Are highly mariyam vessel and who denied for many years that Human Rights Violations had taken place and whose government locked up many thousands of Political Prisoners have seen no shame for the torture that was perpetrated and the lives that were ruined during his time in office. Highly miami welcome to conflict so thank you so much thank you for having me ethiopia has a new Prime Minister now of the who took over after you resigned last year hes now received the Nobel Peace Prize basically for undoing many of the evils of your government and doing what you couldnt do within 100 days. Dont you feel something of a failure when you look at what hes done. I know that because. I have done my share to bring this change to happen. Premise that abby has not come from blue moon it has come from the past in which i was there is a thing here but hes begun to correcting the massive human rights abuses which were a prominent feature of your time no trace but is it is my party which started the reform process and we say. The process should be a no one to the country basically but also to the party itself so i think that is a process which yielded Prime Minister rabin. Prime minister so he continued the process pro reform my gender my party and his party whether this is Nobel Committee cited his achievements as lifting the countrys state of emergency granting amnesty to thousands of Political Prisoners for years you always denied there were only scrapping Media Censorship legalising outlawed opposition groups dismissing military and civilian leaders suspected of corruption all the things that you failed to do when you were in office by the way do you know that 9095 percent of the Prisoners Released due to my office spent before i left office and before i signed so i think what id be did was that remaining 5 percent which has to be released so the decision was the decision of the party and i took that action before i resigned how many did you release almost 4000000 something. More than 3000 or so you know where there were many more than 3000 in jail yeah but its only young people whove recently been arrested been released but the main political figures which has been adverse to been released. During my term before i resigned in may this year the attorney general. Filed criminal charges against your former intelligence chief to ask for alleging human rights abuses and corruption hes gone missing that you know where he would have it i dont know im not in office now no information 20 other people were charged with him he had served until june 28th being. He had served you as Prime Minister who were denying that any human rights abuses were being committed i think youre youre lucky information lou youre lucky riddance it is my government and my party who admitted that there has been. Abuse. Here often here in interviews nobodys being mistreated we have no Political Prisoners one off to the other you gave interviews sitting smiling across the greens of us say oh everythings fine here you know you got these for you you have to understand there with how our part to operate was one of the state of the way you operate with me if you like yourself let me finish 1st if thats the case then you know that we have been historically we have to understand that in the 1st place this is a party fighting left and you know us. When there is a communist mentality and when its a marxist mentality there is a centralism where you do in your ward your Party Decides on issues even though you have differences in as a minority you take with you so you just hold the line whatever it is because youre too cowardly to say anything about whats really going on all this is that its you know it skews that sort of misplacing the whole thing is that we believe that in our party and the government that we need to reform our system we need to bring up. Changes that we need to democratize our country because thats a country we said number of interest this and there is an introduction of ethnic mobilized politics which is very dangerous and therefore we have we have disabled that we need to go far to say that in deep sleep in the forming our country which is a person of that shell be busy in washington you didnt get it i would need were going to be forced to well if you had done that the Prime Minister when he came in by me as the abbey wouldnt have had to condemn Police Brutality pledged to return rein in the Security Services tackle what he called economic mismanagement corruption and rights abuses all of this spending find you want to spin off this is also misplaces because Prime Minister abbott has not come from a blue moon he has got another way where he came for us and theyre with us hes cleaning up the mess isnt a no no its not hes not cleaning up these messes hes going on if youll mess up the mess you left dark knight i think this is also misplacing and i really always say that you know correctly this is our partys admission of our collective mistake and then we put in place properly hes told things that you failed to do by november last year dozens of Intelligence Officers and high level officials have been arrested including people from the military run metals and Engineering Corp met tech on charges of corruption and human rights is this is the level put those charges to dance feed that is the study which i introduced 1000000 to be finished i mean it. November last year you werent in office i did it you do not believe me this i did it i lunched in the studies and then completion of the 2 studies that action has been taken the attorney general said 63. 00 people have been arrested that months november last year 27 for corruption 36. 