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Amanpour
Mourning and Tributes for Paris Victims; Should Anti-Terror Laws Be Tightened?; Imagine a World
Aired January 13, 2015 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): The French parliament singing the national anthem today to remember the 17 victims of this week's
terror attacks.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Tonight as funerals are held in Paris and in Jerusalem amidst a rising tide of anti-Semitism, the second part of my
interview with the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
MANUEL VALLS, FRENCH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Without the Jews, France is no longer France. It's the oldest community. They have
been French citizens since the French Revolution.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): And combating terror -- is a radical shakeup coming? The E.U.'s anti-terror chief will join me live.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
There was grief in Jerusalem and in France today. Nations and families mourned for those lost in the three-day terrorist spree in Paris
last week. President Francois Hollande has posthumously given the nation's highest civilian award, the Legend d'Honneur, as a somber and solemn
farewell to the three police officers who were gunned down in the course of duty while across the capital, the surviving members of "Charlie Hebdo"
staff, in tears at the Sunday unity rally, were working to put out 3 million copies of their magazine, which will hit the newsstands tomorrow.
The cartoonist Luz drew this week's cover. He escaped death on Wednesday only because it was his birthday and he was late coming to work.
Alongside colleagues today, he spoke at an emotional press conference.
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RENALD LUZIER, "CHARLIE HEBDO" CARTOONIST (through translator): The terrorists who attacked us, they want hatred between people. They also
want to stir up hatred with the people they believe to be defending.
And, yes, yes, yes. I am Charlie. I am a policeman. I am a Jew. I am a Muslim. And I'm also an atheist.
Merci.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Overcome by emotion as the journalists meet the public for the first time since the attacks, they pledged that "Charlie
Hebdo" would go on. But they admitted in what form is still unclear.
While in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and thousands of fellow Israelis honored the four French Jewish men who were murdered at the
kosher supermarket in Paris.
"This is now how we wanted to welcome you to Israel," the president said.
Now French Jews feel even more threatened. A disturbing rise of anti- Semitism has seen more French Jews move to Israel last year than from any other country and now many more could follow. Tonight in the second part
of my interview with the prime minister, Manuel Valls, I asked whether he could make the Jewish community feel safe enough to stay.
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VALLS (through translator): The Jews are one of the targets of this anti-Semitism. There are people on the extreme right but also this comes
from the suburbs. It doesn't give rise to attacks. But there are gestures. People are insulted. Many Jews are afraid and what happened two
years ago in Toulouse and Montauban, they're afraid. And we must reassure them.
I repeat; as Claude Lanzmann said, remembering that he made a marvelous film on the Holocaust, without the Jews, France is no longer
France. It's the oldest community. They have been French citizens since the French Revolution.
So we should reassure them by protecting them, taking the measures that we have done, which are unprecedented, protecting schools and
synagogues and Jewish institutions generally. And we have to protect mosques as well because they have been attacked. We need to reassure them
and we must combat this new kind of anti-Semitism with resolve.
But the position of Jews in France is to be in France. For me, I'm absolutely convinced about it and I shall fight it to the very end. I am
married to a musician who is Jewish. She has family in the United States. I could hardly imagine anything else apart from her living in her home
country.
The Jews of France fought in the First World War for their country. And the vile laws against them were passed during the time of
collaboration. But we will continue this battle. It has to be conducted in France, but in all countries as well. The Brussels Jewish Museum was
attacked. That is the struggle, that we must continue throughout the world.
Some months ago people were crying out, "Death to Jews" in the manifestation of the extreme right in Paris. Yesterday, by contrast,
millions of French people came out saying, "We are all policemen. We are all Charlie. We are all Jews." As you said, that's the right response.
But we need to be very vigilant.
AMANPOUR: Prime Minister, you have a social and cultural problem here in France, perhaps more than many other European countries. You have a
massive Muslim minority, many of whom are in the cites, in the outer city slums with no hope, disenfranchised, alienated and ripe for radicalization.
Do you not also have to change your internal culture and politics?
VALLS (through translator): Well, I would point out that the great majority of our Muslim citizens absolutely condemn what has happened.
