to be the organization that did it themselves and it's because the cia blamed itself for the nine eleven attacks well because they had nobody internally who could do these interrogations they decided to hire mitchell and jessen at a cost of eighty one million dollars to come in and teach the cia how to torture

people at the end of the day mitchell and jessen were the ones who flew out to the secret prison site overseas and actually carried out the torture themselves we know from the senate torture report for example that it was mitchell and jessen who were personally torturing these prisoners there was no discussion of ethics there was no discussion of morality and once the memo was signed by the president there was no discussion of legality it was it was as though the the cia was just winging it they were taking it one day at a time they didn't care if they were breaking rules they didn't care if they were violating the laws they didn't care about professional ethics because it was such an unusual situation there really were no rules that were written down there with there were no regulations that that anybody in the cia leadership can refer to and you know people at the cia will tell you well it was a time of war we were writing new rules as we were going going along in retrospect

here we are sixteen years later fifteen and a half years later and the only reason that mitchell and justin are not protected is because they were not cia employees when the cia's director of counter terrorism cofer black said in two thousand and one that the cia was going to take the gloves off and then when vice president dick cheney said that we were going to turn to the dark side they meant it. they meant that the cia was going to go overseas and it was going to kill or capture everybody that it encountered and then just deal with the fallout later that's why guantanamo was created cia has has washed its hands of mitchell and jessen remember this is a civil case it's not a criminal case so nobody's going to go to prison over this this is about money and so even if mitchell and jessen lose the worst thing that could happen is that they're going to have to pay a great deal of money to their victims or to the families of their victims at the cia they've they've moved on. a bloke who's put on u.s.

support for one rebel group in syria why i will tell you about that right after this coming quick break. if we take for instance the size large enough to destroy a city say forty meters or so of the million or so asteroids out there we have

discovered perhaps a percent or so of that ten thousand of them. so in other words i means that ninety nine percent of them are undiscovered so you should expect that the great majority of asteroids which come very close to the earth to come as a surprise. the american led coalition is officially ended cooperation with a rebel group in syria saying u.s. partners should only fight islamic state is the first time such a group that has been excluded the. tane commonly referred to as the shark one of our partner forces they are you know laterally without u.s. or coalition permission or coordination conduct of patrols outside of the agreed

upon deescalation zone and engaged in activities not focused on fighting isis. the group in question is a faction of the free syrian army operating in the south of the country before exclusion it was among the so-called vetted syrian forces those backed by the u.s. led coalition and that next election explains more than a where this is going. after long months of basically zero cooperation between the united states and russia in syria things are now moving at a rapid pace following the g. twenty meeting early in the month between president strong and putin the pentagon said that they will try to get all the weapons and equipment they have provided to that group back from the group because they thought they gave the equipment to fight isis and now the group apparently has different objectives and this comes just a week after trump decided to seize the cia training and arming the rebels program in syria which was again a major move of this program itself has been very controversial there have been

times when cia backed rebels in syria clashed with those supported and armed by the pentagon and also there have been cases where weapons provided by the cia to those rebel groups were stolen and found themselves in the hands of the terrorists at the same time trump is refusing any suggestions he may be a fan of bashar al assad's government and this is what he said recently i'm not a fan of his. and will tell you that because we it we had fifty eight at a fifty eight or you could even say fifty nine out of fifty nine when we launched the tomahawk missiles now i'm not a fan of. certainly think that what he's done to that country and to humanity is horrible so the hardline stance of washington on still stays but there's definitely more cooperation now than before and the big changes well that there is no more you know open calls from the white house

administration on regime change in syria but the main priority now is fighting isis and this is something some had also promised during his election campaign we'll see where there will be any more changes in the coming weeks the military analysts we spoke to says the getting any weapons but from the rebels is going to be extremely difficult. it would be very hard to get these weapons back because if you look at what the americans did twenty thirty years ago in afghanistan they were never able to get the weapons they gave to the. taliban so similar here want to give weapons to most of their e non-state actors it's very hard to get them back the first thing that's going to happen is we're going to see that the u.s. is going to stop giving weapons and money to a lot of the groups on the ground however there's already a lot of weapons of the ground to the various multiple groups the big thing that we really see is the americans are going to clearly perhaps draw a line and not get further training in money. the soyuz spacecraft

is a jew to blast off the international space station to date said to kind of the next crew to a big old but in lab karen's at the baikonur cosmodrome in kazakhstan for us. this is the story is rocket that will carry its three man crew to the international space station where they will spend one hundred thirty nine days in all base enjoying that time they won't just be enjoying the news they have a whole list of experiments they need to get through and some of them sounds more peculiar. so i decided to take to the streets to ask space times and locals what their thoughts on the agenda. that could be for people who tell irritating jokes maybe that would you know when you're in close proximity it's like being in a submarine negative to me being i mean outer space it's more exploration positive things.

