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Israel Prime Minister Visits Kosher Market; Boko Haram Pulls Off Deadly Attack; Said Kouachi Lived With Underwear Bomber

Aired January 12, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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

ANA NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you look - that was a, frankly, a chilling message and just something that I think was very moving for the entire world to see -

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It gave you goosebumps.

NAVARRO: To see those two together. And I think John is absolutely right. Look, you know, if it wasn't President Obama that was going to go, there's this view of recognizable U.S. faces who could have gone. Even, you know, you could have sent former presidents to go. You could have sent cabinet secretaries. And we did have a cabinet secretary there. We sent a U.S. ambassador, who I'm sure is doing a wonderful job for the United States and France but nobody knows who he is or what he looks like, but he was there.

COSTELLO: She.

NAVARRO: Or she.

COSTELLO: It's a she.

NAVARRO: Well, OK, that make the point even, you know, even more so. And I just think that part is where this White House has said so many times that they're not into symbolism, that they're not into the theatrics, we've heard President Obama say. Well, OK. But you know what, it's part of the job. It comes with the territory. And you've got two more years, so can we please just accept the fact that symbolism and theatrics is part of being president and it's important for the American people and for the world to see the United States be part of these massive type of messages.

COSTELLO: And the other thing that I thought of, John, from a military standpoint, right, we need Europe's help in fighting ISIS. And it's in many - and I know that we're getting help, but I'm sure we want more help. So by being there, wouldn't that have been a smart move strategically?

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I don't think the symbolism, which is important as Ana said here, is going to have impact on NATO or coalitions against ISIS. It does underscore how much our European allies have a direct stake in this fight, how there's a (INAUDIBLE) threat, whether it's ISIS or al Qaeda or any of these different organizations that western civilization needs to take -- and all civilization needs to play offense and be more united. The symbolic cost is significant. Ultimately, it's small and the security concerns are a factor. And I don't think it's going to impact the military coalitions. What it should do is redouble the efforts of our allies to take this threat seriously, both at home and abroad.

COSTELLO: I hope so. Hala Gorani, Ana Navarro, John Avlon, thanks to all of you. I appreciate it.

GORANI: Thank you.

AVLON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the Israel prime minister pays a visit to the kosher market, where four Jewish victims lost their lives. The call he's issuing to other Jews in Paris who might be thinking about leaving France after last week's attacks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: And good morning. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Carol Costello in New York. Hala Gorani is live in Paris, outside the offices of "Charlie Hebdo" magazine, where a memorial just keeps getting bigger for the victims gunned down in last week's terror attack.

Show us more, Hala.

HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All right. Welcome back. I understand I'm on air there. I just want to show our viewers a little bit of what is going on at the "Charlie Hebdo" headquarters. This, of course, is the site of that terrible attack on Wednesday that left 12 people dead, four of France's most prominent cartoonists, one building maintenance employee and that police officer, Mohammed - Ahmed Merabet, I should say, who was gunned down in cold blood not too far from here.

Let's show you a little bit - several days later, just how much is still going on right here. This is the makeshift memorial that popped up in the immediate aftermath of that attack. And here (speaking foreign language). I was asking people, why are they coming still here several days after. (speaking foreign language). And she says this location will remain mythical, she believes, for them. And you could see there a tear rolling down her cheek. People still very emotional as well.

Let me show you a little bit of what we're seeing here. We have candles. We have signs here. We have even cartoon drawings. Of course, this is a sign of respect to the cartoonists who themselves lost their lives because they drew things that extremists found offensive and thought, therefore, that they were legitimate targets because they defended these extremists, what they believed to be their faith.

So, Carol, you're seeing here as well the mountain and mountain of flowers. And one layer is coming on top of the next layer. And at some point I do wonder how long this will remain a memorial for the victims. At some point one has to imagine it will be cleared but not yet. Not yet, Carol. The road is still sealed off and people are still coming here, even now, several days later, in their dozens. Back to you, Carol, in the studio.