AMANPOUR: Of course. But the -- those who will be radicalized are right there.
VALLS (through translator): But I distinguish between these French people and the minority, which may tip over into radicalism. We saw this.
We're combating it in Mali, in Iraq and other countries, and we've been fighting against it. But it's true that there is an identity crisis in
France. But it's true in many other countries in Northern Europe, in the U.K., in Belgium and elsewhere.
It is a challenge. But this goes back to schooling, to the organization of Islam in our countries, to how Muslims speak out and how
the Islamic countries react and speak out.
They were very well represented during the rally. So France intervene in Mali to save that country from a terrorist threat. And it is a Muslim
country. We should not make a mistake that one of the policemen killed was of Maghreb original. He was a Muslim and he was in the police. He was
serving the state.
And one of the heroes who made it possible to save the lives of many hostages, he was from Mali, too, and of Muslim religion. And it's so often
said by these mayors of the suburbs that we need to bring people to the values of the republic, to secularism. But there is a feeling of belonging
which is necessary. It will take time but it requires that we be intransigent. We cannot accept for example that young people should give a
V sign for victory in order to celebrate this terrorist act.
And I can't agree with the anti-Semitic words and statements on the Internet or things said in public. So it is a major struggle for Europe
because all these problems we see in Great Britain, people who cause this problem in Britain, came from homegrown minorities. So we have to defend
citizenship and reform thinking about it.
But we need to be careful to bring in everyone.
AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Manuel Valls, thank you very much for joining me tonight.
VALLS: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: Thank you.
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AMANPOUR: Now amid the horror of what happened in France, European anti-terror chiefs are fast-tracking new ways to try to combat it. And
we'll talk about that urgent task after a break.
But first, cartoonists in newspapers and magazines around the world are weighing in still. "The New Yorker" listed the traditional French
values of liberte, egalite and fraternite and added levity. And they depicted a cartoonist, who, like an errant school child, has been given 100
lines, "Do not draw a prophet. Do not draw a prophet."
When we come back, the ever torturous task of ratcheting up security while preserving civil liberties.
Next, the E.U.'s anti-terror chief standing by for us in Brussels.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
As many of the terror victims are laid to rest and mourned today, one of the big questions: why did security fail so spectacularly this time?
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): New video shows the Kouachi brothers firing at police as they made their getaway from the "Charlie Hebdo" magazine offices
last Wednesday.
Here in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron wants new laws to break into terrorist communications online after the head of MI-5
warned last week that mass casualty attacks are certainly being planned against the West.
Joining me live now from Brussels is the E.U. anti-terror coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove.
Welcome and thanks for joining me this evening. You have been in Paris; there was a summit of all sorts of anti-terror chiefs from around
Europe and the United States.
This mobilization that we've seen, these dramatic scenes, the mourning and the pledges to do better, can you do better?
GILLES DE KERCHOVE, E.U. COUNTERTERROR COORDINATOR: Indeed. And beside the tragic event, you mentioned rightly that it was a sort of game-
changer in two respects.
First, a very strong political will by minister of interior of 12 member states, the U.S. attorney general, the number 2 of DHS as well as
the Canadian minister and the Commissioner for Home Affairs in Europe.
And this is important because we have to crystallize and build on this based on political will to go ahead.
The second aspect, which makes me rather optimistic, is the huge reaction of civil society. We've never had that before. We've had some
sort of campaign with "Not in My Name," of that sort, but never on that scale, having people from different faiths, religions, nationalities
standing together to defend values.
It is something on which we have to build.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you directly, because you mentioned political will. And striking while the iron is hot, so to speak. The prime minister
of Great Britain, David Cameron, has said that if a Tory government is elected in again, as a matter of priority, he will try to deny terrorists
and would-be terrorists any online space for communication.
What exactly does that mean?
And do you think there's the will to yet again tackle this tricky task of basically surveilling and spying on people's communications?
