Return to Transcripts main page

Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

AFP: 18-Year-Old Suspect Surrenders; Police Searching For Two Paris Suspects Still at Large; Police Release Photos Of Two Suspects Still On The Run; One Of The Suspects Was Known To U.S. Law Enforcement

Aired January 07, 2015 - 21:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And welcome back. It is early morning here in Paris. Things moving very fast early Thursday morning. Many late developments in the killings of a satirical magazine here by three Islamic extremist that left a dozen people dead not far from where I'm standing.

We've just gotten first word that one of three suspects has surrendered to authorities. The AFP, the French National Press Agency is reporting that the youngest suspect just 18-years-old turned himself into police a short time ago. Just moment ago French authorities released photos of the two other men still at large. Here they are. People have been warned to consider them armed and dangerous and to notify authorities if they spot them. They are both said to be brothers in their early 30's.

All of these following a major police action in the city of Reims which is about an hour and half or so from Paris -- from here by car. Police raiding a location there. Atika Shubert is there for us. She joins us now on the phone. Atika, what's the latest there?

Actually we'll be joining Atika Shubert shortly. We're going to get a live report from there Hala Gorani is joining me here in Paris. It's been an extraordinary day and these new developments are moving very quickly tonight.

HALA GORON, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and you mentioned the surrender of the 18-year-old reported by Agence France Presse. There maybe an interesting back story to that because over the last several hours some people on Twitter claiming to be his classmates said you've got the wrong guy. He was in class when this shooting took place.

And so some people are speculating at this point perhaps his turning himself in because his name has been circulated. And he wants to clear his name. So all of these details are coming in but nothing is confirmed. We're really piecing the puzzle together right now as to exactly how many people were involved.

From the beginning we've been hearing three suspects. But right now if this individual, this young 18-year-old turns himself in and only the pictures of the two older suspects have been issued by police, questions are being asked to exactly how this all went down.

COOPER: Right and there are a number of conflicting reports and frankly we're not reporting right now just because early reports are often wrong. You know, I don't want to kind of just throw a lot of information out there, a lot of different people reporting different things. We're trying to be as accurate as possible.

The reaction that you have seen in Paris here over the last several hours also in Berlin and Amsterdam and London, places in New York, all around the world really has been extraordinary now.

GORON: Absolutely, this is a country that is in shock even though there had been talk over the last several months that the possibility of a terrorist attacks maybe heightened because of what's going on in Syria, because of foreign fighters being recruited to fight in that part of the Middle East for ISIS, et cetera. Still though, the scale of this massacre, 12 people killed just gunned down in a newsroom, especially among journalist, we've all been in editorial meetings.

The idea that the freedom of expression, the idea also that the ability to satirize, to mock. This very, very basic right that we hold so dear in any open democracy has been attacked in such a vicious way. Has gotten people very upset in this country, and you saw it with the demonstrations really.

COOPER: Yeah.

GORON: Because in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday at two in the morning in this weather still having tens of thousands of people out there saying something.

COOPER: Extraordinary. Atika Shubert is joining us as well. Atika what's the latest that you're hearing on the ground?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORREPONDENT: Anderson, I'm in the town of Reims. And this is where police as you can see behind me went into this apartment building as part of the investigation into this attack.

Now we understand they went in just a few hours ago. You can see behind heavily armed police with riot gear. Apparently they went up to the first floor, looked at one of the apartments. You could actually still see inside the curtains were open as they went in. There are a number of sharpshooters in the area just in case clearly they were expecting possibly some violence. That did not happen however. Not a gun shot was fired.

They came out and a forensic team went in to sweep the area. Now they haven't given any details as to exactly whose apartment it is or what they are looking for. But we do know that it is connected to the attacks somehow. Now the other thing that we do know is that one of the suspects, the 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad who was sort of his name was put out there. He has surrendered himself to police. That's according to the AFP.

And he is one of the suspects who was supposed from this area. So it's all pretty fluid. It's developing very quickly. But it does seem to be at this point anyway centering around right here in the neighborhood of Farhoush (ph) in Reims, Anderson.

COOPER: Atika, I want to put the picture back of the two suspects that police say according to our latest bulletin are still at large. Is much known about them at this point? I mean I know there are conflicting reports out there about whether or not they had some sort of training or experience fighting in Syria. There have been a number of kind of conflicting reports about them. What do we know for sure at this point?

SHUBERT: What we know for sure is that Cherif Kouachi in particular does have a long record of run-ins with the law. He's been imprisoned already in 2008 particularly for recruiting Islamist to go to Iraq for example. So this is somebody who had a long rap sheet. But we don't know whether or not he had traveled overseas. What kind of experience he may have had with weapons. But it does appear that he was running in this sort of extremist circles.

