no matter what they tell you grudging defense is a massage by outlets like rupert murdoch's fox news the statement they did b.b.c. and former wiki leaks partners the guardian new york times among others perhaps emerging because they realize they could all soon find themselves in court for merely reporting on the crimes of nato countries well i'm joined now by the united nations kneels meltzer who wants answers from boris johnson's government about britain's role in what defenders of assad say are attempts to eliminate him in london's belmarsh prison special operator welcome back to going underground before we get to issues around the court case that will it's crown court the belmarsh crown court. we're hearing from people in the labor party pretty mainstream now coming on board to support julian a son she is what you have been saying since your report into the alleged persecution of judaism is becoming more mainstream. i think that's a fair assessment i'm actually surprised to see compared to last june which is

about a month after my visit when i tried to place an op on the international day in support of the 2 of the victims of torture. in the mainstream press around the world i was an able to place an op ed d. mask in the torch and during the son's after having visited and examined him with medical experts as conducted to new york times the washington post the the australian mainstream media the british and a mainstream media it was impossible to place it today what we're seeing is really that the mainstream press starts to realize through publications and alternative media that they probably got it wrong and so the get more interested in discovering the truth about a story that's face saving in law they know that if a songe is convicted the next people could be them well we do have indicators of that and perhaps they start to as we say smell the coffee after the raids on the

a.b.c. headquarters in australia and after glenn greenwald was arrested and in brazil and is being accused you know according to the same kind of playbook that we see playing out with the sons so perhaps the start and or so public funds being cut from mainstream broadcasters perhaps they start realizing that they really did 1st come for us and then for greenwald and not it may become for the b.b.c. ok but boris johnson is on the record as saying it is only right that judy innocent finally faces justice that was when he was dragged out of the ecuadorian embassy and thrown into jail yet i think we all agree it would be about time for him to face justice is just what he's facing here in britain is not justice and what he would be facing in the u.s. is not justice johnson went on to say it was a credit to foreign office officials who worked tirelessly to secure this outcome meaning the dragging of him the pictures of which were caught by abruptly even the

news agency i mean are you saying every one of those foreign office officials as facilitating what could have mounted torture and arbitrated tension. you see doona sometimes been expelled from the embassy it's a decision made by the president perhaps even with the support of the parliament in ecuador that was communicated to him on the morning that he had been you know deprived of asylum status and deprived of his citizenship because the ecuadorian constitution does not allow the extradition and expulsion of nationals. without any due process and the british police just went in and tracked him out. without one so what do you make of the now prime minister boris johnson saying credit to foreign officials for the well he's crediting for that because he likes the outcome but it certainly has nothing to do with the rule of law well amnesty international they've refused to make him a prisoner of conscience why do you think there are still other n.g.o.s who refused to take on board the julian asylum i thought was i think you know i very much

support amnesty international and they did when they try to protect people by declaring them prisoners of conscience but when they use their worldwide influence to exclude individuals from that category i think then it becomes very problematic especially in we're talking about a journalist who has been exposing grave violations of human rights and who is prosecuted precisely because he has exposed their sins for human rights and this is political i mean in your view you don't think that whistleblower exposed alleged crimes a in the russian government who had found asylum here there would no be no chance of extraditing them to moscow well that's the 1st issue is the one of the whistleblower let's say snowden who's now in russia or if you have an equivalent you know a russian whistleblower that who has asylum in the west and there are people like

that. but we do in the son is not a whistleblower. he did not leak information it was illegal he was leaked to him. ok. you don't think this. anymore has anything to do with what you call fabricated rape allegations if you believe those allegations could be linked to the afghan war logs revelations of. anglo american nato troops in afghanistan yes well i'm not in a position to you know confirm or deny whether there has been some kind of a sexual offense at some point between the women and and tune in the sun or consider it say i've seen the in the original swedish police documents where the women are not claiming to have been raped but you can see even the woman sitting in the police station sending a text message to message to a friend saying i don't want to accuse a son of anything i just want him to take an a.t.v.

test but the police wants to get their hands on them on him so i mean who would write a message like that not a raped woman then. we see ace consecutive series of grey violations of due process in the swedish case and all of this happens within a month of the publication of the afghan leaks so we are to us as i asked their allies to initiate prosecutions against us and wherever possible so you know the. the choreography of this how it plays out and how sweden actually at no stage in the proceedings really tries to protect the women's interests refuses to question our sons when he is still in sweden and offers and actually demands to be questioned but the day he leaves sweden and he receives written permission by the prosecutor to leave sweden the issue an arrest warrant against him for trying to

