at least four countries claim a former american marine who's been charged in moscow with espionage is that this media speculation claims that the man is being used as a bargaining chip by russia. he faces up to twenty years plenty of time to be swapped. retaliate. in some way by the russians. also this hour the french government hard stance against the movement claiming it's trying to bring about to become spurs the popularity raising its record lows. to veto any legislation passed by democrats after they refused to fund his war neither side shows any sign of giving in despite almost two weeks of government

shutdown. isn't a morality it's not who we are it's a nation i have never had so much support for border control and for frankly the wall or the barrier. good evening thanks for joining us this is. the u.s. u.k. canada and ireland have all said that a former u.s. marine charged in moscow with their citizens and i'm detained in the russian capital last week's already at the center of much media speculation they're all my colleague andrew farmer discussed the story with our correspondents here in moscow and in london. what more do you know then about this case andrew haven't we lately rather gotten used to hearing about russian spies being caught in america i can definitely come up with a few such story. it's from the past few years this case though is exactly the

opposite an american national a former u.s. marine paul wieland was caught in moscow he was arrested in one of the city's most posh hotels but back when the news broke who would have thought that diplomats from a total of four countries would end up going he's our guy so now we have the u.s. the u.k. canada and the latest country to make such a statement was our island however if we go back to canada poll brother couldn't even confirm whether he still had a canadian passport or not which does sound very strange but that's the way it is right now he's now in detention in moscow having been charged with espionage although his brother says that the only reason he went to russia was to attend a friend's wedding party the us ambassador had been given permission to see the suspect then so he did mr whelan's lawyer is seeking bail for his

client for now we aren't really aware of any other details but journalists all around the world are talking about it and speculation is rife he faces up to twenty years in a russian jail to look at six plenty of time to be small to dispose of. what's most likely as we'll as a pawn in russia just play to get back one of its spies after maria patino here in the united states in the rehab boots do you believe the arrest of your brother was a retaliation and was revenge in some way by the russians. you've heard many are linking this case to the case of maria bootie no who was arrested in the u.s. in july she eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring against the u.s. with a russian government official and at least. or person without notifying the u.s.

attorney general but the fact is that the charges that have been brought against paul whelan and maria butanol are completely different now to london to dispute and our correspondent there nasty we're hearing the paul whelan also is a british citizen must be the reaction men in the u.k. it was actually the american embassy in moscow that had contacted their british counterparts to inform them of this arrest and this case we know that so far the foreign office has their spokesperson has said that quote staff have requested consular access to a british man detained in russia also the u.k. foreign secretary jeremy hunt has said that the u.k. is not liking the idea of individuals being used for political chess games our position is very very clear individuals should not be used as pawns of diplomatic leverage we need to see what those charges are against him to understand whether

there is a case or not we're not ruling out any series at all at this stage as to why this might have happened this case of paul whelan comes on the heels of the biggest scandals in twenty eighteen between russia and the u.k. involving a double agent being poisoned in solsbury in the u.k. back in march leading to diplomatic expulsions leading to one of the biggest droughts between the u.k. and russia and russia in recent years so whether or not this one is again going to add more fuel to the fire and exactly how much this scandal blows up of course remains to be seen in the days to come. french government spokesperson has accused the elder vest movement of trying to stage a coup the common signals a toughening stance from the authorities following weeks of violent protests over dubious q has the story. well not a great start to the year for president machen with the latest polling showing that seventy five percent of french people responded that disapprove of the president

that's despite the concessions he's tried giving the yellow vests movement over the last few weeks and that comes as his cabinet met for the first time on friday since the start of the new year yellow vest movement something on their plate to discuss and afterwards the presidential spokesperson discussed at the l a best movement describing them as agitators who wanted to overthrow the government. says the announcements of the manual macro the yellow vests have become a movement of agitators who want insurrection and to overthrow the government moreover those who call for debate don't want to participate in the great national debate well that's not something the other best movement has long said many times when i've spoken to people out on the streets that that's one of their aims that they want to change the political system here in france and one way of doing that could be to overthrow the government those protests now have been engulfed in

france since november seventeenth and some cities have seen the worst writing in the whole of a century as a result of that and it looks like this movement is set to continue into two thousand and nineteen with the so-called act eight planned for saturday with a number of demonstrations already been notified to say that they will take place and many more expected to be notified at the very last minute on saturday now it also comes as an open letter was penned to president back on signs from angry france criticizing the president saying that he just hadn't listened to the movement let's have a look at an exit from that letter bridge will turn into hatred if you and your companions keep seeing people as rubble consider them to. and think they mean nothing and it's not just the yellow vests or the causing much in the head tick it's also been announced this head of communications is to step down from his post

now this is for whom he's credited as being the person who shaped the presidential campaign that went on to win in style back in two thousand and seventeen and he's been a long term confidant of the president around him for about two years he's not the only person from the backroom staff quit and of course on top of that we've seen a number of resignations from the cabinet team including the interior minister back in october that was you have a clue and also the interior minister nicolas though who resigned as well as some of the other cabinet members in two thousand and eighteen so while president might call might have been hoping to sweat some of that discord from two thousand and eighteen under the carpet it looks like two thousand and nineteen could be the same . with the partial u.s.