Now, we know less about his brother, Said Kouachi. But we do know that Said Kouachi did spend time in prison. And this is a big issue here in France because the prisons are really where a lot of this radicalization has occurred. And the number of the attacks have been carried out by suspects who spend time in the prison system exposed to some of these -- the most extreme forms of this Islamist, you know, extremism.

So, this is what we know at this point. But we are still waiting for confirmation from French authorities for more background on both of them specifically whether or not they traveled to Syria or Iraq recently.

COOPER: And that -- and that he was put on trial I think it was 2008 for trying to encourage others to go overseas to Iraq and to try to go himself. He -- I think he was sentenced to 18 months. But he had already served time while awaiting trial so he didn't actually do any extra prison time as I've read.

SHUBERT: Well this is somebody who is sort of in and out of the prison system. I mean in the court -- in the trial, he actually described himself as a bit of a delinquent, as somebody who is always having run-ins with the law but found this sort of extreme version of Islam that he followed and was further exposed to within the prison system.

So, this is something that French authorities are now looking to if he was radicalize this way and if he did travel. This is one of the key components because it does appear that there was more planning, organization, the fact that he didn't have heavy weapons. It looks like AK-47s in the video and had flat jackets.

The questions are now where they did get those materials, those weapons and did they get training. And if so where did they get training?

COOPER: Yeah, Atika Shubert, I appreciate that. We'll continue checking with you, again this manhunt according to police still underway at this hour. Joining me now is retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and also former FBI and CIA Counter Terrorism Official Philip Mudd.

General Hertling when you had seen the video of these attackers, I'm wondering what you particularly look at, I mean much comment has made today at, you know, the way they were holding their riffles, even the calm with which one of them picked up a sneaker that had fallen out of the vehicle as they were making their escape.

MARK HERTLING, RETIRED ARMY LIEUTENANT GENERAL: Well, it is a certainly well-trained group whether it be two or three. All of the things that contributed to the attack were rehearsed obviously. They had some type of military training, Anderson. They were very good at weapons control. They were able to fire well and hit what their aiming at.

They had done a reconnaissance. They had the intelligence. The speed of the operation is all very impressive. But truthfully Anderson and it gets to your comments earlier in the show its not that hard to do. You know, you're talking about in this three people.

COOPER: Right.

HERTLING: There were probably more in support whether they had a videographer somewhere filming all of this, whether they had support infrastructure, but still, I mean from military perspective that's less than a squad. You can teach a lot of people to do the kinds of things that they did today if they're trained correctly during a short period of time.

The intelligence peace is the most interesting and the way it was executed is fascinating because we haven't seen a lot of that kind of activity in the past. That's what concerns me. It's very concerning because the combination of execution versus luck in finding somebody that does this before, based on the intelligence availability, diminishes and still will probably tell you the less number of people that are contributing to the action.

COOPER: Yes Phil, I mean ever since the Mumbai attack, I mean I've been on the particular lookout for these styles of attack and just probably seem to have had -- perhaps less coordination than the Mumbai attack which had a central controller talking to the gunmen. We haven't heard any reports at this point about that sort of things during this attack. What do you see in the videos in the attack does far? What stands out to you?

PHILIP MUDD, FORMER SENIOR OFFICIAL, FBI AND CIA: Well I guess I step back and a lot of people in my business Anderson would ask to be blunt. Why this hasn't happen more often? We've seen what you called lone wolf that is individuals.

COOPER: Right.

MUDD: Some of whom are a psychologically unbalanced stage attacks. We've seen very well-organized operations that are much bigger. Remember the operation in the London subway in 2005. We haven't seen what a lot of people like me anticipated that is operations that are neither lone wolf nor highly organized, just a few people who sits together, playing, go in with the well-executed operation.

I look at this and said, you know, this is in some ways the worst nightmare of somebody like me, something that's very simple to execute but is more lethal than what we've seen in lone wolf operations.

COOPER: And Phil, I mean there -- some people might think, well this kind of thing probably wouldn't happen in United States but there have already been people in the United States who have been convicted of planning this exactly this kind of thing -- the guy I think Headley was his last name. He has actually have plan to kill...

MUDD: Sure David Headley.

COOPER: ... right, David Headley. He has a plan -- and in fact, he even traveled oversees and was finally arrested in Chicago. I think at O'Hare airport after planning to kill a cartoonist as well in Europe.

MUDD: That's correct. I think if you think this can happen in United States, let me tell you what it look like at the threat table. We look at the threat matrix every morning for four and half years when I was at the FBI, I assume they do the same thing today. The most surprising thing I think most Americans would see if they look over my shoulder of that matrix every morning at 7:15 or 7:30 would be the volume of threat.