evade justice so there is a series of contradictions that is clear is acted upon by the now supposedly leading candidate to take of jericho been in this country the then director of public prosecutions kissed ahmed yeah i'm not i'm not aware of who exactly at that at the time but clearly that plot stand played out to. push assad's into a corner where everybody had this image of him and i was influenced by this image as well in the beginning this narrative of him being a suspect being a hacker being the narcissist being a spy and as soon as you scratch the surface a bit of this case you realize there is nothing to back it up ok you also discovered a trail that led to swedish just as well as a thomas bloodstream the former justice minister who you claim effectively supervised the kind of rendition torture. that was documented by wiki leaks of the kind documented by wiki what he was the justice minister when sweden and the

security police of sweden kidnapped 2 people that were registered asylum seekers in stockholm and handed them over to cia without any due process and they were immediately treated on the airport. territory and then flown to egypt where they were tortured in the tent arbitrarily of these 2 people we know because they survived both of them filed complaints with the united nations and sweden was obliged to pay them i think each of them about a half a $1000000.00 in compensation. so you think that the guilt. when the rape allegation was used just smear it. it was an admission of guilt on the part of sweden when it dropped all the allegations well i would say drop the suit against him well they admitted that they never had any evidence that was sufficient to even press charges against him 5 days later the leading prosecutor of

stockholm closed the case saying i believe these women but nothing they said indicates a crime that could be an explanation but i know i asked sweden formally in a formal letter as a mandated to do by the united nations i submitted all the contradictory evidence to them and said please make sense of this explain to me how this complies with human rights law and before i draw my conclusions and now the 1st response of sweden was criticizing the judiciary which is independent from us and we are the government so we can't comment on this roll back to the minister please you know your my counterpart but please transmit my concerns to tishri and let them answer to me. then they responded in a one page letter saying we have no for their observations my experiences were states don't want to respond to my questions probably they have something to hide. ok well as the court case gets underway here in london in 2 parts another part in

in may chelsea manning who is let out early by president obama a source for 4 weekly leaks has been virtually bankrupt they say by the united states they're refusing to testify against julian. so u.k. authorities here are they basically deciding on whether a show trial should go ahead absolutely yes i think this is not what it's it's about whether just show trial should go ahead because there's not going to be nothing else than a show trial in the u.s. there's no chance is going to get a fair trial it's not just about who are innocent in this is really in the battle over press freedom over rule of law of the future i would say even of democracy because democracy which means that the people control governmental power this can not exist with secrecy that you you deprive the public of their right to know and you deprive them of the tools to control the government or you know that we have a supposedly independent judiciary here having said that the new prime minister

boris johnson newly elected prime minister has previously expressed reservations about the conduct of the iraq war and was after 911 can you even call on boris johnson to do anything in the case of julian as the home secretary of the previous government signed the extradition request and granted it. exactly and that's and that was not a challenge at the court and that's why it's with the court if it had not been challenge to just be extradited although that tends to be just a formality when it's the united states one of britain's closest international i think to be fair there have been individuals that have not been extradited to the united states by britain which i believe is one reason why they wanted to go through sweden because sweden has a track record of extracting just about anybody to the united states with or without 'd due process now that is obviously off the table with the case being closed and in sweden and now to go through the british system. as we're able to

thank you after the break wiki leaks didn't only tell us about secrets kept from the masses of them in the tree industrial complex in the war on terror it also told us about the imperialist war on drugs we explore what connects the streets of london's king's cross to the killing fields of central america to the major cocaine transit routes in west africa all the small coming up about to going underground. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race based on often spearing dramatic development only mostly. i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical of time to sit down

and talk. welcome back in part one we had the united nations allegations of u.k. complicity in the presentation of julian a songe of wiki leaks whose trial begins today in london while wiki leaks told us of u.s. military assassinations of journalists torture in guantanamo multinationals endangering health in the developing world and the d.n.c. war on us democratic presidential candidate bernie sanders it also exposed corruption destroyed illusions about nato nations self proclaimed war on drugs joining me now is acclaimed author and journalist antony loewenstein whose new book is called pills powder and smoke. side the bloody war on drugs the well while the

drug deaths are at record levels here in the u.k. your book kicks off with hyundai or a switch thanks to the songes wiki leaks experience of the so-called war on drugs is actually sort of nothing to live in to. imperialism like the united free fruit company where honduras for a book on drugs that is into the middle i think a lot of people when they think of the drug war don't think of honduras and in fact i should because most of the cocaine going into the u.s. goes via honduras from south america it's mostly a transit country rather than a production company country but it is a narco state the violence is some of the worst in the world abortion is illegal there was a coup there in 2009 supported by then president obama and hillary clinton so these problems existed long before trump became president trump or certainly worsened it to be sure but i think the really important thing for me about going to honduras was to show this is a neighboring country of the u.s.