government shutdown close to entering its third week congressional leaders arrive in the white house for crunch talks as democrats put forward legislation designed to end the stalemate but it doesn't include funding for a border wall prompting donald trump to claim that he will veto the bill let's go to new york now to correspondent kelly more. to say there's no end in sight then to this political gridlock. indeed it's been fourteen days that the u.s. federal government has been shutdown the new congress is sworn in and now in session and at this point all eyes are on the white house where congressional leaders from both parties are going to meet with u.s. president donald trump today friday in the hopes of resolving the crisis now we've seen previous face to face meetings between president trump and democratic representatives of congress and it hasn't been pretty however in the lead up to today's meeting we saw the president actually send out a letter to each member of congress this letter making the case for his border wall

and arguing that the border wall needs to be created so at this point we've got the other two major parties at odds and we've got hundreds of thousands of federal employees who are not getting a paycheck let's review. isn't an morality it's not who we are as a nation and this is not a wall between mexico and the united states that the president is creating here it's a wall between reality and his constituents his supporters i have never had so much support as i have in the latest week over my stance for border security for border control and for frankly the wall or the barrier now at this point we've seen a bill passed in the house of representatives now under the control of the democratic party this bill would reopen nine government agencies that have been closed now nancy pelosi was recently asked if she would be willing to fund the

border wall with just one dollar this is her response. we see what you would accept even a dollar of wall point for this president to go over the open. dollar but beyond that you know this is not one dollar and i wonder how. now donald trump remains firm in his commitment to this border wall and he has now taken not just to twitter but to instagram he's posted a video making his point about why he feels that this border wall on the southwestern u.s. border is necessary this is donald trump on instagram. illegal immigration is wrong plain and simple.

so it's a new year a new congress but as yet the government remains shut down as it has been for the past fourteen days as gridlock still prevails on capitol hill in washington d.c. philadelphia reporting live from new york thank you. in this case it isn't doing germany into a massive cyber attack the lead to the personal data of hundreds of german politicians and media figures being leaked online or the probe is so in its early stages some german media outlets already claim to know who's to blame each other for explains. but german press are running hard with this story on the data of hundreds of politicians and includes members of the cabinet here in germany chancellor angela merkel herself. the president of germany frank fall to steinmeyer among many many others but it's not just politicians that have been the victim of

this this data breach also comedian younes bottom and and rapper mark terry are also caught up in this now because if there is talk of hacking and data breaches the knives immediately come out for russia and that is what's happened in a lot of the articles we've seen here so far what we do know about the data that had been hacked into is that it's being called non highly sensitive data it includes things from the politicians this is like job applications party memos and lists of party members now a spokesperson for the german government said an investigation is underway into this hack. is the young the federal government is taking this very seriously the only thing you can see by the hack attack now is that we're working on that the thirty's are working very hard to understand what happened leaks like these have to be handled with a great character biggest think information can be propagated however the government can say that now sensitive political data was published so far no

official claims that russia was behind this and no evidence presented to that end but this isn't the first time that we've see a big media campaign in germany pointing the finger of blame at russia when it comes to online shenanigans before the twenty seventeen elections the papers were rife with how were the russians going to interfere with our elections post the twenty seventeen elections there was a lot more navel gazing article saying why didn't russia try and hack or interfere in these elections as we heard from the spokesman person from the government there this investigation ongoing will be looking into this as it develops. britain has spent almost two hundred thousand pounds protecting the welfare of hate preacher abu qatada after he was deported to his native jordan to face terrorism charges for some revealed by the times newspaper has sparked anger among both m.p.'s on the public. these payments are ridiculous the money we have is an insult

to the british taxpayer the government have succeeded in deporting qatada back to the rule of law each and every stage of the process the deportation of abu qatada has taken twelve years and cost more than one point seven million illegal fees for both sides that is not acceptable to the public and it's not acceptable to me we must make sure it never happens again. a toddler was granted asylum in the u.k. nine hundred ninety four is he claimed that he'd been tortured in jordan but the u.k. arrested him after nine eleven on terrorism charges qatada was sent back to jordan twelve years later after receiving assurances that he would not be tortured. if the petition cost a lot to the united kingdom at least one point nine million pounds were spent on his deportation with payments for legal fees and legal aid ily two hundred thousand that was spent after his deportation for monitoring his condition and assuring that he wasn't tortured the governor said that it was committed to monitoring qatada for