The volume of stuff like this is -- that's prevented because they only see the real sort of high octane threats that make it to the front page of the Washington Post, in New York Times or CNN. We saw stuff everyday that looked like this. A kid in Atlanta, we saw cases in New Jersey, New York, California, people who are trying to execute these attacks and didn't succeed.

So again, the fact that this hasn't happened I think is one of the bigger surprises here.

COOPER: In general, already in France. I mean for instance, the French's president came out earlier and said that they had already foiled a number of potential terror attacks just in the last couple of weeks and there were even other attacks that went forward much smaller scale, some individuals driving vehicles in two instances into crowds of people. I think some 23 people or so were wounded, one lone person going through a French police station slashing people with a knife before being shot to death.

So there has already been a number of attacks here of the type that we are starting to see more and more, the (inaudible) ISIS and certainly even al-Qaeda are trying to encourage.

HERTING: It's coming to the forefront Anderson and I'll chime in with what Phil said. When I was the commander of U.S. Army Europe, we had that same kind of treat analysis on a daily basis looking out throughout the 51 countries that are in Europe and saying, where is the next attack going to took place? And the same thing, in many cases, because of either good intelligence or sometimes just flat out luck we were able to stop an attack. The one that comes to mind which was one that was almost executed was

an attempt that bombing the Frank Ford Airport by the Islamic Jihad Union. That would have happened and just a serious of serendipitous actions did not occur and those kinds of things go on every single day. And there are people trying to put those pieces of the puzzle together.

Trying to fight those who would bring insecurity to a stable country and it's just hard but it never stops. And I agree with Phil. I'm very surprise we have not seen more of these kinds of small but deadly attacks with well-trained individuals.

COOPER: General Herting good to have you on, Philip Mudd as well.

Coming up, I just want to hear from man who captured the iconic video of the attack that has now been seen around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And welcome back to our live coverage of the breaking news here in Paris and all throughout France frankly. When a three suspects in the killings here, now in custody apparently surrendering to police earlier tonight that's according to French AFP news agency. Two other suspects, I'm going to show you their photos still at large

Take a look, here they are. French authorities have just put out their photos. They're asking the public's help in finding them. They are brothers in their early 30s. All of this less then 24 hours after the massacre that unfolded not far from where we're standing tonight. Some of it captured on video.

Martin Boudot was sheltering with others on a rooftop near the Charlie Hebdo offices when that scene played out. He was able to capture that on video. I spoke to him earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

When did you realize something was happening?

MARTIN BOUDOT, REPORTER/DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Well we -- a colleague of mine was going for a smoke outside and he told us that two guys, two persons were, you know, standing out and tying get in with (inaudible). So, we heard their first shots and then, you know, more and more shots -- the right process (ph), you know, the whole -- like five or six meters away. And...

COOPER: That close?

BOUGOT: Yes. It's basically the (inaudible).

COOPER: 15...

Did you know instantly that they were shot?

BOUGOT: No, no, no, I mean at first, we just heard shots, we heard screams and then we tried again on the roof, and we did and... COOPER: You run up to the roof?

BOUGOT: Yes, yes we run to the roof and try to, you know, avoid bullets from -- and try to keep all the urgency safe (ph) it's like 20 people are (inaudible). So...

COOPER: It's incredible though. I mean the video that you took and we're looking at some of it now. I mean, this went on for a number of minutes, I think 5 to 10 minutes is that about how long it was?

BOUGOT: Yes, from 5 to 10. At least it seems like it was, you know, so much longer. I mean -- and then the cops arrived and they start shooting at them and then we don't know...

COOPER: The police started shooting them or the terrorist started shooting the police?

BOUDOT: The terrorist started shooting the police and then we didn't know what we were supposed to do because, you know, we were only stuck on this roof. We knew that there were victims few meters away from us that there might be going to be some explosives somewhere or maybe a third guy and they were yelling.

So finally what we did -- we went to Charlie Hebdo's office. (Inaudible) have doctors and we've got...

COOPER: You actually entered the offices?

BOUDOT: Yeah. Right after the -- I mean, totally from 10 to 15 minutes after they left...

COOPER: And the scene there...

BOUDOT: You know, it was like, you know, it was a slaughter, it was like a massacre. We could see the bodies on the left, entered in the meeting room. And the other people from Charlie Hebdo's were scared or were hiding. And they were just standing like zombies. But, you know, they were like standing and didn't do anything and we tried to help the very first wounded but actually to be honest, they were not -- a lot wounded. They were just -- people dead around.

COOPER: When the shooting was occurring, did you see all three gunmen?