for at least 100 years has been a client state of washington since the eighty's during the reagan era it was a staging post for the u.s. fighting its dirty war in that part of the world and i think people often think that that's all in the past we've forgotten that the fact is today the violence is arguably worse than it was not even arguably in arguably worse than it was in the eighty's as not soley because of drugs but a lot to do with drugs and i wanted to investigate on the ground to show you what that actually manes to people so when people are using drugs in say the u.s. and the use and race and abuse of cocaine others has never been higher in parts of the u.s. maybe they should think and this is not judgment against people use drugs because i think people should have the right to do so if they want to say that there is a very dirty supply chain assure that we're not encouraging anyone to take good game with maybe a little bit of honduras in the game the bars drones and admitted to taking orders but we'll get on to the intersect of this you say that thanks to us. bolasie the

drugs then go to africa. is what you concentrate on rather than through the the commonwealth caribbean so guinea bissau is a small country in west africa and i wanted to investigate where most of the cocaine coming into europe and in the u.k. goes via west africa from south america guys from south america by boat or by plane just to west africa. ivory coast countries like that it depends on where the law enforcement is most effective and these countries the transit countries for cocaine and then it goes up africa crossings a year and then is distributed by variety of different groups often albanian gangs across europe and into the u.k. and guinea bissau is not like honduras in the in the way that it's not as violent but it is the are the poorest countries in the world its main export is. and i want to go there again because most people realize the drug exactly and most people i think when i think about the drug supply chain never think about places like these

and we know that the victims of what the drug war actually means are you could i mean certainly the. u.n. will do drug report says 2 thirds of cooking from. the u.s. proxy that the american mission to binny cape verde gone immorally needs year to go and that's what's ending up here in britain it's political vulnerability in countries that have been usually the victims of colonialism are often are the victim of u.s. led war on terror violence guinea-bissau not so much violence in the us but is a us client stays and although as it has an experience the kind of violence the other similar states has it has been politically unstable since independence essentially for 45 years since line $74.00 and the effect of that on the ground is the if you go there looks like a tropical paradise on the one hand on the other hand you have the military and various elements of the state allowing themselves to be used and abused by south

american drug cartels there's also libya of course which is now increasingly and on cipro which was the. french united states about bombing so i mean quite apart from we're trying to prevent drugs i should say we invited all the commissioners the best is rule these nations who refute allegations that they're in any way knowingly responsible for the drug trade. i mean you're saying that foreign policy has been at the core of in the billing address wrote us from policy and i'd argue u.k. foreign polls in particular the us and again this is not just about trump people miss the point often trump is not the problem here trump is often worse than it is to be sure in the last 34 years but these polls his have been going on fairly consistently for decades of us foreign policy and many people who advocate a drug war no it doesn't work if you're if you aim of the drug war is to stop people taking drugs it's failed on that fact alone and i think the u.s.

much prefers a reliable clients days and in democracy maine democracies do not want the say and u.s. officials meddling in their country they don't hear as many one juror and no one ever does ask them what they want they often will say and i said it's a main it's in the book the u.s. has cause carnage here for 2 reasons one because there's massive demand for the drugs in the us and drugs have to get into the country somehow and u.s. foreign policy has supported the current government and the previous government and many governments who are not governments well away from all the imperialism and the foreign power being projected using the drugs were you claim that at home. it's used to coerce local populations to crush political opposition and that's been going on says the real them war there is no doubt that there's vast evidence in the eighty's especially that various groups of the da and the us government is evidence of dismay saying this has vast evidence showing these were caned to get physically

poor african-american communities hooked on certain kinds of drugs crack cocaine especially to destroy the civil rights movement dade and i mean there's a infamous quite i have in the book and i'm not the 1st one to use it from one of nixon's advisors who said decades later that we need the drug war was it wasn't working its am was the antiwar left and african-americans and we could get the media and public opinion against both those groups in the 70s which some extent they did successfully effect of that has been fee is that the drug war is always been about a war on the poor always has been the majority of people who are in prison or detention in the u.s. for drug offenses mostly minor nonviolent african-americans latinos or poor whites and i think it's important in the 2020 elections the 1st time ever that a lot of the democratic candidates openly talk about a their own drug use but more importantly changing the drug war ending the drug war legalizing cannabis reparations for those who have been impacted by the drug war no

one in britain surely at the top was sitting here going drugs are going to help criminal was and coerce. poor populations in the vulnerable to stop the movie the political autonomy whether there was a policy to allow the drugs in i wouldn't say but what i would say said the way drug laws are designed in the u.k. is deliberately aimed to disenfranchise the poorest as well when the rate of incarceration for drug offenses is the highest in europe in the u.k. here the rate of death from heroin overdoses is here mostly poor scotland and britain there is i think a real paucity of mature debate in the u.k. and that's mostly. the conservative government current government and often away the party there are some in the labor party and the tories are actually legacy from factor in the changing reagan in the eighty's definitely and over the years the blair era gordon brown air out with some exceptions were pretty bad on drugs but in

