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Amanpour

Suspected Terror Attack in London

Aired May 22, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. And we continue our breaking news coverage of the suspected terror attack in London today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): A British man is dead, hacked to death as he was leaving army barracks in the southeastern part of the city. A local lawmaker said that he believes the victim was a soldier.

His two attackers were shot and wounded by police. One of them sought out passers-by just after the killing to record his defiant message. His hands, as you can see, are bloody and clasping a meat cleaver and a knife.

He says, according to reports, that, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reasons we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Now the British Prime Minister David Cameron was in Paris when this happened. He was at a meeting with the French President Francois Hollande. The prime minister rushed back to the U.K. where top level security meetings are underway at Downing Street. Listen to what David Cameron said about the attack.

DAVID CAMERON, PRIME MINISTER, GREAT BRITAIN: I've been briefed by the Home Secretary about this absolutely sickening attack in Woolwich in London. It is the most appalling crime. We obviously are urgently seeking and the police are urgently seeking the full facts about this case. But there are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident.

Two people at the scene of the murder were wounded by the police and they are being treated as suspects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And we're going straight now to Nic Robertson, who's at Downing Street and those security meetings have been underway.

Nic, have they ended? What can you tell us about what came out of that?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The meeting lasted about an hour. There will be another meeting tomorrow. The prime minister has said that. He will be back to chair it.

This one was chaired by Theresa May, the home secretary; Defense secretary was there; there was also the metropolitan police commissioner, the intelligence agencies were there as well. And what it has been decided here tonight that's been made public at least, of course, a lot will have been discussed that we won't be privy to.

But what has been decided is to increase the security around the barracks in Woolwich where the incident took place and to increase security around all the army barracks in London. Now the spokesperson who was talking to us wouldn't be drawn on what this may mean, but the clear implications are that is -- that the concern would be of a potential for another type of attack like this.

Of course, at this stage, Christiane, that is just speculation. But these are the slim details that we have from this meeting so far.

AMANPOUR: And Nic, I know everything is really bare bones right now and we're trying to figure out what exactly is going on. But this is a different kind of attacker. We have not seen in England, at least, what looks to me like an African-born or a Caribbean-born man, who was addressing the camera there.

Apparently there he has said, "Allahu akbar," as they apparently themselves were filming the attack. Has anybody talked to you about the profiling of this alleged attacker, at least?

ROBERTSON: Well, we do understand what would be normal in these situations, is they will look at the profile, that they will dig into phone records, what they've been doing on the computer, which website they've been viewing, where they may have prayed, who their friend might have been.

But when we ask the spokesperson was -- were these British-born people, that was something he absolutely didn't want to get drawn on. And if we think back to the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, there are people who have been involved in those bombings and the repeat by East Africans about two weeks later, who tried to bomb again.

But this style of attack, as you say, this is unprecedented, unseen here before. It has the security services deeply concerned about the implications; could there be another attack and where did this one come from? Have these people been on their radar already? Had they slipped through some kind of intelligence operation that had already been underway?

These are questions that we don't have answers to right now, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: And look, Nic, you and I both covered 7/7 back in 2005 and we all remember the videotaped confession or suicide message by the perpetrators of the underground and bombast. Again, "tooth for a tooth," that's the same kind of language. "You'll never be safe as long as Muslims are being killed in our land."

It's the same kind of language, we allegedly hear, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote on the boat when he was hiding before he was captured.

This looks to me very copycat-like, and I'm wondering whether, again, you're hearing anything about that, whether intelligence or other officials are saying anything about homegrown terrorism in this regard.

ROBERTSON: Well, it does seem that a spokesman wanted to steer us away from discussing that issue, specifically by not giving us any details whatsoever.

But that will be one of the things that will of concern here, lone wolves, copycat, homegrown -- how did they get radicalized, through what they were watching on the Internet rather than from a group discussion in a back room of some mosque somewhere?

Certainly the intelligence agencies here in Britain have recognized this problem since 7/7 and before, and have been working on it to try to make sure that these sort of things cannot happen in the public arena, if you will. So the notion of homegrown terrorists is something that will be on people's minds. But again, no information on it.