COSTELLO: So touching. What about the magazine itself, Hala? Oh, I think I've lost Hala. All right. Hala Gorani reporting live from Paris. We'll get back to her shortly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in Paris. Earlier he visited the kosher market where four Jewish men were gunned down Friday before security forces stormed the store and killed the gunmen. All four victims will be laid to rest tomorrow in Israel. Netanyahu has made it clear that Jews who want to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed. This comes as many French Jews are determined to stand strong despite what happened. Atika Shubert has more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sunday in Paris and the city tries to return to normal life. But the bullet holes are still there for all to see at the kosher supermarket. The makeshift memorial nearby continues to grow. Heavily armed police keep a watchful eye, removing suspicious packages, alert and on guard.

On Sunday morning, the Jewish community gathered here for prayers.

SHUBERT (on camera): Now it's been like this all day. People have been streaming in to the site from across all different communities to bring flowers, light candles, but also with this message, (speaking French), it means "I am a Jew" or "I am Jewish." It's the French rallying cry for people here to show support for those Jewish victims specifically targeted in this attack.

SHUBERT (voice-over): Israeli politicians also came. Naftali Bennett, the controversial right-wing leader of the Jewish home party, shook hands with Jewish Parisians at the scene, comforting those who came to mourn with an offer to immigrate to Israel.

NAFTALI BENNETT, ISRAELI MINISTER OF ECONOMY: If they decide to make (INAUDIBLE), to come to Israel, we will accept them and with -- and embrace them. If they decide to stay here, we will continue to make sure that they're secure. The world has to wake up.

SHUBERT: Many French Jews we spoke with are now seriously considering that offer. This man told us the Jewish community is no longer safe. The attacks against Jews are now sporadic and completely irregular. It's on the weekends, every day, there are anti-Semitic attacks against the Jews in France and across Europe.

This woman told us, I envisage that I will leave for Israel when I have a good moment because, unfortunately now, here, I'm afraid.

France's chief rabbi says leaving France is an individual choice but it won't solve the problem for the whole community.

HAIM KORSIA, CHIEF RABBI OF FRANCE: We have an (INAUDIBLE) but my problem is a problem in France. It's a - we have a (INAUDIBLE) that's an old (ph) one. But I think we need to say it again, this (INAUDIBLE) happy like a Jewish in France. So we need to be in France where Jewish people can be happy and I think we can do that together only when we are together (INAUDIBLE) France.

SHUBERT: On Sunday, Parisians rallied in solidarity with their Jewish neighbors. But this week's targeted attack may convince some French Jews that France is no long a safe place to call home.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, with all eyes on Paris, Boko Haram pulls off one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history. The brutal tactics shocking the world as Nic Robertson reports live from Nigeria, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As world leaders gather against terrorism in Paris, Boko Haram sinks to new levels in Nigeria. Militants carrying out their deadliest massacre to date. More than 2,000 people are feared dead. The nation's latest attack happening Saturday. Explosives strapped to the chest of a 10-year-old girl were detonated at a crowded marketplace. Twenty were killed. And although no one has claimed responsibility, Boko Haram is the main suspect. CNN's Nic Robertson is following this story for us from Nigeria.

Hi, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hey, Carol.

If that wasn't bad enough, on Saturday, one young girl being used as an unwitting suicide bomber. In the next main town down the highway, Boko Haram apparently did the same tactic using another two young girl on Sunday, just yesterday, killing three people, wounding another 40 plus people in another crowded market. Quite simply sending the young girls in with explosives strapped to their bodies and then detonating the explosives remotely.

But what has everyone concern here is the fact that Boko Haram has now overrun the last significant military outpost and a whole town close to the border with Chad. Thirty thousand people put to flight. One eyewitness telling us that hundreds of Boko Haram gunmen came into the town after overrunning the military checkpoint. He said the local militia tried to form up and fend off against Boko Haram. They couldn't do it.

This witness hid out in the bushes at the side of his house for three days, witnessing the slaughter, the killings, the looting from the stores and the market, the fires that Boko Haram torched the - torched the houses and shops with in the town. Then they moved on. And this eyewitness then fled on foot and he said, for a distance of about three miles he was passing body after body after body, and his estimate was about 3,000, as many as 3,000 people killed, Carol. So we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of the details of what has happened in this strategically important border town of Baga.

