Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Gunman Takes Hostages at Paris Kosher Grocery Store

Aired January 09, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I talked to one security expert last night, French, who was saying in order to keep track of a tier 1 terror suspect in France, it can take as many as 20 to 25 people to give round-the-clock surveillance. Not only do you need a judge's permission and evidence, but you need a huge amount of resources, and for the shear volume of suspects that they have, you simply can't do that.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I mean they have -- the interior minister said there's up to a thousand, close to a thousand people have - they know have connections to the ISIS group in Syria and Iraq and this is not - may not be connected to ISIS at all. This may be al Qaeda in Yemen so that, you know, there's just a lot of disaffected young people out there. The message is attractive for one reason or another. The parents are distraught. We've done stories about the parents who, you know, have seen their children go off and attract to the message and they're absolutely distraught.

COOPER: It is the top of the hour and if you are just joining us I just want to bring you up to date on exactly what is happening. Good morning, I'm Anderson Cooper reporting live from Paris. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. Thanks very much for joining me.

A dramatic development here at this hour ongoing standoffs. Here's the latest on two hostage standoffs happening right now in France. We have two separate incidents playing out around Paris. Separate standoffs between gunmen and police and hostages reportedly caught in the middle in both incidents. On the left side of your screen, a police standoff with a gunman inside a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris. There are reports now of six hostages. On the right, the men accused of Wednesday's bloody sieged are now apparently pinned down by police inside a small print shop northeast of Paris. A local lawmaker says one of the gunmen told police negotiators they are ready to die as what they call martyrs. There is a lot to cover. We have correspondents obviously on the scene. The two scenes not that far apart, just over 25 miles, or 40 kilometers. Now, there is a new development as well. Police say that they think the gunman inside that grocery store is also the same person who shot and killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb early Thursday morning. Atika Shubert is standing by. Atika, explain where you are and what's the latest where you're seeing.

I want to go to - I want to go to - well, we just lost CNN's Atika Shubert. Obviously, this is a live development so things are coming and going. We have Jim Sciutto on the scene. Atika Shubert as well, and also Fred Pleitgen on the scene of that standoff. Not too far from the Charles de Gaulle Airport and in fact earlier in the day, at least two runways at Charles de Gaulle Airport were shut down just out of an abundance of caution because of the closeness of this town where the standoff is taking place. And the images you are seeing, the person speaking there on the bottom right here on the side of your screen, that's from French television, so they were taking some of these images - images from. Fred Pleitgen is now standing by for us. And again, for our viewers, Fred, who are just coming to us now at the top of the hour, let's just bring people up to date with exactly what we know about what's happening inside that printing shop and how these terror suspects have ended up there.

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Anderson, the printing shop is about 400 yards in that direction right there. What you have in between me and the printing shop is a police headquarters that they've set up here which is right around -- over there. It's a makeshift headquarters. There are hundreds of police officers on the street here. What happened was that these suspects around 10:00 a.m. this morning apparently came into this village, they commandeered a car. Remember that we were talking yesterday when we were on the yesterday, we were talking about how the police operation was centering around the town of Reims (ph), which is about 90 miles north of Paris. Somehow they managed to get out of that police cordon, commandeer a vehicle, come down here and now are holed up in that print shop again 400 yards down the road.

What's going on is that the town here is in lockdown at this point in time. Citizens are being told to stay indoors. The schools were in lockdown as well, but what's going on right now is that apparently the schools are being evacuated. We just saw a bus full of school children pass us here at this roundabout right here. It seems as though one by one the authorities here are evacuating the schools. As you can see if we pan a little bit further, the area here is absolutely packed with police officers. So what they did, is they cornered these two suspects who are apparently holding one hostage at that print shop. They cornered them there. What they did then is they built up a ring to make sure that there's no way for these two people to escape.

What we do know, or what we've heard from a French official is that apparently at least at some point the police was in contact with these two hostage takers, with these two terrorists and that, in fact, they said that they wanted to die "as martyrs." Now, whether or not that is something that they really mean or whether or not that's something that they're just saying to sort of show off in some way, shape, or form we don't know. But we do know that this operation is going on. And what it is essentially right now, Anderson, is - it's a waiting game. We know that the police, and they've told us this, don't want to make any rash moves. They want to try and solve this thing without having to fire their weapons so at this point in time they're taking their time because they have these two people cornered, time is essentially on their side right now. They're hoping obviously for fatigue to set in with these two people and as I've said they've been in contact, it's unclear whether or not they are still in contact, whether or not they have regular contact, whether or not maybe there's a police officer somewhere within shooting distance. But at this point in time it appears as though they have the situation under control to a point where at least what they're doing is they are allowing the folks who live here a little bit more freedom of movement. They are allowing people to pick up their children from school, they are evacuating the schools, they are obviously trying to empty out the area around that business center where that print shop is located to make sure that they have free reign for any sort of operations they might have to-conduct here.