And this idea that it's the Al Qaeda ideology, this global caliphate, that it is the West against Muslims, this is the idea that they try to propaganda and this is the idea that they will be -- they try to put across with this message, clear evidence here of their planning, that they knew after this barbaric act they weren't going to run away, that they were going to stand there, that they were going to try and find people in the crowd, witnesses who would then -- they could then record video messages on as the 7/7 bombers did preemptively before their suicide attacks.

These men planned to speak to members of the public and tell them about what they done. They knew that they would be arrested; they were ready for that. So this shows a level of planning and preparation. So these are the things as well that the police will be digging into and the intelligence services digging into now to see if there is any evidence that was out there that they missed, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Nic, thank you. And of course, we remember that several years ago in 2008, a British person was convicted of plotting to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier, we're told, and that they plan to film that and release it and send it around to panic people.

Tom Fuentes is a terror expert and a former assistant director of the FBI. He joins me now on the phone from Washington.

Tom, thank you very much for joining me. What immediately comes into your mind when you see and hear about this specific incident in London now?

TOM FUENTES, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Christiane, what comes to my mind is how unpreventable these kind of acts are. And I know everybody wants to immediately look for someone in intelligence circles to blame and say why didn't know about this. And it's possible that these individuals were under some previous investigation.

But normally, when you're talking about this kind of an act, they didn't buy any special weapons. If they used meat cleavers, those are readily available in kitchen supply stores. And how do you know what's in their mind or what they're thinking when they decide that they're going to commit a horrible act such as this?

It also brings to mind in 2009 Abdulmutallab, the so-called Underwear Bomber, yes, he was Nigerian. But he was radicalized when he went to school in London. He was going to a private school in London, became radicalized and then traveled to Yemen where he learned how to equip himself with that bomb and actually receive the material.

At the time of his debriefing, he said that he was not the only one radicalized in that school, who traveled from London to Yemen to do the same thing. And so far we've not seen the others surface in the four years since that event.

But that shows you, London's a very diverse city; people from all over the world come there to go to school or to work. And you know, they could -- it could be anybody being radicalized there.

AMANPOUR: Well, I mean we talk about London; we've just seen this in Boston. I wonder whether you, as you're looking at this and thinking about this, to see perhaps a new trend in this kind of flash mob terrorism? And that's my word I'm using there. But I want to know, you know, we don't know whether -- we don't think that the Boston bombers had a huge organization behind them. These guys look like they were deliberately trying to do something to cause as much as panic as possible. They allegedly charged police; they weren't trying to get out of the way. They've been wounded and are at a hospital. Do you see a new phenomenon emerging after Boston and now this London incident?

FUENTES: I think possibly the expansion of the idea that they did not have to do the 9/11 huge attack, and it's always been the hallmark of Al Qaeda, where other terrorist groups like Hezbollah did the smaller attacks, killing one, two or 10 people at a time, sort of a death by a thousand cuts philosophy.

So now we're seeing probably more people adopting the philosophy that killing a few people is better than killing none from their perspective and especially if they can do it with hand weapons, small weapons such as meat cleaver or butcher knives or swords that are not, you know, not t come anywhere close to being as regulated as firearms.

AMANPOUR: Joining me now -- Tom, thank you very much for being with me.

But joining me now is Richard Barrett, the former head of the United Nations Taliban and Al Qaeda monitoring team, as well as being the former head of counterterrorism for MI-6. He is currently the senior director at the Suppan Group and he joins me now in the studio.

What do you make of this?

RICHARD BARRETT, FORMER HEAD OF COUNTERTERRORISM, MI-6: Well, I think that Tom Fuentes made some good points there, as did Nic Robertson. I mean, these sort of instances bound to happen. I mean, we can't escape it, whether it's in Boston or London.

But I think we have to keep it all in perspective. I mean, it's incredibly rare if you look at the attacks in London since 2005, there really haven't been any.

You mentioned the top two kidnapper soldier in Birmingham, I think it was, and that was a very real plot, and very similar, I think, to this. But apart from that, most of the things that have been uncovered by the security services in England, been pretty Mickey Mouse, you know, they've not really been terribly serious.