Carol?

COSTELLO: I can't stop thinking of these little girls, Nic. Do we know any more about them?

ROBERTSON: We don't. There have been many eyewitness accounts that have said that they've looked at these girls and they've seen fear in their eyes. On Sunday, when there were two girls sent up as suicide bombers, when the first girl exploded, an eyewitness said he saw the other girl and she looked startled, and afraid, and fearful, and then suddenly her explosive vest blew up, killing her and injuring people around her.

So, unwilling victims, not suicide bombers in so much as they would go in there intending to kill themselves, just unwitting and perhaps very unwilling vehicles, human bombs here. This is what Boko Haram is apparently doing, the depravity they're stepping to. And

what local security officials are telling us is that Boko Haram are raiding local smaller villages, killing off the older men and women, and rounding up young boys and girls to use them in this way, Carol.

COSTELLO: It's just evil. Nic Robertson reporting live for us this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, he's one of the men responsible for the deadly Paris attack, but before that Said Kouachi lived briefly in an apartment in Yemen with a man who would also make headlines for his own terror attempt. We'll tell you who his roommate was and take you inside their shared apartment next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Before Said Kouachi and the Underwear Bomber were thrust into the international spotlight for their terrorism ties, the two men actually shared an apartment for a brief time five years ago in Yemen, and now CNN is getting an exclusive look at their former home. Senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh joins me now from Beirut with that.

Good morning.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Carol, you know, as investigators piece this together, it is remarkable the number of times that Said Kouachi and his brother would have come up on the radar and remarkable most really that one of the most famous well-known attempted bombers of the last decade, the man known as the Underwear Bomber, was, according to a man we caught up with, our producer caught up with in Sana'a, the roommate of Said Kouachi for a number of weeks.

WALSH (voice-over): During multiple alleged trips to Yemen, Said Kouachi, the older of two brothers behind the Paris attacks, made some extraordinarily high-profile friends it is said. A local witness tells CNN he briefly roomed with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who tried to blow up a plane to Detroit in December 2009. These winding streets Kouachi studied Arabic grammar at a local

institute and sometimes played football with children. This is where in 2011 Kouachi met this researcher, Muhammad al Kipsy (ph).

MUHAMMAD AL KIPSY, RESEARCHER: And he was the only adult (INAUDIBLE). And he lived at that place.

WALSH: He shows our producer the institute lodgings where he says the Paris gunman and the Underwear Bomber shared an apartment for a week or two, probably in 2009. The lodgings are closed to us, but Kipsy remembers what Kouachi told him about the Underwear Bomber.

KIPSY: That Farouk was a very quiet person and he rarely talked to people.

WALSH: Those former lodgings are now office space, the school closed down. Despite this link to one of the most famous attempted bombers of the last decade, somehow quiet Kouachi later fell off the French intelligence radar.

KIPSY: He was a very nice guy, very cheerful, polite.

WALSH: One Yemeni official tells CNN Kouachi met al Qaeda loyalists in Sana'a, the streets of the capital perhaps holding so many secrets about how the Paris attackers learned their brutality.

WALSH (on camera): A Yemini security official. Yes, it's odd.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, Nick. I understand you have breaking news about the Kouachi brothers.

WALSH: Carlo, we have some breaking news we're hearing from - - Yes, Carol, some breaking news we're hearing from a senior Yemini security official that Cherif Kouachi, the younger of the two, was in Yemen at the same time as his brother, Said. That's thought to have been, says this official, from a period of about three months starting in April 2011. We do know Said was supposed to be in country at that time too.

We don't know if they were together during that period of time. This official, I should point out Yemeni officials, you know, it's a failed state there (ph). They are seemingly struggling to put together the full picture. This official says that they believe Cherif did not go to that language school, the one you just saw in that report there in Sana'a. Instead they think Cherif headed north to Sa`dah, that's an area far away, two hour's drive or so from the capital of Sana'a, and attended an Islamic school near there which they think was a couple of hours drive away itself from some al Qaeda affiliated training camps. That's the theory they're pursuing at the moment.