up to three years the final payment was made in twenty sixteen. ok let's discuss this now with political commentator david vance with the former chief exec of the immigration advisory service studies keith best very good evening to you both gentlemen if i could start with you keith considering that this is about insuring somebody human rights is that good enough reason to be spending this money. well i'm afraid justice does cost a lot of money from time to time and his in his case i first of all i have no brief for abu qatada i've never met him and i don't think we'd have much in common but the rest of the civilized society is how you deal with the people you don't like as well as the ones that you do and of course he was becoming a great embarrassment because he claimed asylum and then from the year two thousand and two he was locked up several times under the rather draconian terrorism

legislation in the u.k. but he was never ever charged with anything and repeatedly he in these legal representatives would say well look if you really got something against me charge me with an offense and have me tried but that was not sufficient evidence to bring that and then of course. there was an attempt to try to get him removed to jordan because he is a jordanian national but you have to remember that it was not the european court of human rights that actually prevented him from from being sent sent back it was actually a british court the special immigration appeals commission. that actually overturned the deportation order and said he couldn't be sent back for fear of the fact that he would be then tried using evidence which was tainted had been obtained under torture and what was interesting is awfully was sent back to jordan and that

required a special treaty between the u.k. and jordan to ensure that he wasn't going to have evidence that was tainted used against him he was then acquitted by the jordanian courts just want to take a moment to give give david a chance to respond axium shaking his head a bit how do you feel about this david. yeah well i mean what it demonstrates to me neal is just what a soft touch the u.k. has been for quite a long time now because and the first place of a khattab should never have been granted asylum here back in one thousand four on when you think about it all the money all the welfare param payments he and those around him are parasite id of the u.k. taxpayer on till such times as he was deported that's also pretty deplorable and what's even worse is even when we booted him out of the u.k. for he should never have been in the first place we're still paying

a couple hundred thousand points of taxpayers' money to look after his human rights well as i'm sure even keith must understand tatar was suspected by many in our intelligence services of being a prime recruiter and fundraiser for al qaeda so when we talk so much about human rights i'm much more interested in the human rights of the people killed by out qaeda terrorists around the world and the fact that the u.k. taxpayer was actually forking out for the for the alleged taking care of him when he was in jordan just telling me a lie under plausible and he came in i agree i agree i agree with you that he's obviously a very unpleasant man and you're absolutely right to say that it was not just the british or the jordanians but the algerians for example other countries of the qs him of being involved in some rather nasty plans for for terrorism but i think if

you reflect a little more carefully on what you've just said your recipe is one for anarchy you say you should never have claimed asylum in all reality we are we are we are haughty to the right we are talking of vention like most civilized countries which in fact if somebody claims asylum and they can show a genuine fear of persecution we are obliged to grant. asylum what you're suggesting is why don't we just tear up the international rulebook and just silo off into the oblivion of a country which writes the rules as as what actually them rather than having international law well and that's not a recipe for anything ok so let me come back and they'll yell at me let me come back and now in case well let's put a couple of those points straight shall we in the first instance the u.k. has no obligation to if our khattab a wanted to find asylum case there were many countries geographically closer to

jordan than the united kingdom i wonder why you came here well the answer is of course because we are a soft touch my original point and for me for you to suggest that i am clear i'm my recipe is a suggestion for anarchy what you're suggesting is a much greater suggestion for anarchy because you're suggesting it's appropriate that the u.k. a taxpayer should pick up the bill for a terrorist mastermind he was going to constrain the rule of any of the u.k. i'm still in the senate you know i don't know which is different because let me finish now and i know the second i got to finish you're you're you can't talk to me and i mean i don't say what you're interrupting me twice don't interrupt me twice kate you're suggesting that the you care taxpayer should take your pick up the bill for a terrorist mastermind to come to the u.k. live off benefits and then when he does get deported back to jordan we further pack up an extra two hundred thousand now if that's not nihilistic perhaps is

a better word than anarchistic but either way it's pretty imbecilic trousdale or we don't really need them in the u.k. case i don't know if you got the memo we have enough whole beirutis we do not want any murdering it's as simple as i just beg you to believe you've never heard an alamy of what you're saying and let me get a word in edgeways now if i may what you are saying. is that frankly you would be partial as to whether we pay for justice in some cases or in others you can't do that in a fair civilized society secondly the recently had to be monitored when he got back to jordan was to see if the treaty we had with jordan was being breached or not another word was tainted evidence being used against him let me finish please you know to have that courtesy just to let me finish and that was why it had to be monitored because otherwise if it had been found that the treaty had been broken