BOUDOT: No, I've only seen two of them.

COOPER: You saw two of them?

BOUDOT: Yeah.

COOPER: So you saw the two that actually entered the offices?

BOUDOT: Yeah.

COOPER: Because these are early report say that there was a third gunman but who spies to lookout, staying on the street. BOUDOT: I didn't see a third guy. I've only seen two guys, shootings, with very professional manner, I mean has been on the ground like you have seen, you know, I've seen how we manipulate rifles and they were manipulating like professional.

COOPER: They were using the rifles, holding the rifles correctly, shooting relatively calmly?

BOUDOT: Yeah. I mean they were having, you know, -- the shoulders on the rifle. They were just acting like policeman. At first, we thought they were policemen.

COOPER: Really? It was that that sort of organized?

BOUDOT: Yeah, yeah. Because nobody...

COOPER: That professional.

BOUDOT: ... that was too, you know, it was unreal and we thought something was going on. Nobody really understood...

COOPER: Obviously two policemen were killed in this but it's believed one of them was guarding the officers on -- have you seen security for that office?

BOUDOT: Yes. We've seen police cars for the last couple of months but actually...

COOPER: They just moved in about six months ago.

BOUDOT: Yeah, they moved in six months ago and a police car, there were two policemen or a three depending on -- based -- they were outside the building and they were you know, days and nights, they were just here.

These last few weeks, they were not here anymore, you know, and from what I've heard, from Charlie Hebdo (inaudible) and we can see the -- I talked to the -- they felt that the threat was a little, you know, less dangerous lately, it looks like something -- it was a little cooler, if I may...

COOPER: Things have seemed to settled down a little bit.

BOUDOT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And -- But actually, you know, that's why we were so surprised about what happened. We are all so surprised and I really want to, you know, tell them how much I support them and all the journalists, I mean I -- obviously you guys are here as well.

But the French journalist, the French, you've seen 100,000 people gather...

COOPER: An extraordinary -- and when you saw the crowds here in Paris, in other places in France and also all throughout the world, frankly.

BOUDOT: It's very touching. I mean it's beyond words, I mean that means a lot. That means a lot for us especially when, you know, it's abroad in the U.K. in the U.S. or in Montreal, I've seen...

COOPER: If the idea was to silence freedom of expression, to...

BOUDOT: But it's failed.

COOPER: It failed?

BOUDOT: If they wanted to make Charlie Hebdo disappear, they actually made them legend, you know. Charlie Hebdo is not a legend and -- well thanks to them actually and I think that's a good punishment.

COOPER: Martin Boudot, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Thank you and I'm sorry for what you've been through today. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Extraordinary day for him. With us now is Chris Dickey, Senior Foreign Editor at The Daily Beast, as we said police now have put out the photos of two suspects who apparently are still at large.

CHRIS DICKEY, FOREIGN EDITOR, THE DAILY BEAST: Yeah, it seems that they are. They've gone and they're looking for them in the city of Reims which is in Champagne as a matter of fact. But they hadn't had any luck.

One of the points of interests is that once you've got the names, there are ought to be a ton of information about these guys.

COOPER: The French Intelligence, the French Police...

DICKEY: Yeah.

COOPER: But they are -- I mean they have extensive contacts.

DICKEY: There's been a lot of terrorism in France. The French Intelligence Networks, they penetrate these groups very, very thoroughly, much more than let's say the NYPD does in New York. And they have been very effective. That's one reason there's been so few terrorist attacks.

But, in this case, there seems to be some kind of lapse because if these two guys are the guys that we're seeing some details about in the French press, then at least one of them had a record with the police.

COOPER: Right had been in jail, had gone been in trial...

DICKEY: Had been in jail, had been in Iraq.

COOPER: Right.

DICKEY: ... and connected to terrorism. How did they take their eyes off this guy? So -- that he could prepare an attack like this so that, by the way, he could acquire a Kalashnikov...

COOPER: Right, which is not...

DICKEY: ... which is not...

COOPER: ... an easy thing to do.

DICKEY: It's not an easy thing to do here. It's, you know, it's -- I don't want to overstate how easy it is to get a Kalashnikov in the United States but there are lot of them in the United States. You're not be really surprised when somebody goes into a fast food chain, some lunatic with an automatic rifle that is or looks like a Kalashnikov.

Here, you don't see that. Here, they're very hard to get. And in fact, I think it's very likely if they were acquired -- if they acquired those guns here in France that it was through some connection with the underworld. If you go down to (inaudible) for instance, there are a lot of Kalashnikovs down there associated with drug dealers.