puts a layer is all i don't know is it possible to fall down not your skin zero gravity . but going to theory you can recalibrate by smelling. coffee beans perhaps you could recalibrate in microgravity and see if there's anything wrong on the space station. electric eyes to see if there is a good bells all right but one of the most peculiar sounding experiments to be conducted on the international space station this time involves testing sensitivity to pain in zero gravity i asked people how they think it will be done but you could do some tweaking it like that but just other the folks it's zero gravity i think you know because you know when you're in the gravity everything's very slow with imaginations running wild i decided to get the details from the crew themselves just fine it's there is

a device you put your finger inside that small voice begins to squeeze as soon as you feel a little pain. there's also a thermal sensitivity to how you put your hands on this and it starts to heat up when it comes to what you remove your hand and the device registers to ping from. over the years experiments in space have touched on everything from the way it to those wonderful but the questions that most people really want to know the answers to all are a little less complex than your question chief. test but the one question that he thought a lot it was what the space satellites. dispatcher always should remember mushroom soup but having to answer the same old questions is a small price to pay for the incredible journey they are now on this is nicky aaron reporting for r.t. from the bike in the. well currently the international space station up there is fully dependent on supplies from earth which is why this next trip so important but

in the future scientists want to use resources from asteroids so fin co spoke to former nasa astronaut about the plan you can watch the interview in full in about an hour but i suspect that the first uses of asteroid resources were actually be. for water which is the can be turned into rocket fuel hydrogen oxygen it will be used in space rather than shipping things like metals back to earth so is there are natural rights to go around or world powers going to find themselves in a battle for the ones richest in resources. well there are an awful lot of asteroids out there in all sorts of varying orbits so i do think there is an enormous amount of resources out there and if you think about it you know as as you mentioned asteroids are both a threat. and an opportunity right and what's the first thing you do when you have a brand new frontier that you want to take advantage of or you map it right and so

the most important thing for both. uses use cases is to find and track these things know where they are and that's again what our principal goal is at the moment to to build a comprehensive map of the locations and trajectories of these esther. that's to come let me tell you about what's coming before that though i'm kevin i move me in how from between now and then what are the breaking out international an exclusive interview with nicolas maduro the president of venezuela and what's particularly trouble time for his country right now coming up.

for many particularly his critics a trumpet ministration is nothing less. steroids for some who know the president this is merely business is usually is this a winning strategy for the president america and the war. because there's a survival guide book stacie just to start simply at least. he should. get it back. oh heck no.

repatriations look at the rest the seventy. philip the separate kaiser report. fleur used to be a professional hockey player who won a stanley cup and the moment the girl who was living to try to rescue six had a dark side. time i was fourteen to sixteen i was raped one hundred fifty times by a coal mine i was mawson in a dark room and so you know every time i close my eyes i couldn't sleep after many years of silence he speaks up and unites with other victims so you are going from toronto to ottawa walk in an hour walk and victor walks to create awareness and promote healing around the subject child sexual abuse this type of behavior is absolutely acceptable because of the sentences that are handed down through the justice system. maybe you also

welcome to introduced me today we had the honor of talking to the president of venezuela mr president thank you for coming but also venezuela is going through a very tough time right now in a few days the elections the national constitutional assembly will take place. in the country both politically and socially this election to head off to the no going back so minutes. since the adoption of the one thousand nine hundred nine construction convening the constitution simply has been the political right it venezuelan people is not only a political right it's a human right you know i called for a national culture somebody a million for such as you all can clear that the right wing forces you and where you did not want to be violated they signed up to last november. trying to carrots . trying to break a country apart since may they've been openly having rylan why don't we have in the company. and state department support

discredited. colombia in particular. yet. this sunday's election as you seek to consolidate power and hold it for a. little bit of the opposition has been saying the same thing for eighteen years. and now i'm in for the last month there is one of the other when the result of conflicts in our country than through democratic reform half weeks or so you may. want to engage in direct dialogue to get up and join the national constitution. anything your position is going to need is. right now the situation facing a little isolation there leaning right and the strategy of a local. district in the me a lot of people in the very district. the opposition is more than people. why do you think that the opposition always refused to engage in dialogue with you .