you know what would have happened david and you would have you know you're the one who you are doing in this case he would he would have been returned to britain is that really what you wanted right. right keith two things in the first end of the you know that's what happened on was that what you would want to get your interrupted me within twenty seconds off me starting you must learn to let me finish kate this is not going to be it works in the first instance he was released by the jordanian authorities within twelve months gosh what a surprise one in the second instance during the twelve months that he actually was in captivity in jordan it is reported that cheering the time case he was contacting other parts of the al qaeda network around the world this was a very dangerous man and you seem concerned that a dangerous man has been booted out if the u.k. i think that's a very good thing and i wish many more given the same treatment well you're

overlooking one thing dave if i may say so and i'm sure you're aware of it the minority ninety nine. target was convicted in these absence of being involved in terrorism by the jordanians in the jordanian court when. requires no listen to me please when there's the jordanian law requires he came back to jordan then somebody who strongly in their absence has to be retried again he was then acquitted why was he acquitted because the evidence of the being used in the trial in these absolutes in the one nine hundred ninety nine was tainted because he did been obtained by torture and could not be used in a fair trial so i think you know you need to look at the facts david rather than what you might but it was five days pick out the yeah but high on case the fundamental fact is that this guy was by any definition an out qaeda terrorist

mastermind that should give you great cause for thought and terms of how you wish to see british taxpayers' money allocated it certainly gives me great cause for concern. this. terrorist who had no right to be in the u.k. in the first place as far as i'm concerned should have been booted out so many years previously but thanks to our good friends in the c.h.r. which i notice you glibly glossed over earlier he was allowed to stay here for all those years when home secretaries could not deport him and so i'm glad that he was deported i mean i am disappointed that we've had to spend two hundred thousand pardons to look after his well for in jordan but not money could have been spent much better for example keith here in the u.k. looking after british victims of al-qaeda violence wouldn't you agree with me with me or not point where would you like to see the line expand on another universe or is victims who chose i'm only slightly disturbed david but it seems to be that your

opinion as to whether somebody is wrapped up in criminality or no is sufficient to convict them i actually like living by the intelligence so if you rave if you were to accuse me i'm sure you are a criminal offense or of i'd like to let me finish please if you were to accuse me of a criminal offense i would like to think that it wouldn't be you who decides on that it would be a jury and the fact is that jordan already having convicted him in these absence then had to acquit him when he was retried for exactly the same thing because it was discovered that the evidence was tainted now it's not you are missing the great point to the matters as to whether you think he's a terrorist or not it's the rule of law room where the loot can be proved or not that's what matters but keith people keith with grip with great respect kate you seem to be ignoring the fact that it's not my opinion that he was a terrorist mastermind it's a matter of numerous reports by various heads of intelligence services so case on

this you don't plan to revise the evidence of television services and sorry sorry sorry case that this you gotta let me finish if you know better than heads of intelligence services that said this way. is a very dangerous man onder line very dangerous terrorist then all i'm saying is that i'm very glad he's not in the u.k. he seems yes well i didn't agree with you i guess right after defra not regard i do agree he couldn't be heard to talk but the guy just big you be not so naive as to think that if mr putin or mr trump using their own security services allege that somebody has done something you don't just believe blindly. or gentle and you're that good or not. you know i thought i was going to say i mean to what keith just said this obviously happened long before the era of donald trump so it's not to do with but it's to do with the fundamental fact keith that this guy was by the as

evidenced by numerous reports by intelligence services he was an qaeda terrorist and my only point to you keith is i don't really want them in the u.k. do you i just want to make one point here gentlemen could you kind of talked around the same point i just want to say keith you've been discussing you know whether or not the law was followed you saying the law has to be followed david saying that you know britain is a soft touch with letting in people we shouldn't would you like to see the law beefed up to make it harder for people to get to get in especially when there's a lot of suspicion of around the. well i'm sorry but i am a lawyer and so therefore you'll forgive me if i rather believe in the rule of law . the point david is making that if an intelligence service alleges somebody is a well known terrorist or something like that and in fairness. tara was on the end of that algeria accused him of that and other countries as well including our own

but if those countries you are not provide the evidence to support those contentions then i'm afraid i'm not prepared to listen with deep credence to any intelligence service is that alleges something against somebody simply because it suits them politically to do so ok i hold their nose or. i don't i think i'm very pleased he's not with us sceptical but the fact is that he but like any body else deserves to have the rule of law and of law and i commend you know if we've got we've only got about thirty seconds left i want to want to let you reply but it's got a point has any case you know the intelligence services you can't trust them. what you know in essence what keith saying must be must be music from heaven to the years of any prospective terrorist wanting to get into the u.k. this guy was a he was a really bad rogue with the u.k. is far better off without them and yes into your initial point we should toughen up

our laws much much more robust to make sure that such wicked terrorists do not enter this country they can go to jordan or forever else they want but not in the united kingdom you have to wrap it up there gentlemen great conversation appreciate the time that you like a on one day day and if they don't come for you political commentator david vance chief executive the immigration advisory service keith best thank you thanks and thanks for staying with us here on r.t. more in half an hour.