COOPER: The other question we don't know and there are conflicting reports on this is really, what happened to this -- to one of the suspects from the time they were last involved with law enforcement, did they actually served time in Syria? Did they actually go there? We know there's reports on this. As many a thousands French citizens who have gone...

DICKEY: Right, we have to -- I think we have to be -- really important that we don't impose a template on this event based on our fears and based on the kind of reporting that we've all been doing. Yes, there's been this great concerns that people would go to join ISIS or that they would go to fight Assad and that somehow they would -- we converted and brought back and become terrorists here in Europe. That is a real concern but we don't know that that is the case these days.

COOPER: And what -- one eye witness and again, they could have been mistaken but one witness says that one of the gunmen said, tell the media that this was al-Qaeda in Yemen. So, I mean there's a lot of conflicting reports at this point. We got to wait and see. Chris, thank you. We're going to talk to you a little bit later on the broadcast.

Up next, an update from Reims where a major police operation took place on the hunt for the Paris suspect. A report from AFP, one suspect has apparently surrendered. Two still believes to be on the run. Police are releasing these photos of them, more of that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, we're in Paris right now. Breaking news in this early morning hours here, AFP the French National Press Agency reported the youngest of the three suspects in today's terror attack has surrendered to police. Two suspects remained at large, but take a look at the photos, they are brothers as well as obviously. Major police raid in the city of Reims that we've been reporting on. I want to go to Barbara Starr with the latest and what she is hearing from her sources. Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN ANCHOR/REPORTER: Good evening, Anderson. Good morning in Paris. Our own Evan Perez is hearing from the law enforcement sources that it looks like one of the brothers was known to the U.S. government through French authorities. They had some information on him. He was someone that French had been trying to keep under surveillance.

So it raises the question how this man was able to pull of his participation in one of this -- in this attack. The officials are saying, look the French are having the same problem that the U.S. has, so many terrorism suspects to follow these days, and it's very difficult to conduct 24/7 surveillance on them. But it's beginning to look throughout the last several hours as the French have combed through every piece of intelligence they have.

They are now putting together a picture. This was someone that was known to them, at least one of these men, and through that, known to U.S. intelligence. So, you can anticipate, I think, in the coming days a good deal of cooperation between intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic to try and pin down more details as the manhunt for the two men urgently continues. Anderson.

COOPER: Barbara, do you -- the person said to be known to U.S. intelligence are -- do you know if that's the same -- are the two brothers the same one who actually served the time here in France and went on trial?

STARR: I'm sorry to say, I don't think we have that level of detail yet about which...

COOPER: OK.

STARR: ... one. It may well be, because if he was through some sort of judicial system, there may have been information that came out, but then very typically would have been shared with U.S. authorities.

COOPER: OK. All right, Barbara Starr, thank you very much. Gathering information as much as we can right now. Twelve people, as you know, murdered in cold blood at the office of the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo. Most of the victims are cartoonist, journalist massacred during their editorial meeting.

They're not the first, just the latest victim to be targeted for their words, and drawings and ideas. In 2004, Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, produces "Submission", the movie that was critical on the treatment of women in Islam. Month after the film is released van Gogh is murdered in Amsterdam. His killer, 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Islamist, is now serving life imprisonment.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali collaborating with Theo van Gogh on the movie "Submission". She's on Al Qaeda's most wanted list. She joins me again. Also Maajid Nawaz, a former extremist himself, who now he speaks out against violent radical Islam. He is the co-founder and director of the Quilliam Foundation. Maajid, I mean, let's talk in the wake of this, what needs to change within the Muslim community? What -- I mean, you've try to kind of come up with counter narratives to the extremist narrative. What do you believe -- if anything needs to change, what needs to change?

MAAJID NAWAZ, CO-FOUNDER/DIRECTOR OF QUILLIAM FOUNDATION: Thank you, Anderson. And it's good to speak again on this issue. I think fundamentally, there needs to be a change of fundamental mindset. Attitudes need to change. Muslim communities, all of us together, including non-Muslims have to stand up and show solidarity in instances like this.

As we appreciate solidarity against racism and against anti-Muslim hate crimes when they happen, when the attack in Sydney happened, and a whole group of people started this hashtag, we remember it, I'llridewithyou. Many, many Australian non-Muslims, and it was a great initiative, standing with Muslims to say, we won't tolerate any blow back against the Muslim communities. My question is how many such hashtags do we see coming from Muslim communities in defense of non-Muslims when they are slaughtered in this way, and in defense of the principles of freedom of speech.