And this one, too, you know, OK. A couple of crazies who are committing murder in a London street, killing a soldier, you know, in the name of some sort of cause, which is very indistinct and really doesn't resonate with, I wouldn't have thought, any of the Muslims in Britain or elsewhere in the world.

AMANPOUR: So do you see these, then, as -- I mean, obviously we've talked about lone wolves. We've talked about homegrown terror. We've been talking about it ad nauseam since Boston. This seems to follow very quickly after Boston, which got a huge amount of play; this is the oxygen that these people depend on, and we're giving it to them.

Do you think that this -- I mean, from your knowledge -- I know that the facts are still not in -- from your knowledge at MI-6 and your other knowledge, is this something that would have had a lot of organization, would have a big group behind, is ideologically motivated? Is it crazies, as you say, copycat?

BARRETT: Well, I think it's hard to say, you know, without knowing more. But it, generally speaking, when people do this sort of thing, there's usually a group. You know, they've sort of wound each other up; they've become more radicalized by talking to one another and moaning about what's going on in other parts of the world and watching extremist videos and things like.

But that doesn't mean it can translate into a trend, you know. This is an isolated incident.

And I'm sure that Boston, as you say, was a good advertisement for terrorists, if you like, and they can get massive coverage from a relatively small incident -- horrible incident, of course, you know, absolutely vile, but nonetheless one that in overall terms doesn't cause very much damage, just like this one, too, when you think of all the murders that go on every day.

So there's a balance to be struck, isn't there, between publicizing these events and telling the public what's going on and what may be behind them and encouraging other people to copy them. And I think that's a really difficult job for the media. I think it's a really difficult job for government.

And now in the U.K., as he bringing in the cabinet of this briefing room together to talk about the response, to talk about no doubt the message they're going to give to the media, to the public and so on.

AMANPOUR: And what will the response be? What can it be in this regard?

BARRETT: Well, I think the key message they'll want to continue to put out as they have in the past, this is enough reflection of a community that this, in fact, is an offense against society at large and that any sort of reaction against the community and more broadly is incredibly counterproductive and plays into the terrorists' hands.

AMANPOUR: Are you surprised by the brazenness with which they wanted this filmed? I mean, we've just seen it. It looks like cell phone video, again, just inferring from what we've been able to see; it looks like they called somebody from the street, saying, take down our message; broadcast our message.

We understand they charged at the police when they arrived and got shot and taken down. At least they haven't been killed. We will know what happened. They will answer questions.

BARRETT: But it's -- you know, terrorism is about creating fear, isn't it? It's not about killing people so much. Here, they kill one person and frighten a huge amount of other people. That is the objective of terrorism.

So if you kill somebody on the street and nobody hears about it and maybe some people think it was a traffic accident or something, you haven't achieved your objective. So looking for the publicity, and not worrying about being caught, you know, that is part, I think, of the modern terrorist methodology.

AMANPOUR: I was really stunned to hear senior members of the United States military -- high command and others -- talk at Congress this week, saying that they believe the fight against Al Qaeda would go on for another 20 years in one form or fashion.

Does this prove that?

BARRETT: Well, you know, the fight against terrorism has been going on for thousands of years. Another 10 or 20 years is neither here nor there. And I'm quite sure that if it's not Al Qaeda, there will be other terrorists, because, you know, let's face it; terrorism works, as we see. And it works increasingly in our sort of interconnected world where everybody sees what's going everywhere else.

So, yes, sure, it'll carry on 10 or 20 years. But let's not all get overexcited by that. It's a vile thing. It's a real affront on society. But let's keep it in perspective and deal with it with resilience.

AMANPOUR: Well, thank you for your perspective.

Richard Barrett, thanks for being here.

And we're going to go to a break and be back with more of this breaking story after a break.

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AMANPOUR: We return now to our coverage of the suspected terror attack in London, where a British soldier was brutally hacked to death as he was leaving army barracks in the southeastern part of the city in Woolwich.

Now we're told, reports say, that the attackers filmed it and were heard shouting, "Allahu akbar," and we know that they then said that this is, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," in response to what they said were attacks on Muslims in other parts of the world.

