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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Al Qaeda Claims Attack; Neighbor Suspicious of Kouachi Brothers

Aired January 14, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

A major question today, how do you battle a dead terrorist? More than three years after the American Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, his comrades there are calling him the mastermind of the "Charlie Hebdo" massacre in Paris. The Yemeni branch of al Qaeda is declaring in a video that Cherif and Said Kouachi, quote, "accepted and fulfilled," end quote, the orders they received from al Awlaki, who, and I will quote again, "threatens the west both in his life and after his martyrdom." A spokesman is calling it, quote, "a blessing."

And thus we can infer from that a coincidence that an associate of Cherif Kouachi killed a Paris policewoman and four hostages in a kosher market the same week. That man, Amedy Coulibaly, has pledged his allegiance to ISIS, not al Qaeda, ISIS. So there's that confusion.

It's safe to say "Charlie Hebdo" is more popular than ever. Parisians lined up before dawn to buy their copies of the first edition to come out after the deaths of 12 people at the magazine's offices one week ago today. A print run of 3 million, up from the usual 60,000, is now expected to rise to 5 million copies over the next week.

There is so much to talk about and so I bring in our senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who's reporting today from Beirut. And here with me live in New York, CNN global affairs analyst and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel James Reese.

Nick, if I can begin with you. If you could tell me a little bit more about this connection to Anwar al Awlaki and the time that either one or both of these brothers may have spent in Yemen. And then, of course, this three-year divide between all of that. What more are we knowing about this?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's really what investigators must be desperate to work out now. Yes, it's possible that if Anwar al Awlaki, who's said to have had some sort of operational command of the Kouachi brothers' attack on the "Charlie Hebdo" magazine, if he died - as we know, he died in 2011 and left the plot in an adequately resourced or a targeted fashion, then it could be the brothers sat down and did nothing effectively as a sleeper cell for three years. But investigators will be keen to work out if there were further contacts between Yemen and then, if they got further cache. Now, we know that, according to Barbara Starr's sources, perhaps

$20,000 -- as much as $20,000 may have been brought back by one of the brothers, Cherif, as he traveled back from Yemen in 2011. We know the older brother, Said, potentially went there first in 2009, briefly was the roommate of the underwear bomber who targeted the plane heading to Detroit in 2009. Went in and out of the country there for a period of time according to witnesses and then maybe let his brother use his passport to go in, in 2011.

So a lot of confusion about exactly what the activities these brothers are said to have got up to in Yemen, translated to in Paris. When they carried out the Paris attacks, they were clear they were working for al Qaeda in Yemen, referenced Awlaki himself. The key question I think investigators and intelligence agencies now will want to answer, when (ph) trying to work out quite how currently operational that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group may be in Europe is, did that three years pass with minimal contact or did they continually get resources and planning from Yemen before last week's attacks?

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: So, Colonel Reese, if you could just dovetail off of that. They were dropped fairly recently, those brothers, from surveillance. Which, for many of us hearing the details that we've been hearing is so astounding. But is that the notion that we should now, I mean, attach to the gap -- the three years between the time they spent with al Awlaki and the actual attack itself?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE, U.S. ARMY DELTA FORCE (RET.): Well, Ashleigh, remember, you know, these insurgencies are intent-based organizations, all right. So the intent is, hey, we need you to kill these cartoonists. That's their mission statement. When they do it, how they do it, they don't get told that. So it's an intent based operation.

BANFIELD: But this was slopping. I mean this was - this was a mess all the way along. Nothing looked particularly skilled in terms of the way they got away. And effectively they didn't even know there was not a person named "Charlie Hebdo." They came in asking, where is Charlie? I mean that's why I don't understand why three years.

REESE: Well, and, again, I -- I'll disagree with it a little bit. It's - it was not -- I think it was planned pretty well. Some - though when, at first contact, in any type of operation, that first contact, things go awry. So these things started out well. They had some great training. They practiced during the years. Yes, correct, they went up -- they had to ask where the building was. That could all be part of the ampness (ph) and the nervousness they are. But this is what terror cells do. And I guarantee you someone else was told to do the same thing. So there were other cells that were in place that were told to do the same thing. These guys execute. And that's how they keep their operational security.

BANFIELD: Nick, does anyone think that it's possible that these brothers waited out the surveillance or that they were smart enough to know that they were actually under this kind of surveillance or smart enough to know that the surveillance had actually ended? WALSH: Well, it's tough to work on the timing really. Clearly, in

2011, if Cherif was using his brother's passport, that was all because his documents were impounded, but they also clearly knew they were being watched then. Maybe they felt a few years later it could have expired. It's very hard to tell the motivation and logic behind their timing.

But another key point, Ashleigh, is Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman in the kosher grocery store. Now, he claimed he was working on behalf of ISIS and pledged allegiance to them in a video he left behind, discovered after his death in that grocery store. But he knew the brothers on the street. So here you have this interesting notion of two jihadi organizations, al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula behind the Kouachi brothers it seems, or they claim, and ISIS, who potentially rival each other often in northern Syria or on the battlefield in terms of competing often for recruits in the jihadi world. But as also here, those men on the streets, on the street level in Paris, knew each other and decided perhaps to launch cooperative operations. Although the al Qaeda statement today suggests it really was coincidence and good timing that Coulibaly launched his attack, along with the Kouachi brothers, at the same time.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And his attack seemed so incredibly random. I mean it was a traffic stop, a traffic accident, these police happened to be there. And, you know, Coulibaly just shot the policewoman and her partner there on the street.