Ayaan is on the show with us today, and I feel that our communities have failed, somebody like her who's on a hit list, because they Ayaan has every right to follow her conscience. Ayaan, I personally feel that I wish that more Muslims are on the front lines defending your right to follow your conscience, and I think there are -- might work and if it's successful, it will result in many others like me and there are others, there's people like us Hazul Hijazi (ph) in America, people like Terry Potter (ph), Irshad Manji in Canada, Dr. Usama Hasan in London.

There are -- the beginnings of these voices of Muslim reformers, who are attempting to open up this kind of ones, the reform discourse from within the faith. So all of us can say to people like Ayaan that yes, we will ride with you, we will defend your right to follow your conscience and speak as you see fit, because the last time I checked, people like Ayaan didn't attack anyone, didn't certainly even threaten to kill anyone.

The real problem here are not provocative statements, they are not mere cartoons, the problem here are men, mainly men, but also women who decide that it's their prerogative to pick up weapons and murder and slaughter people in the name of God as if God can't look up for himself.

COOPER: Ayaan, do you agree that there's too much, like there's passivity in some sectors of the Muslim community?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI, AHA FOUNDATION FOUNDER: Yeah. I mean, Maajid and I have -- we've, you know, we've debated, we've discussed, and we now together stand on this issue on one side, which is the use of words, the use of speech, the use of images can never ever justify, never ever justify a retaliation of violence. So as far as this is concerned, Maajid and I are 100 percent on the same side. Maajid has mentioned a number of names from within individuals like me who are born into Islam. I think what we need to do, and I admire Maajid's courage, I completely encourage him and all of us born into Muslim households in whatever degree we're going to address this, but the most important bit of it is to face the grim reality that this is embedded in the religion that we were brought up in. I happen to have left the religion, Maajid remains a Muslim, but at some point we have to face the grim fact, it is an ugly fact, it's a fact we want to turn away from, no one wants to turn away that fact more from than I am.

This is embedded in Islam, and the best way to fix this is to acknowledge that, and when you talk about attitudes and our mindsets, the first thing comes to my mind is it is an attitude toward the Qur'an. These individuals who committed this crime and all of these people who are committing this crime, they treat to the Qur'an like a driver's manual. They look at their Prophet Muhammad as a moral guide for today, and if they look at the Prophet Muhammad as a moral guide on some instances, that would be OK, but in some instances, he cannot be a moral guide.

And that's is why Maajid and the rest of us who are brought in the house of Islam, we need to stand up and to say in many ways the Prophet Muhammad cannot be a moral guide. That is what Charlie Hebdo was doing. If we want to be a part of civilized society, we have to say that the Prophet Muhammad, especially in his years after Medina, he cannot be a moral guide for good. He was from our 21st century perspective absolutely immoral. We have to satirize that...

COOPER: Well, let me not -- Maajid, there's some...

HIRSI ALI: ... academic...

COOPER: Maajid, as somebody...

HIRSI ALI: Go ahead.

COOPER: ... who's still in the Muslim faith, how do you respond to that?

NAWAZ: I distinguish between fundamentalists and their twins, the Islamists, who both attempt to impose Islam either on their personal family lives or, in the case of Islamist, on all of society, and then I also talked about Jihadist to use force to spread Islamism. On the one hand, on the other hand, there are conservative Muslims, while I will agree with what Ayaan said, is that the conservative Muslims who are the vast, vast majority, who are not Islamists, conservative Muslims and also every other Muslim out there of every other denomination.

What we have to do is recognize that it's no longer suitable for us to follow a vacuously literalist approach to the religious text. So, for example, and I'll give some examples of what Ayaan was speaking of, the Qur'an doesn't explicitly condemns slavery because slavery was a norm during that time of the prophet Muhammad. And in fact, it implicitly endorses slavery, it regulates slavery, it didn't abolish it, it's not even condemn it regulated it. It puts certain rules and structures in place.

So if we were to vacuously, literally, take that today as ISIL have done, we could try and justify reenslaving people. Now, of course the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of Muslims would find that repugnant. So, when Ayaan says, we need to start looking at Islam carefully, I'd come to interpret that in the following way.

If I were to say fast food is bad for you, that doesn't mean I think all people that eat hamburgers are bad people. What it means is a difference between looking at first, principles again, renewing the interpretative methods of the religion and picking one individual Muslims.

And, I don't hear from what Ayaan is saying that she thinks that she should pick on one individual Muslims. I hear her saying the message has reached loud and clear that all Muslims across the world have to stop reflecting on the vacuously literalist interpretation that has come to dominate our discourse unfortunately and there are, you know, there's a side of majority out there but they have to start speaking out loudly and clearly to reclaim their religion that is being hijacked.

HIRSI ALI: But, maybe Maajid the way to get that...

COOPER: This is a conversation...

HIRSI ALI: ... is to...

COOPER: Go ahead...