To that end, the British -- the Muslim Council of Britain has just issued a statement, condemning the attack on the soldier, saying that nothing justifies this murder; it's a barbaric act. It has no basis in Islam and we condemn it unreservedly. They say the vast majority of British Muslims acknowledge the armed forces for the work that they do, and they call for calm in all communities.

And we now have the audio of the alleged attacker speaking. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEGED WOOLWICH SUSPECT: I apologize that women had to witness this today. But in our land, our women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe. Remove (ph) your governments. They don't care about you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, that was delivered in a broad London accent. It was only a short portion of what we're told they also said.

Atika Shubert is on the scene for us.

Atika, what are you finding out there right now?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, basically, what we're hearing from eyewitnesses and police -- I'll give you a quick chronology of what they've been telling us, basically that it happened a little after 2 o'clock in the afternoon and that a car with the two attackers inside appeared to target this off-duty soldier on the sidewalk. It happened a little bit more than 100 meters there behind me.

When they hit the soldier, they then came out with what was described to me as a meat cleaver, a machete, other large knives and they began to hack him to death. In the words of one of the -- of one eyewitness, "It was like they were butchering a piece of meat."

Then they dragged the body into the middle of the street and inexplicably hung around and attempted to either film themselves or they asked other people who were at -- there to actually film it.

And that appears to be what we're seeing in this video. And it's a gruesome, grisly murder; the police arrived within about 20 minutes and shot the two attackers, seriously injuring them, bringing them to the hospital.

The fact that that statement has come out seems to indicate a clear political motive, and that appears to be why, with this emergency cabinet meeting that has just concluded the government now believes this has all the indications of a terrorist attack.

AMANPOUR: What do the police say -- or any over there say -- about why these attackers hung around and waited for themselves to be arrested or shot?

SHUBERT: You know, there is no explanation for that. When I've talked to eyewitnesses, what they have described to me is, in the words of "frenzied, crazed attack."

It's inexplicable why they hung around, why they wanted to be filmed. It was -- it was a traumatic experience for a lot of the eyewitnesses, not only because of the horror of what they were seeing, but the fact that this -- these two attackers seemed to be almost proud of what they were doing and wanted to be filmed, wanted this to be documented.

And that is -- has really scarred a lot of the people who were fortunate enough to witness what happened just 100 meters or so behind me.

AMANPOUR: And just quickly, the barracks there, it's not a warfighting barracks. It's a largely ceremonial group of soldiers who are billeted there, right?

SHUBERT: Well, exactly. This is the Royal Artillery barracks. This isn't exactly, you know, any sort of big army fort or anything like this. This was an off-duty soldier who was basically walking along the street. He had on a T-shirt that said "Help for Heroes," a British charity that helps wounded vets.

And this neighborhood: it's a working class neighborhood. People here commute into London every day for work. And the attack happened at this junction right in front of a primary school, about an hour before children were supposed to be let out.

And so we actually spoke to the school. And they said, you know, they were still trying to get kids back home late in the day, because they didn't want them to go outside and see this horrific scene. I mean, it's a neighborhood that has seen violence; there have been some gang-related things, shootings in the past. But nothing on this kind of a grisly scale.

AMANPOUR: Atika Shubert, thank you very much.

And we are going to take another break and when we come back, more on this breaking story.

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AMANPOUR: And we want to recap now what's been unfolding in London over the last several hours, a British soldier has been brutally hacked to death today outside his army barracks in Woolwich, which is in the southeast part of the city. His attackers were shot by police. But before that, one of them sought out a passerby and recorded this defiant message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEGED WOOLWICH SUSPECT: I apologize that women had to witness this today. But in our land, our women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe. Remove (ph) your governments. They don't care about you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now the full message, he said, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reasons we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

This, of course, is very similar to language that one of the alleged Boston bombers used and, indeed, very similar to the kind of language that was used by the suicide bombers which attacked London's underground and bus system on 7/7/2005, still waiting to know much more about these attackers. And of course, CNN will have much more on this breaking story.

That's it for us for now. Stay tuned.

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