There was helicopters in the air for a very long time right now. That's not the case. That might also be due to the weather, it's pretty bad here at the moment, but we know that these two suspects are cornered in that print shop at this point in time and also might be interesting the operations at Charles de Gaulle Airport, there was some problems with that, there were two flights that had to abort landings here in the early stages of the operation, but right now it appears, though, there's no problems anymore at Charles de Gaulle Airport and right now the police again are waiting to see what happens next.

They are pushing the situation, they are at least at times apparently in contact with these two hostage takers, but they certainly want to try and solve this thing in some way, shape, or form that doesn't make matters even worse than they already have been over the past couple of days, Anderson.

COOPER: And Fred, I mean there's really only two ways that hostage situation can be resolved. It either - they either give up or I guess three ways, they gave up, police go in or these hostage takers end up just trying to kill themselves or trying to break out.

PLEITGEN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's the - pretty much the only two things. Either they give up and hand themselves into police, which is something, who knows whether or not they might do that. I mean as I've said, they've told one French official has been told that police was in touch with them and they said they wanted to die as martyrs, but we've seen over the past couple of days that at every point in time they have been trying to save their own lives, which started out with the incident at Charlie Hebdo at the - when they obviously shot those several cartoonists there, they made a get away from there, they ditched there to getaway car several times, they then went and hijacked a police station, I'm sorry, a service station, a gas station where they then got themselves food, got themselves gasoline, they then went on and hijacked another vehicle to make their way over here.

So everything that they've done at this point in time shows that at least in some way, shape, or form they do value their lives and they don't want this whole thing to end with their deaths at this point in time. Whether or not they change their minds, whether or not that changes, who knows? But at this point in time the French authorities at least appear to have some sort of hope that they can solve this thing without this being a bloodbath and that's why they're playing this waiting game. That's why they're waiting things out. And that's why they say and they have told us specifically this operation could take a very long time. They said it could take into the night, it could take well into the morning hours, it could take several days. They're waiting to see, but they are trying to solve this without any more lives being lost, Anderson.

COOPER: And again, I want to put both images on the screen, the incident that Fred Pleitgen is talking about and also now this other standoff that's happening in eastern Paris at this kosher supermarket. And Jim Bittermann, obviously, that is area is on lockdown as well. Actually, I think if we could bring that mic over for Jim. That area is obviously on lockdown as well. French anti-terror units. I mean, the French have -- their law enforcement is very capable, is very good. Their intelligence services are very good and have over the years been very good at infiltrating a lot of communities here and trying to gain as much information as they can. For instance, president, Francois Hollande, in fact, has said that they thwarted a number of potential terror attacks just in the last several weeks. There's obviously a high-level meeting going on right now that France's president, we're told, is at, meeting about these two ongoing situations. But this is a challenging thing for any police force.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and I mean, you know, from a political standpoint, this could be very damaging for President Hollande, he knows that. This morning he met with all the prefects (ph) of the departments, the France has a hundred departments, like states in France, and each one of the departments has a guy called the prefect, the top police officer in that department. They came into Paris at the invitation of the prime minister after this attack here at Charlie Hebdo and he briefed them this morning, the president, and he said "Look, we have to make sure that this country is safe and secure and that people can gather in a peaceful means and be secure." Probably thinking ahead towards Sunday because that's when we're going to see major demonstrations all across the country.

But, yeah, I think it's a major concern for when you have something like this going on what kind of a menace that is in terms of public opinion. I think public opinion could very quickly turn here not only against the president but against authorities in general.

COOPER: I want to bring in Claude - former French minister of the interior, he was in office during the 2012 attack involving Mohammed Merah, the al Qaeda jihadist who was suspected of killing seven people, Merah himself was later killed by police. Mr. Gueant, thank you so much for joining us. Two major standoffs right now unfolding. I'm wondering how - how did the Merah attacks shape the response of the French government for future terrorist incidents.

Mr. Minister, apparently we're having some audio trouble, we'll try to get back in with him. Again, though, I mean French law enforcement has great experience with this sort of thing, hostage negotiators are obviously on the scene in both in these incidents and have had some level of contact. What we don't know is what level of contact they've had or may have had with the hostage taker at the kosher supermarket.