DE KERCHOVE: I haven't heard and nor read what the British prime minister said. If he mentioned something about the need to get access and
be able to intercept some telecommunication, which is more and more difficult because of the policy of the big companies, Google and Microsoft,
as a consequence of the Snowden leak and encrypt more and more telecommunication, it is a very valid point.
And to be honest, this is a point that I made myself at the meeting of the ministers. But I'm sure that -- and when you follow the British
politics and the way they address, there is much more subtle, much more balanced. It caused a very wide range of policy from prevent to respond.
And that's what we tried to do in Europe. It's not one single issue like interception. Of course we need more interception. We need more
data. But we need to work on the root causes surrounding radicalization and address them.
AMANPOUR: This all comes in the wake or around the speech that the head of domestic intelligence here, the MI-5 chief, warning just
practically the day of the Paris attacks that already scores of Syria related mass casualty attacks have been averted but there most definitely
are planning more and it's very likely that it will happen.
What are you fast-tracking now when you look at urgent requirements right now in intelligence and security?
DE KERCHOVE: As you rightly pointed out, Andrew Parker does not speak often. So if he says something, it is to be listened to very seriously.
And there is indeed still a threat, a serious threat. And it comes from Syria and Iraq. And that's why we have been working the last two years
very hard to define more effective policy. It's about internal-external border control, improving the track at the external border because we have
to detect and stop would-be jihadists much more effectively.
It's about aviation security. It's also maximizing the instrument that we have developed over the years like Europol, like the Schengen
information system, and it's also investing more on prevent.
As I've said before, if you look at the recent case in France, Mohammed Merah; Mehdi Nemmouche, who killed five Jews in Brussels or four
Jews in Brussels and now Coulibaly, all these three people have been -- got radicalized in prison.
So prison remains sadly a major incubator of radicalization.
And finally Internet, we start a dialogue with the big companies -- Google, Twitter, Facebook -- because it's a Twitter war. It's something we
have to address both by removing illegal content -- it's difficult because there is always a challenge of freedom of speech and on the other hand you
have to use Internet proactively to counter the single narrative of Al Qaeda, of Daish, and send counter messages.
AMANPOUR: What about freedom of movement? Obviously there's a huge amount of talk about how this woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, was able to get
from France to Turkey, you know, watched as she's busy shopping and then a few days later, after spending a few days in Turkey, manages to get across
Syria.
There's obviously a big battle over this between the Turkish authorities and European authorities.
But how on Earth could that have happened?
DE KERCHOVE: I would say because we are missing one instrument and that's at the core of the discussion in Paris. We really need to do what
Americans have done after 9/11 to set what they call a passenger name record, PNR, which is one of the few tools which allows the police to
detect suspicious travel. When base services have not been able, based on intelligence, to detect that someone was planning to go abroad for the
jihad. And this is a very difficult issue because it raises concern of privacy. And European parliament, for the time being, is a bit reluctant.
So part of the work now is try to convince the European parliament that it's very much needed and that we can strike a fair balance between
security and privacy in respect to the PNR.
AMANPOUR: Well, do you think you'll get it and beyond the PNR, you know, we now know the Schengen rules, which is you can pretty much travel
across quite a few European countries without presenting so much as an ID.
Does that have to be changed?
DE KERCHOVE: Not at all. A country that -- a PNR, I think we will get it at the end of the day. It's -- we have to work and it's now in the
hands of the experts. But I'm confident and I'm sure that the heads of state and government when they meet on the 12th of February will once again
call for an adoption of a PNR legislation this year.
As to your other question, Schengen is part of the solution. It's not part of the problem. It's often mentioned as a problem because there is no
control at internal border. But you know, it's one of the best achievement of the E.U. integration process. People are fond (ph) of that. I would
not like myself to be controlled when I cross the border between Belgium and France. But Schengen, at the same time, it's a huge enterprise by
which we try to define what we call the flanking measures, control at external border, more information sharing among the spooks, among the
police, the law enforcement agency. And swifter judicial cooperation.
One of the issues in Paris was whether to ask the commission to come with a legislation to amend what we call the Schengen Bola (ph) code, which
does not allow, for the time being, systematic check on the E.U. citizens when they cross the external border.