The official also says they've heard from Western allies recently the theory that perhaps the brothers went to Oman from France together and then illegally crossed into Yemen. They're not so sure about the illegal crossing because they think Cherif and Said were legally entering Yemen the whole time. But a very messy picture inside Yemen, but increasingly clear both brothers were in there for a protracted period of time.

Carol?

COSTELLO: So, the Kouachi brothers were there, so was the Underwear Bomber. I mean, it's certainly possible that a whole group of people around that same time were being trained in various places in Yemen?

WALSH: Well, that's certainly the extrapolation I'm sure that Western investigators are making now. Remember, there's a good two plus years difference between when the Underwear Bomber was in Yemen and meeting Said Kouachi and then when it's thought Cherif joined his brother there. Said was said to be going in and out for a period of about two years or so. So, the question the French courts are going to be asking themselves is, given the high profile nature of his roommates, given the fact the brothers were there together, given the fact that Cherif was facing convictions, even jail time for previous plots in the past, how come these guys suddenly fell off the radar? Remember, too, there are suggestions from a French source close to the French security service that Cherif in fact may have gone to Syria at some point late last year. A lot of what they would call noise here, a lot of suggestions why they should have been more heavily followed, but of course they weren't with those tragic and horrifying results.

Carol?

COSTELLO: Nick Paton Walsh, reporting live for us from Beirut. Thanks so much. Joining me now CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, he's in Washington, and my colleague Hala Gorani who is in Paris. Welcome to both of you.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Tom, what do you make of this latest information?

FUENTES: Well, Carol, a quick history lesson. Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber, was a Nigerian. He went to school in London and was actually radicalized while attending school in London. He first went to Yemen in 2004 and 2005 to that school for Arabic studies, which is a legitimate school. He then went back there later and then we think at that time made it up to a training facility where he learned how to work with the explosive material TETEM, which was the ingredient he had in that underwear bomb that failed to detonate on Christmas day 2009, landing on the flight into Detroit from Amsamsterdam.

So, the fact that one of these guys, or both, knew him or met him before 2009, were even roommates with him, they could have just been attending that school at that time. The language we don't know for sure if they all were ever together at the training camp. Now, the Underwear Bomber cooperated with the FBI on his arrest in Detroit and said that he was one of 20 other students that attended the bomb making terrorist school with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but he didn't know the names of all of them. People were there and not supposed to know the name of the others so that they couldn't reveal them if they were apprehended or the plot was foiled. So, that's why it really wouldn't have come up until later, or somebody else talking about it to put them together. It wouldn't have come up at the time because the authorities would not have known who all of the students were that actually made it up to the Yemeni training camp.

COSTELLO: So, Hala, the Kouachi brothers, we now know they were together in Yemen. We know that French authorities had them on a radar for a time. Why did they drop off the radar in France?

GORANI: That's a good question and the answer might be that there really aren't enough people in this country to keep tabs on every single person that may be -- whether they are absolutely active in a sort of chatter kind of way online or via text messages, that there may not be the kind of personnel that you need to keep tabs on absolutely everybody.

The other possibility is that they were communicating off the grid. In other words, that perhaps they were communicating through their girlfriends and wives. This is something that the Paris prosecutor and the interior minister said, that there had been 500 phone calls between the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly and the wife of Sherif Kouachi. So, is it possible that they either used their cell phones to communicate or that the wives communicated, one with the other, and therefore they did not alert authorities to a potential plot being discussed or planned. These are two of the explanations.

But, either way, these are intelligence failures because these young men traveled to the Middle East, it appears in 2011 possibly before that, so why, if they're going to these highly sensitive areas and coming back and they're entering legally, that is one of the theories, had they not been tracked and kept tabs on? That's going to be a big question.

COSTELLO: Big question. I have to leave it there. Tom Fuentes, Hala Gorani, thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.