BITTERMANN: One of the good reasons to talk to Claude Gueant is that he was the interior minister under Sarkozy and very likely had access to the files on these guys, in fact, because there the two Kouachi brothers were up in front of officials back then. I mean their dossiers were well known to police back then, especially younger one, who had been convicted and sentenced to jail. So he would have information about the -- these guys and about what they knew and certainly he was regarded here as a very tough figure in terms of his -- the way he was watching the terrorist groups, but also other groups, too, and kind of controversial in that regard because I think that the - he would may have had a little bit too strict.

COOPER: At this point, I mean French authorities believe that these two brothers have had some international experience. We know back in 2004/2005 the younger Kouachi brother, Cherif, was attempting to go to fight in Iraq. He had talked about actually targeting Jewish targets in France, in Paris, according to court documents, a local imam, a local - self-styled imam that he was working with, a cleric who was radical, actually said "No, don't do that here, go fight in Iraq." He was actually put on trial for that, served time for that. There are reports that it's possible that he went to Syria recently, those reports are unconfirmed so far by CNN. We had a French source on last night with very good access to French security forces who said he believes, according to his information, the younger brother, Kouachi brother, did travel to Syria at least for a short period of time in 2014 over the course of the summer and also Barbara Starr and others in the United States have reported that U.S. intelligence has been told by the French that the elderly Kouachi brother, Said, did travel to Yemen in order to receive some form of training.

BITTERMANN: The older brother, who we thought was kind of a follower up until this morning when, in fact, Barbara Starr did the reporting and discovered that according to U.S. sources that he'd been to Yemen and had been trained up in Yemen. So it looks like they both have thoroughly engaged in the jihadist struggle and it makes them I think just that much more dangerous. The younger brother was the one that was more out there. He was the guy who wanted to be the football player, the rap star, that sort of thing. The older brother was more in the background and lived not -- didn't live in Paris, lived over - Both of them are orphans, grew up in a foster home and it's kind of a tale of not a lot of success, about two people that wanted to make their mark somehow but didn't. Up until now.

COOPER: Joining me now is CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, also Sal Lifrieri, a former NYPD hostage negotiator. Sal, thanks very much for being with us. I'm really curious just to hear your perspective. To have two operations going on like this at the same time and to be dealing with people who talk about martyrdom. To be dealing with people who are believed to have already killed not only law enforcement officers but in the case of the Charlie Hebdo attack ten civilians as well. How do you go about this from a hostage negotiator standpoint?

SAL LIFRIERI, FORMER NYPD HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR: Well, I think the intelligence that you -- that's being garnered right now is sort of critical to understand what kind of training do they have, what's the playbook, basically, that they're looking at that they were reading off of. You know, we talk about them going to Yemen, going to Syria or getting some type of training. You know, it's going to be important to know just how serious was that training because that's going to give you an indication of what you're dealing with at each individual scene. And then as far as the intelligence operations from the scene itself, it's very critical as far as the amount of information that you're going to garner from the conversations, the brothers may be having. That's something that if I was on the scene I would be really interested in knowing the relationship between the brothers, who's the lead, who's the backup. And is there an opportunity to maybe get between the two of them?

COOPER: So, that's something as a negotiator you would want to try to understand, the actual kind of dynamics of the brother's relationship and you would try to use that as a negotiator?

LIFRIERI: I think that's something that they have - that they will be looking at. Understand who's the person that they are actually getting to talk to, was that the younger brother, is that the older brother, what was the training that they may have had? What are the comments that are being made? There seems to be some conflict from between the brothers when you look at the situation yesterday when the -- one of the brothers yelled to the other one "we don't kill women." So there seems to be some form of conversation between them and some uncertainty as to how they want to handle it. The meet up today with the salesman at the front of the store and the comment that was apparently associated with them was that we don't want to kill hostages. And we don't want to harm hostages or witnesses. So, you know, there's a lot of things that are coming both ways on this that it's very difficult sitting on the sidelines trying to understand what's actually going on. I think that's -- we're missing a key element of intelligence of what's happening from the scene.

COOPER: Yeah, there's certainly a lot we do not know and it's important to acknowledge that, and Sal, for our viewers who don't realize, one of the things that Sal was talking about, the comment of one of the brothers reportedly made while in the midst of the Charlie Hebdo killings, was he yelled to the other brother "we don't kill women." And, of course, that actually turned out not to be the case, at least one woman was killed inside the office of Charlie Hebdo and we certainly know that a French policewoman was killed on Thursday morning believed to be by the suspect you're seeing on the left-hand side of your screen, a man described as being of North African descent.