I think that will be decided as well by heads of state and government in February, which is, I think, a very important move if we want to secure
a free movement zone inside Schengen.
AMANPOUR: And just a few days before the attack in France, you had talked about a special cell to be able to intercept communications and to
be able to try to get a grip on some of the things we've been talking about.
Is that going to be fast-tracked? What is that about? What do you put all those 18 million euros towards?
DE KERCHOVE: Indeed, and it's not interception on the country. It's more on a positive side. We would like to help member states to define a
more strategic communication because a lot of this is about ideology. A lot needs to be counter and deconstruct.
It is, at the end of the day, the hijacking of Islam for terrorist purposes. It's really a distortion. And we need more voices. Paris was a
huge opportunity to send a very strong signal. But we need to build on this. And I would be myself very much in favor of pan-European initiative
and linking up several initiatives on Internet, like imam online in the U.K. We need to have more voices. And that's what this cell is about.
It's really expert in communication to advise the member states.
AMANPOUR: And just sum up for us, if you would. We've heard so much. We've obviously seen what happened in France, but even before that we had
heard so many warnings about the terror threat from Iraq and Syria.
What do you feel and how could you describe right now the terror threat?
DE KERCHOVE: I would disappoint you because I'm not the right person to tell you that, first because there is no threat at the level of the
European Union. It depends on member states to in order. And first, you should ask Andrew Parker and the Andrew Parker in France and in Belgium and
in the Netherlands.
I first take what Andrew said very seriously. I think that the threat remains serious and especially as a consequence of the development in Syria
and Iraq. There you have Daish, ISIL, an organization with a very sophisticated media branch. And at the same time, you have an Al Qaeda
which feel a bit in the corner and which might want to mount attack somewhere in the West to show that they are still relevant. And that's
what I think Andrew Parker has in mind. They may mount something at some stage. And so we have -- as I heard the prime minister of France said
earlier in your program, we have to remain serious and very vigilant.
AMANPOUR: And it is still at high alert in France and around Europe and the West.
Thank you so much, Gilles de Kerchove, for joining us. Thank you very much indeed.
Now we have focused a great deal of course on the danger, the violence and the absurdity of Islamic extremism.
But absurdity can be found in plenty of corners of other religions, too.
Take a look at this picture in an orthodox Jewish newspaper in Israel. They would have their readers believe that no women took part in Sunday's
world leaders march in Paris. With an airbrush worthy of the Soviet era, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel; the Jordanian queen, Rania; the
Danish prime minister, Thorning-Schmidt Helle (sic) have simply disappeared.
Meantime in Saudi Arabia, we hear an apparently prominent Muslim scholar has issued a fatwa on making snowmen or snow camels. The second
hottest country in the world doesn't get much snow, but when it does, no fun will be had. The government has yet to comment on this.
But the government is continuing its brutal punishment of this blogger. He's already received the first 50 of 1,000 lashes for insulting
Islam, 950 still to go.
It is the extreme and violent version of Islam that the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris lambasted in our interview yesterday.
Now after a break, we return to "Charlie Hebdo," an epic printing underway after this.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where an attack on the freedom of the press creates a media printing of epic proportions. On
Wednesday, "Charlie Hebdo" will boost its circulation from a weekly 60,000 to 3 million copies in 16 languages and 25 countries, including Turkey,
where "Hebdo's" editor-in-chief says secularism is under attack.
It's been a mammoth collaborative effort between colleagues and the French and global press, along with Google and the French government, the
fittingly named French newspaper, "Liberacion," has been hosting "Charlie Hebdo's" surviving staff as it puts out this edition with the Prophet
Muhammad on the cover, carrying a message of compassion, which is common to all religions, a message the editor-in-chief of "Charlie Hebdo" made clear
at a press conference earlier today.
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GERARD BRIARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "CHARLIE HEBDO" (through translator): He's so much nicer than the Muhammad of -- that is wrongly shown by the
people who fired the shots. Our Muhammad is a much nicer guy.
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AMANPOUR: And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always watch the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on
Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
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