00 on charges of Human Rights Violations that included the former head of mattick conflict dagny or Brigadier General over whom you did nothing you did nothing about him in that study you lucky with this i love the study and a group of people who study the study is charging people with human words in North Charleston and usually when you try to rob the challenged people after you stayed after concrete even there was a criminal Investigation Unit that investigation has been launched by may 3rd local media said huge sums of money were missing from this company emetic whether the girl let the let the court decide on it as Prime Minister he was supposed to look after the Public Places the military was supposed to follow your orders. And you for seem to fail spectacularly to make them do that since you feel any remorse at the crimes you were allowed to take place when you were Prime Minister no i think i have resigned because i was not able to you know change dramatically whatever has to come between 2 week because no i i say fiction actually i have my own history in this and i have my own weaknesses and you have got to not to look into only the weaknesses but you had to also see the strength of this country has gone and you know you know that my country has been visited during my tenure by 6 of the 77 leaders and they all announced that this country has been working very hard at double digit grows and they cannot make. Achievements where we have expected our people out of poverty the only country which has actually in. 7 out of this 8 images and now where the by the United Nations by my time so i think you have to see all those positive things we have achieved last day of the last over the rest of the attorney general. Said investigated her uncovered serious abuses by Security Services at secret prisons in the capital and elsewhere do you know what your Security Officers were doing in the single prisons i dont know those big smites machine or did you ever ask go visit how can i do or if your intelligence doesnt give me information how can you know there were plenty of foreign reports that torture was going on which you didnt own it and youre not youre telling me you didnt know what was going on i didnt say you said no so far as your denials were just proforma denials no are not going to know everything when you were in office no not at all you did you said they didnt know everything you didnt you didnt know what was going on in these prisons you didnt ask you werent interested. They know it or fish only we know some of the accused abuses and i have taken in my time some of the actions. Of those things but i didnt know that there are you know informal prisons which has been there the attorney general said there are people who have been blinded and held in darkness for long periods of time others have been left infertile because of blows to their genitals there are some that have limbs broken women have been subjected to go rape and men have been sort of mice all this happened until your rule so i had one she was shame that this was going to move on to you would rule no i mean would it be assured that when this happened but i didnt know those things and if i knew those things i would architected them because this is a very sacred things happened well it didnt take long for this Prime Minister to find out what was going on so obviously nice looking in light lace and you did not believe you know either you didnt want to look at italian in mid whom for this Prime Minister to art i struggled very hard to bring him to power and i did every you lost your job thats why you gave up you lost control of the party lost faith in you thats why you gave up what i think you can you can say that going to be struggling to control the rest in the country because failure cases now is going to need my sense i did it intentionally because i wanted to see that this big change should come so i think this is genuinely what has happened and i did my best in paving the way for this to happen so i think that has to be clearly carter did and i did i think a big clearly wriggle of it when we have been in your prisons during your term in office with being subjected to gang rape and men to some of them are ization now that you know this even if you say you didnt know it at the time. Was europe. The gene to the victims i didnt have all of the emperors way when they said when they resigned because thats the system which was open to the unmedicated you meant to the victims and apologize personally to them if there is a need to be a will you havent done some have you know i have i have been to get those plans and then when we have been conciliation and threw them into consideration commission established and asked process as well how do you sleep at night knowing that this was going on in your torture centers carried out by your officials when you were Prime Minister how do you sleep at night if i knew. Then i said to you that i was there to collect everything in my disposal if i knew it but i did know that your meal your said to be a religious man from a family of pentecostalists the state run that strong. However those gang rape and sodomy is ocean fit in with your religious values no i didnt know i say if a new it doesnt fit in in my prayers but you went on denying it denying it denounce news for now you have read the interview that thats the report there the noisy despite the reports coming early human Rights Groups all over the world which you just rubbished you said thats not true theyre outside as there are enemies dont listen to them everything is following you said i think i have never say everything is fine you said there was no nor mistreated us i said there was no mistreatment going on there is a problem but i was saying that my report is that its not to the extent where it has been said thats what im