HIRSI ALI: I just wanted to say maybe one way of acknowledging that is I want -- I just want to point to sea of faces in France and in the rest of Europe. When we take the position of victims and victimhood and, you know, of being persecuted, we sort of shut that door. I don't think that Europeans, I don't think that the French are out on a genocidal bloodthirsty pursuit of Muslims. They are not.

Let's acknowledge the fact that in all of these years maybe even decades that we from Muslim countries have been provoking civilized society. We haven't had the backlash that a lot of us complain about and talk about. Right now it's time that we give back. Right now, it's time that Muslims take to the streets in large numbers to show the same solidarity for the freedom of expression, for the freedom of conscience and in doing so, genuinely, truthfully acknowledge what is wrong with our scripture (ph), what is wrong with the morality that we were brought up in.

So Maajid we agree but I think we have a long way to go, but before we get there we've really, really need to defend the values of what our soul is made of which is a freedom of expression.

Nawaz: If I would to see that...

COOPER: I'd love to really do an hour with both of you and others as well. Maajid Nawaz, I appreciate you being on, Ayaan Hirsi Ali as well. Again, we'll surely have a longer conversation on this because it's an important one.

Up next, more on our breaking news, report from the French news agency AFP, one suspect has surrendered, two more still on the run. The manhunt apparently is still on. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey, welcome back I'm live in Paris. A lot has happened in our time on the air. Less than 24 hours after the massacre here in Paris, roughly about 14 or so hours. A police raid in the city of Reims reports said, the AFP that a suspect has turned himself in, authorities releasing now the photos of two other suspects still said to be on the run. We've learned from our Barbara Starr that one of them, we don't get to know which one was under French surveillance was known to American law enforcer and one of them has a criminal record here in France, what we know about.

Atika Shubert is in Reims where that police raid took place. What's the latest you're hearing on the ground there, Atika?

SHUBERT: Well, things seem to be winding down a bit but as you can see still an armed police presence in front of this building. What we do know is that they went in heavily armed at first. In fact there were sharp shooters nearby.

It was quite tense, they went in quickly for 15 minutes and then, not a single gun shot was fired and they brought in a forensics team. Now we don't know exactly what they were searching for or who the apartment belongs to but what we do know is that the youngest suspect, Hamdi Murad turns himself in.

Thus we understand come from this area. So, there maybe some connection there but French police are not confirming, and of course we have the photos of those two other suspects that are now out. Cherif and Said Kouachi, they are considered armed and dangerous and still very much on the loose and so, police still on the manhunt there. Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Atika Shubert, I appreciate the updates. We're going to take the tops (ph) of reporters who have been here in Paris covering events when the gunmen opened fire, their thought next, all the latest ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to bring everyone up to speed just on breaking news here in Paris. One is about suspects as we've been reporting in custody, two others at large and mass of manhunt obviously for them still underway. They're considered armed and dangerous. They are two brothers, one of whom is known to U.S. law enforcement according to Barbara Starr. Joining me again is CNN's Hala Gorani and Fred Pleitgen.

And this attack has really shaken this country and yet tonight in -- the thousands of people that we saw come out in the city of Paris and all throughout France and all throughout Europe, there were a lot of signs saying, we are not afraid.

GORANI: Right. And it was very moving. I mean, I grew up in Paris so it's a city I know well and of course when something hit the city that you consider home, there's something -- there's an emotional component to it. And in this case, seeing these images of very large crowds on a cold night, in the middle of the week kind of lighting up Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie in solidarity with the victims of the shootout today, of the shooting today not too far from here. It was something very -- there was something very emotional about it, right?

COOPER: Yeah.

PLEITGEN: And I think one of the interesting things is also, right now, of course, you do have an interesting situation here in France, a very volatile one. We have the rise of a right-wing here that's very anti-Islam.

At the same time, France does have a problem with radical Islamist. I mean, in Western Europe, in the east of the country that has the most people going to Syria and Iraq...

COOPER: Right.

PLEITGEN: ... to fight for ISIS. And at the same time, the first demos that took place, the impromptu demos were not against Islam. They were not right-wing demos, they were demos that try to bring people together and I was here. And people were saying, we're going to allow this to let us drift apart. And I think it's a very, very important message that people sent...

COOPER: It's also one of the things that Martin Boudot who took the video who I interviewed earlier was saying that if, you know, if the idea was to silence not only -- obviously this magazine is publication but to silence descent. It's had the opposite impact.

PLEITGEN: And it was going to fail in France wasn't it? Because of one thing lives here, it is descent isn't it?

GORANI: Yeah.

PLEITGEN: I mean, in magazines like this one have been doing it for such a very long time. They've been going into politicians, they've been even going against the Jewish community, the Christian community the Muslim community.

