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Stephen Sackur speaks to the Italian author Roberto Saviano. | 0:00:00 | 0:00:03 | |
Welcome to HARDtalk. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:10 | |
I'm Stephen Sackur. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:12 | |
My guest today is a writer whose work has made him powerful enemies. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:17 | |
A decade ago, Roberto Saviano wrote a best-selling book, | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
Gomorrah, which exposed the power and brutality of the Naples mafia. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:28 | |
The crime bosses put a price on his head and in the last ten | 0:00:28 | 0:00:32 | |
years, he has lived in a shadowy world of safe houses and bodyguards. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
Now he's written a new book about the global cocaine trade. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
Why has he sacrificed so much to expose organised crime? | 0:00:40 | 0:00:46 | |
Roberto Saviano, welcome to HARDtalk. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:04 | |
Thank you. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
You have taken an extraordinary decision because here you are, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
a writer whose early decision to write about organised crime has | 0:01:10 | 0:01:16 | |
changed your life and in some ways has cost you an ordinary life, | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
and yet here you are, writing another book | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
about organised crime. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
Why have you come back to the same subject? | 0:01:26 | 0:01:33 | |
I'm interested that you have described the situation | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
in personal terms. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
You talk about revenge and a feeling of vendetta. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
Let us go back to the beginning and see where the personal | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
feelings come from. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:17 | |
Would it not be true to say that if you hadn't been born in Naples, | 0:02:17 | 0:02:21 | |
in Napoli, one of the headquarters of one of the most powerful Mafia | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
groups in all of Italy, things would have been very different? | 0:02:25 | 0:02:31 | |
Naples shaped you. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
But what I want to get to is why you specifically decided you had | 0:03:28 | 0:03:34 | |
to dig deep into the Camorra, the local mafia gangs in Naples. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:43 | |
Because, let's face it, your family lived peacefully | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
in the city. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
Your dad was a doctor. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:50 | |
He made his life there. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:51 | |
You had a mother and a brother. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
It was only you who was in the end filled with this rage and wanted | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
to take on the Camorra and describe exactly what they were doing. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
Why? Why you? | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
Do you think that the Camorra was and is so pervasive in Naples | 0:05:15 | 0:05:22 | |
that every family is, in a way, morally compromised by it? | 0:05:22 | 0:05:29 | |
You once said, "From the postman to the professor, just by keeping | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
quiet, we become part of this mechanism that I wanted to expose." | 0:05:32 | 0:05:40 | |
Do you feel that it has spread so far that everybody | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
is somehow corrosively connected? | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
Let's think back ten years to your decision to write. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
You say that your book, Gomorrah, is full of graphic stories | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
and detail of how the Camorra in Napoli worked. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:30 | |
And you went into real detail, you named names. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:33 | |
It seems to me that you must have been aware that writing that book | 0:07:33 | 0:07:38 | |
and having it published not just in Italy but around the world | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
was going to create a massive problem for you. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
Well, you have had to live with the decisions you took then | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
for the last ten years and it seems to me that you are now a man | 0:08:21 | 0:08:26 | |
who is filled with conflicting, difficult feelings, and quite | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
a lot of regret. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:29 | |
You have said that the impact of having the death threat | 0:08:29 | 0:08:34 | |
upon you is not just about you, it is about your mother | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
and your father and your family as well, and you say that you can | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
never forgive yourself for the impact it has had upon them. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:46 | |
Does that mean that you wish you had not written Gomorrah? | 0:08:46 | 0:08:52 | |
What is it like? | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
I'm a journalist like you. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
Well, you are a writer and I'm a journalist. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
I cannot imagine the impact of having to live with bodyguards | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
every day of my life, having every move I make monitored, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:04 | |
having this sense that a threat could lie around any corner. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:12 | |
Are there times when you have actually found it impossible to live | 0:10:12 | 0:10:16 | |
this life and feel sane? | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
Sure, and we know what happened. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
The two bosses were acquitted. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:20 | |
They walked free from the court. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
You spoke, I think, to Salman Rushdie one time about how | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
to live free even when surrounded by security and bodyguards | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
and all of this paraphernalia. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
What is the secret to being as free as you can be, in your mind? | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
It seems to me the most damaging aspect of this threat that you live | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