saying by then any case i report which i was i was giving to the public which which was the case lets take another Detention Center gigo Central Prison otherwise known as jail or get their regional Detention Center in the east of the country but ministered in public by your special police it was closed in august last year you know what was going on there as well no i dont know why not you knew the prison existed and you know you were right you had no duty officer to you have no curiosity mr high among you didnt want to know what was going on in your jails no its not their kids you know that if you tell governments have their own rights and i think the whole thing is i did my my work according to the reports they get from my intelligence and from my sources and therefore thats what what was the kids. People reported there were many of the former prison those who said they saw people dying in their cells after being tortured by officials in this or garden jail and as it was called what should happen to the officials who carried out this torture. I mean what should happen to them. Theyre in prison and thats it. Just prison sentences and what should happen to you for turning a blind eye to it that depends on the legal system of the country you know i had in his own this simply because to take all the responsibilities but what is extraordinary is that with all the abuses that were carried out when you were Prime Minister you accepted from the new Prime Minister the nations highest award for Service Without even blushing without any embarrassment whatsoever now that you know what was going on while you were Prime Minister why didnt you get back to work. Why should i because i have a number of positive things i have because you failed to show all this is one part of it and its the incident that says you tallest is when you watch your eyes water could hit my my country that doesnt explain thats not the only thing you know i have done many good things there are issues in the system which are definitely what i initiated reform and did conduct reform because i understood that age of you know before his admission and this too that there are something going on therefore i initiated this reform and then i have released 95 percent of the you are in if you were in office for 6 years and this new Prime Minister has come in and done more for human rights than you did in all the time you were there this because they paved the way for him to be really the u. S. State department in 2016 published a catalogue of the human rights abuses taking place on the your rule which of course you deny it but then there are known to be true arbitrate killings disappearances torture harsher life threatening prison conditions detention without charge you know minute where they really werent but thats what they said but how can you tell you that you didnt know what was going on when all these reports were pointing to what was yes and whenever they knew that there are things going wrong i initiated that form and the serious reform and the before and thats the result where the Prime Minister has come into power. You said when your is on that you wanted to be part of the solution in ethiopia how can you be part of the solution when you so much part of the problem. You know i would become part of the solution because in there is a problem which would result in procuring to created the atmosphere of permissive out in the sphere in which your Security Officials believed they could torture but it was all right to torture go on torturing disappearing people no judicial excellence no do you created the atmosphere in which that was possible no i didnt create the atmosphere so while profile and then the constitutional system has been established then anyone who is the one where there is could be accounted for but i didnt create this this point this the environment for them it is a deep system which i was not given to look into because of my background and because of my you know i must say that are coming into the deep system so i put it see that when mr big came into power he couldnt wait to condemn the legacy of your government and draw a line in the time in office could be a pro last year he said that the government your government had sanctioned torture of its prisoners and said it had been guilty of state terrorism you said it he said in parliament does the constitution say anyone who was sentenced by a court can be tortured put in a guard netscape doesnt thats the rule that the government was in his eyes were not only mine you were the Prime Minister i was in this order but with you is there also the buck stopped yeah politically decided to inform including indian outs of what the responsibility lay hailes not to you how do you yet use the ends it is now to try to get out of it mike to try to get out of his relationship and form thats why admission that you know what i needed to do for the here in a shared vision for you blocked every attempt by the United Nations special rapporteur should come to you or anyone has an issue call from an attempt is should come easy or at least we should. Come up from us and the only message i need locked i believe is in you blocked my list be gating was because you didnt want them to find out what was going on i did and i initiated that before before my eyes that mission a year ago and out before me is that what the result of pain is that im going to come to power conjured so beautiful id be all of it in him to power the conscience of people were killed in the your regime and you refused to have an independent investigation led by the un chief human rights official if you ask the killings the last one and half years the number of killings side passed in 6 years what happened in my town if you