fairness to labor they pioneered private law and order private prisons and i work on the island so certainly there's a benefit and there is a benefit that you explore from keeping drugs illegal as regards the profits of private can guess and there's many individuals who are very happy that the drug war continues said not just from i mean for example since chump one election a few years ago share process of private prison companies went through the roof and they had reasons there because he's messed the field as prisons immigrations and is more mature society does not demonize or prosecute those who use drugs and more importantly focuses on the groups that should be punished which is the which is the big cuts hills they're the ones making the money here this is a half a trillion dollar global industry and the majority of people who are making money and not the farmers in colombia who are founding coca or the people i met in honduras it's not them it's the cartels it's the reading your book is really will

chap with the laws that says it. and i mean of course and he's not 11 the whole war on terror and the war on drugs has been fused in my view totally fallaciously to suggest that somehow we made way being the ways have to fight both wars because to destroy terrorism you have to also destroy drugs from the evidence to the evidence to show that groups like hezbollah. isis and al qaeda are soley funded through drugs or even partially as my money to deceive as a political party in lebanon would definitely deny yes a little of their certainly i'm not saying no these groups every use drugs to support their work i'm not saying that for example tell a bank clearly is making money from the opium trade in afghanistan the evidence that is clear but the idea somehow that you need to massively increase your and security budget which is what the u.s. and u.k. is doing a last 510 years to suggest somehow to fight terrorism again to destroy poppy fields in afghanistan or in new limits your defense here is very proud of its

record in destroying what reveals i'm going to ask about it didn't work by the way what about the opioid crisis and the difference because it's no 135 day a day in the majority of opioids in the us 5 a day here yeah lou 11 of the holes was below 0 in britain agreements other times what's different about the opioid epidemic than these other drugs would mostly ipod's that people are dying of initially of course from legal but increasingly the people who are dying from this from fentanyl the opioid crisis is interesting because in many ways a lot of evidence that drugs that are currently illegal help a lot of people in dealing with their i.p.o. addiction nor will believe it's disputed and i go to the end here and. ask about the fact that you mentioned the famous statistic that it's easier in london to get a delivery cocaine than it is to get it delivered pizza that you talk about the fact that. the war on drugs really is a bit like the seeking of the stopping of climate change will secure the

baby steps one suffice that simply we think for example that changing a light bulbs at home to make us feel better about our green credentials will save the climate and drug situation the analogies the same anyone knows about drugs about issues of prosecutions drug use drug abuse it's never been worse and i spent time in all these countries and saw people are producing drugs using drugs abusing drugs the carnage is so clear and the drug war is a class war it's a war against those who are the poorest of the poor and sick around the edges doesn't solve that i understand a country's not going to legalize all drugs next week really stickley it's probably going to be a country like cycle on bia that maybe not legalize as cocaine but does a test on a certain area and says bolivia did bolivia did and kicked out the us and it was a success it wasn't perfect and obviously there's been

a change of government there to recluse and it's likely i suspected that the current hard line regime change their policy to get in the us again to the point question just changing the laws change the conversation and i think a lot of them maybe still a profound hypocritical on the same few years. mainstream media in the us in the u.k. riling in support the drug war against people use cocaine when the use of cocaine in these industries is very very here going underground show naught. thank you that's it for the show will be back on wednesday as the trial of imprisoned wiki leaks founder julian assange journalism all around the world continues a bullet's crumples remember them through them he would judge by social media is good forget what all of julian assange interviews for this program on going on the run through troops have.

been the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of northern ireland that was coordinated loyalist attacks protect the only population of tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and what was striking to point these attacks was that the or you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants in the burning of full streets in belfast at the time more than a 100 innocent civilians were. you can see in years and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and its occurrence which the collusion was involved in some of those cases the killers would lead to be named. i think it went to the very very top i think if the phones. the water

where all the taste you know on the go ahead. become a battleground in the u.s. government people are demanding the shut down of a local plant from. yankee is right now my focus because it's a very dangerous oh no clare power plant the owner is attempting to run the reactor beyond its operational limit this case just sort of puts a magnifying glass on where's the power in this country where's it going is it moving more towards corporate interests who or is it more in the idea of a traditional participatory democracy is are powerline with the people this case demonstrates that struggle in very real ways. struggle on r.t. .

thought . i. am a thing. today peace day storage.

is here. waiting to be breached. turkish airlines. the superior moscow right now in the headlines it was being described as a far reaching and historic trial for journalism wiki leaks founder julian assange begins his u.s. extradition hearing in london we're going to be across it throughout the day. as coronavirus cases spike outside china moscow did not use accusations of this information campaign that's allegedly undermining the global response to the epidemic. and also this month israel exchanges fire with a militant group in the syrian capital and in gaza after the i.d.f. shot dead one of its members of the port of fence and removed his body with the. bat.