There had also been local media reports that based on French police sources that the police had taken into custody two people related to the suspect in the killing of the French policewoman. Is that something -- I would assume that's something that during this ongoing hostage situation French police would try to utilize the fact that they have these two people who are related to this person, whether to talk to this person or to use that as some sort of leverage.

LIFRIERI: Well, you also want to get a source of intelligence from them as well and understanding of what they've been up to, maybe who the support network is. You know, you can utilize that contact to be able to identify the conversations maybe areas of communications that you want to have or further conversations that you're going to have with them. You know, you want to understand more about those relationships they may have with that person. Is that something that's going to be useful? Is that something where maybe you can offer up that they'll talk to that particular person? You know, there are a ton of different dynamics and different things that are -- that would occur. But having those two and being able to have conversations with them is a phenomenal source of intelligence that the hostage team member would engage those people in.

COOPER: And Tom Fuentes, I mean law enforcement has to be prepared for any possibility in incidents like this. Even these suspects attempting to break out of the areas where they are in. Law enforcement has to be -- we saw in Australia with the hostage standoff there in that coffee shop when a shot rang out inside, law enforcement moved in, SWAT teams moved in within really a matter of seconds and they have to be basically on, you know, ready to go at any second for hours and hours and hours. That's got to be an extremely stressful thing, an extremely difficult thing to stay on point like that given the length of time these things can draw out for.

TOM FUENTES, CNN ANALYST: That's true, Anderson. And one of the things the commanders will be planning for is the rotation of people. And what would normally be happening here is you'll have an inner perimeter with the SWAT teams very close, in a position to do a rescue attempt if they hear shots fired and the commander orders it. But you'll have other SWAT teams will be somewhere nearby, they'll have the architectural drawings of the building, they'll be looking at whether there's back doors, entrances from above, below, front, back and they'll be rehearsing, they'll tape it out in some location and practice who will go in, what the fields of fire will be and how they'll execute a rescue if the attempt to rescue is ordered. So the commanders having been in these situation many times, the on scene commanders will have additional commanders come out to help them. They'll rotate. If this ends up going for several days in the past you want it to go. The longer this goes the more likely the hostage taker forms a bond with the hostages themselves and then is less likely to want to kill them if they were ever likely to kill them in the first place. I mean they've already killed the people in cold blood without the slightest hesitation, so why suddenly they would have this wave of being humanitarian is questionable, if it's legitimate or not. Normally you try to make these things last to form that bond and save the hostages.

COOPER: I want to bring our viewers in the United States and around the world who are watching right now, at CNN International, up to speed on exactly of these - both of these standoffs happening right now in France.

We've got two separate incidents playing out around Paris right now. Separate standoffs between gunmen and police and hostages reportedly caught in the middle of both. In the left-hand side, police standoff with the gunmen inside a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris. There are reports of six hostages. On the right, the men accused of Wednesday's bloody siege now apparently pinned down by police inside a small print shop northeast of Paris. A local lawmaker says one of the gunmen told police negotiators they are ready to die as so called martyrs.

I want to bring in Claude Gueant, the former French Minister of the Interior. Mr. Minister, thank you very much for joining us. First of all, your thoughts as you see both of these standoffs happening right now. Mr. Minister, can you hear us?

GUEANT: Yes, I hear you.

COOPER: OK, what are your thoughts as you watch law enforcement trying to deal with these two standoffs happening simultaneously?

GUEANT: The sound is very bad. I couldn't understand your question. It's very windy around here, you know.

COOPER: OK, we'll come back and try to organize. I want to bring in Hala Gorani and Jim Bittermann who are standing by. Again, this is an extremely unusual situation to have two incidents like this happening right now. And unclear exactly -- there's a lot we don't know. We don't know whether this gunman in the kosher supermarket, whether in fact he was the third terrorist who took part in the "Charlie Hebdo" attack. Logic would seem to indicate that it was but that is simply something we don't know, it's not confirmed.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And I think they're not telling us because they don't want to reveal anything. We've seen this all along that we've been the last to learn things because their first concern is freeing the hostages, capturing the suspects, and as a consequence they don't want to give any information away that might give a clue to the suspects. Especially if anybody by any chance is watching CNN or any of the other networks. The fact is they won't release anything to the press that may endanger their operations. We had that yesterday, for example, when they were talking about the area they were searching, they said they were searching in Picardi, which is a region of France that's hundreds of -- maybe thousands of square miles. It's like saying they were searching - saying like they were searching Montana. We really didn't have an idea where they were looking.