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: Yeah. It defends everybody and they had a very small circulation. I mean, it's not a magazine that people would pick up kind of like Le Monde or Figaro or something like that. But of course, now it's front and center because of the attack against its journalist. And it really is savage and I think that's really what's gotten people so upset because we've had instances of terrorist attacks in France but on a much smaller scale.

In this case if it against this target, it is a high-profile and the scale of 12 killed that shocked so many here.

COOPER: And really just in last couple of week, I mean, French President Francois Hollande came up forward and said that they had already foiled the number of other potential attacks. But we have seen in the last couple weeks in other parts of France, two people driving vehicles into crowds of civilians. I think some 23 people were injured in that and attacking a police station, someone wielding a knife and he was finally shot to death.

PLEITGEN: The country is definitely grappling with certainty something. An attack like this when something that people had been fearing for a very long time because they had seen this pattern of people from here going to Syria, going to other places and they knew that some of these people would come back, they've be battle hardened and then also they wouldn't have any problem killing because it's something that they've seen.

And these people coming back are saying that has been a fear for quite sometime. And as you said there have been several plots that have been foiled before but there have been a lot of people saying that they did believe that that's something...

COOPER: Well also -- and we just talk to Philip Mudd and former General Mark Hertling who both said that they believe, you know, they've been surprised this has not happened, this kind of attack is not happened in the United States. And among the intelligence community, this kind of attack with one or two individuals, you know, lightly armed with automatic weapons targeting a particular target.

GORANI: And the question is how do you police against this? I mean, you have to make a choice at some point. It's going to be interesting to see their response. Do you treat it as a criminal act and then move on as a society and not for instance increase the level of surveillance, of intelligence gathering that has gotten so many people upset with some of the recent revelation.

You know, that's going to be a question going forward for France and for so many other countries as well, is how do you respond to this. To stay who you are as a society, treat it as a crime which is what it is at very reprehensible and shocking one or do you change the way...

COOPER: Right.

GORANI: ... you organize yourself as a society against this perceived treat?

COOPER: We're obviously going to be covering all throughout this night and for the next many days as these two suspects we believe are still at large.

Hala Gorani, thank you. Fred Pleitgen as well.

Up next, what we know about the people's lives we're taking today, the ones who had been identified so far. We remember and honor the victims of this dark day in the City of Light next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: As we come up on the top of the hour, a thousand of French police and security forces are looking for two men. These two men, two brothers, one of them was already know to French and U.S. law enforcement before the deadly attack at a satirical weekly here in Paris, not far from where I'm standing.

Reports as well a third suspect has turned himself in. Of the 12 people killed, 6 have so far been identified. Mostly cartoonist, also of course killed two police officers, a maintenance worker and a guest of the magazine.

Tom Foreman tonight looks back and what we know about the victims so far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He was by far the best known editor at his tiny newspaper and rather than shy away from controversy, Stephane Charbonnier embraced it. Charlie Hebdo seemed relation offending everyone.

The night after his office was firebombed because the magazine pretended it has been guest-edited by the prophet Muhammad, Charbonnier was as blunt as always.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

FOREMAN: This is the act -- it is extremists.

And a year later, he had not backed down a bit.

STEPHANE CHARBONNIER, CHARLIE HEBDO EDITOR: We are provocative today. We will be provocative tomorrow. I do this because it's our job to draw about actuality.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About the news?

CHARBONNIER: About news, yeah. Our job is not to defend freedom of speech but without freedom of speech we are dead.

FOREMAN: But as police stood guard outside the newspaper's front door, there were many other victims who were well-known in their own right. Georges Wolinski was a big, louder than life cartoonist. One friend told CNN nothing was secret for him.

After today's attack, his daughter posted in Instagram message which is a photo in home office attached, Papa is gone, she wrote Not Wolinski. He was 80.

Bernard Verlhac drew cartoon under the pen name Tignous. Publish report say he was a contributor and a friend of his told CNN he was a great artist.

Jean Cabut was 76 and had his first illustrations published in Paris newspapers in 1954. He was credited with a drawing of controversial cartoon of the prophet Muhammad that was published in the newspaper in 2006.

In the wake of the murders, the deputy mayor of Paris called them all, "The most famous cartoonist in France" and he added, "It's a very big and deep shock for all of the press and for all of the world." Reflecting on his newspaper and his life's work, Stephane Charbonnier told the French newspaper Le Monde two years ago, "It may sound pompous but I'd rather die standing than live on my knees."

Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, that does it for us from Paris tonight. Our coverage obviously continues now with "CNN TONIGHT" and Don Lemon -- Don.