with is that you no longer, it seems, trust people, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
partly because of what you have learned in the research | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
for your books in organised crime but also because of the way people | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
have responded to you since you were threatened. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
You say that when you look at people now and you think about humanity, | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
you see the monster in all of us, you see the shadow. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
And you hate yourself for seeing the shadows in people but you do it | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
all the time. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
That must be very difficult. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:27 | |
You've already suggested deep disappointment with the way | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
the politicians, the big powers in Italy, have responded to your case. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:07 | |
Is that in your view because Italy is still heavily dominated | 0:14:07 | 0:14:13 | |
by the mafia, organised crime? | 0:14:13 | 0:14:18 | |
Well, Berlusconi was Prime Minister for much of | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
the period you have been in hiding. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:58 | |
Berlusconi said that your view of the mafia in Italy was unnecessarily | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
negative, that you were talking Italy down, and maybe quite a number | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
of Italians feel the same way. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:10 | |
I guess what this gets to is whether you really believe that | 0:15:10 | 0:15:11 | |
I guess what this gets to is whether you really believe that | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
your words, and in particular your book Gomorrah, changed anything. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
Because if it didn't change anything, it raises the question | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
of what the heck all of your suffering since has been about? | 0:15:50 | 0:15:55 | |
And you have continued writing, and your latest book, ZeroZeroZero, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:23 | |
is about the massive impact of the global cocaine trade. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:29 | |
How is it possible to be an investigative writer, | 0:16:29 | 0:16:35 | |
as you are, now that you are surrounded by police and bodyguards, | 0:16:35 | 0:16:40 | |
when your name is associated forever with Gomorrah | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
and everything that came with it? | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
How can you possibly maintain this investigative profession? | 0:16:47 | 0:16:54 | |
But I'm just... | 0:18:01 | 0:18:02 | |
There just seems to be such an irony here, that in a way you're telling | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
me that you have more freedom to go to the favelas of Guatemala or | 0:18:06 | 0:18:10 | |
the drug towns of Colombia than you have your own country, Italy. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:18 | |
Would you say that, you know, having focused so heavily on mafia activity | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
in Italy, now the organised cartel trafficking and cocaine industry | 0:18:56 | 0:18:58 | |
around the world, you come across as a man who has a very bleak, dark | 0:18:59 | 0:19:06 | |
view of the human condition and human impulses, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:13 | |
and greed and cruelty, and the worst aspects of human behaviour. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
Am I right? | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
But the... | 0:20:03 | 0:20:05 | |
The problem with that is that the truth is not winning. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
The mafia is not finished in Italy. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
The cocaine trade is as powerful as ever across the world, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
as you itemise in the book. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:17 | |
One thing you conclude in the latest book on the cocaine | 0:20:17 | 0:20:24 | |
trade is that, in your view, the only way to beat the traffic is to | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
legalise cocaine around the world. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
That is a counsel of despair. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
Of course, if we legalised hard drugs they | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
would become more available, they would become cheaper, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:42 | |
more people would take them. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:43 | |
Is that really the only way you can see of ending organised criminality | 0:20:43 | 0:20:47 | |
connected to the drug trade? | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
I want to end bringing it back to a personal level, Roberto, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:29 | |
because your life in some ways is not your own anymore. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:47 | |
And it just struck me as very symbolic that | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
at the beginning of your latest book you write a dedication to | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
the police bodyguards who have been with you for all of these years. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:56 | |
I think you say, "We have spent 51,000 hours together. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
"And here's to all of the hours and the places we will be | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
in the future." | 0:23:02 | 0:23:03 | |
Do you really feel that, for the rest of your days, you are | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
going to live with bodyguards, in safehouses, never knowing where you | 0:23:07 | 0:23:10 | |
might be sleeping the next week? | 0:23:10 | 0:23:11 | |
Is that really the rest of your life? | 0:23:11 | 0:23:19 | |
But you have no choice. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:56 | |
But you have no choice. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
We have to end there, Roberto, on maybe that thought, | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
that hope that you have. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:12 | |
Thank you very much for being on HARDtalk. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:15 | |
Hi there. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:44 | |
We had some glorious sunshine yesterday across western parts | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
of the country once again. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:48 | |
These were the clear skies in Abersock, north-west Wales. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
We have had a lot of sunshine over the last few days across western | 0:24:50 | 0:24:54 |