COOPER: Which is why, I mean, anybody hiding, if these guys are on the run, hiding out, they're clearly going to be watching local French media reports to try to find out as much as they can about where police are searching.

HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Also what's interesting is if this shooter -- and it appears this is the case -- that yesterday's shooter that ended in the death of this unfortunate policewoman in Monrouge (ph) is the same individual who's now holding hostages at this kosher supermarket, that means that there was 24 hours in this big city, this big French western capital where you had a shooter on the loose who just gunned down a police officer in broad daylight. So this is a situation now in Paris the likes of which I don't think this city has ever seen. And Jim, you were saying this before. The second point here, also, which is something that people have brought up, including experts in hostage negotiations, is that now security forces are becoming very stretched. They have two extremely volatile ongoing hostage crises that are unfolding simultaneously. What we were - This expert was telling us earlier on CNN, there's one hostage negotiator per situation. They have about 50 people per crisis. They don't want to overextend. They don't want too many people making decisions at the same time and confusing the situation. So they have their work cut out for them. COOPER: And if this goes on for a while, you know, they'll have to find replacements for everybody. The people that are guarding the perimeter out in northeastern France (ph), they'll have to find replacements, and like you said, staying on point, that will become more and more difficult as we get into a day -- second day, third day and we saw that with (inaudible) down in Toulouse, when they finally went in during the shootout basically I think at the end of their rope essentially.

GORANI: One thing you have in a supermarket, you have food, you have something to drink. I mean, this is one of the issues for hostage takers is when they end up in a situation where they're isolated and you're able to negotiate with them --

COOPER: You're able to bargain for items for food.

GORANI: For items. And here they're in a supermarket so that might change the calculation just a bit.

COOPER: I want to bring in Senator Angus King from Maine, he is a member of the Senate Select Intelligence and Armed Services Committee. Good morning, Senator, thanks very much for being with us. How concerned are you about this style attack in the United States? I've talked to a number of former intelligence officials, people with backgrounds with the CIA as well as the FBI, all of whom expressed concerns about Mumbai style attacks or I guess we should now say Paris-style attacks inside the U.S.

SEN. ANGUS KING, I-MAINE: I think, Anderson, that is the real question because we've gotten very good at foiling large-scale complex plots like September 11. We have intelligence, the counterterrorism center, FBI, police, a lot of good communication between our agencies over here. But this kind is much, much harder. One of the realities, Anderson, is there's something like 15,000 foreign fighters from all over the world who have gone into the Middle East, into Syria and Iraq in recent years ,and now are filtering back into their countries. Those are the people that it's a cauldron of jihadi training that's going on. The West Point of extremism, and that's the concern. So, yes, the answer is it's got to be of concern here. Self- radicalization is also a problem. It's a very complex issue that involves communication within the community, law enforcement, counterintelligence. But I wish I could sit here and look at you and say nothing like this is going to happen here, I don't think I can make that guarantee.

COOPER: Senator King, I appreciate you joining us on what is a very fast-moving and a very fast-developing story. I want to go to Jim Sciutto, who is standing by outside the kosher supermarket right now. We haven't heard from Jim over the last few minutes, and I want to get an update on the situation. Jim, what are you seeing, what are you hearing is the latest?

SCIUTTO: Well, Anderson, since the last time we spoke less than an hour ago, they have moved us back two or three times from a safer distance from where the kosher shop. You can see over my left shoulder here two of the tactical police here who have been doing crowd control and constantly widening the security cordon around this kosher market. Just for orientation, it's between the two buildings you can see there, and then across the street where the standoff is taking place, and it's there where earlier we were describing and you saw some images of all those tactical teams lined up. Some of them within ten yards of the front door, crouching down behind a concrete wall, in position to go in. No indication they're going in right away. But certainly in position to go in if necessary if they get the call to do so.

Some other new information just in the last several moments as well, Anderson. The police union here In Paris confirming that the hostage taker here at the kosher market in eastern Paris has said and has demanded the freedom, the liberation of the two other hostage takers, the gunmen believed responsible for the attack on "Charlie Hebdo," the magazine, so he, at least, establishing a connection between him and the two other hostage takers here. Police have not said definitively that there is an operational connection, that they planned this together, but there is clearly some solidarity between them as this attacker here asking that they be freed.

One other note I can add as well, this kosher market here has become a warning for other similar shops and businesses around Paris, we're being told all kosher markets around the city have now closed down as precaution in case they become targets for the possibility of other attackers or copycat attackers as well.