Colonel, maybe you could weigh in on the notion of what this responsibility claim will mean for those who are making it. Does it mean that the Americans or any coalition partners will all of a sudden open up a whole new front, or at least start redirecting a whole lot more resources and a whole lot more ordinates and drone strikes (INAUDIBLE) towards those in Yemen?

REESE: I don't think so.

BANFIELD: Why?

REESE: I think what you're going to see right now is status quo. Yemen is a sovereign nation. They have their own issues right now between - they've got a Shia insurgency going on inside -

BANFIELD: It was a sovereign nation when a drone strike took out al Awlaki as well.

REESE: It was, but that's been - that's status quo. We'll continue to do targeting. We'll look at putting, you know, predators in there and drone strikes in there. But you're not going to see us launching a special operations raid in there or putting boots on the ground.

BANFIELD: OK, so may not in that area, but what about this part? When you have al Qaeda now coming in and potentially trying to seize the limelight from ISIS, is there a way to capitalize on perhaps what may be a brewing battle between those groups? Could the Americans and the coalition partners somehow psychologically figure out a way to get those two groups to kill each other?

REESE: Yes, there is. And what I believe what we can do is, is you've got a lot of egos involved here. And what we can do - and I say we, the coalition of the willing here, can conduct information operations, psychological operations to draw wedges between these leaderships and get them to argue, which then allows the people who are trying to make a decision, who am I going with here, maybe they start saying, maybe these guys don't really know what they're talking about.

BANFIELD: It's fascinating stuff. Thank you so much, colonel. It's always good to have your expertise.

REESE: You're welcome.

BANFIELD: And Nick Paton Walsh, thank you for your reporting, live from Beirut as well this morning.

Could the Kouachi brothers have been stopped months before their violent attack on the magazine "Charlie Hebdo" and the offices there? A neighbor of the brothers was so worried about what he could hear them doing and saying next door, he actually broke in to take a look around their apartment. And what he found inside, simply terrifying. So, why didn't he say anything? The details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Got some news just in from Capitol Hill. And this is good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it. The House has just approved a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which some people would say is great news. The problem is, attached to it, and here's where some would say it's bad news, attached to is a blocking of the president's executive action on immigration, specifically that $40 billion proposal that includes measures for border security, cyber security and the Secret Service and also - and this is probably the issue that will have a lot of people up in arms -- that deferred action for childhood arrivals, that program that the president created in 2012 to protect about 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, the childhood arrivals who had come here with their parents.

So that's the House. But next up is the Senate. And, of course, as you'll know by now, after the election in November, the Senate is Republican controlled. But if the Senate doesn't have 60 votes, it won't be able to block a filibuster. So keep your eyes tuned to Capitol Hill. But right now, so far, a lot of progress in the Republican action there against what the president had done with pen just months ago.

We're now also learning more about the terrorists in last week's attack at "Charlie Hebdo" through the neighbors who actually lived in the same building as the killers did. Cherif and Said Kouachi shared an apartment about a half-hour's drive from Paris. Two months before they actually did their murderous act on the magazine, a neighbor in the building told a Canadian newspaper called "The Globe and Mail," that the Kouachi brothers were loudly reciting the Koran at all hours. And she and her husband were so concerned and so alarmed about the behavior they were hearing next door, that the husband and a friend actually decided to break in to the apartment. And once they did, what they found inside was simply stunning.

Mark MacKinnon is a senior international correspondent for that newspaper, "The Globe and Mail," and he spoke with that woman through a crack in the door. He joins me live now.

Mark, your story of what this woman told you, and specifically perhaps the manner in which she told you, is really surprising. Can you just characterize, first of all, what it is she told you that her husband and the plumber who helped him break in next door, what they found in that apartment?

MARK MACKINNON, SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT., "THE GLOBE AND MAIL" (via telephone): Well, what she said was that they -- her husband, having grown suspicious of the neighbor because of the behavior that you cite and the fact that there was - there were actually four people who shared the apartment next door. There were Said and Cherif Kouachi, a third person, who she said was a brother-in-law, and a woman who was later arrested by police at that address. And she said that when her husband and - with the help of a plumber, realized that they -- their neighbors had gone out, they decided to break in in a way they hoped would leave no trace, just to confirm their suspicions about the neighbors.

And inside she - now, she wasn't detailed about the type of weapons. She said - she calls it a cache of arms. And her husband was obviously very alarmed about this but they were caught by the brothers inside the apartment who they returned home and she said shoved her husband around, threw him against the fridge, she demonstrated with her hands and was quite sort of demonstrative about the actions that were taken, and basically terrified them into silence. Two months later, of course, we saw how those weapons ended up being used.

BANFIELD: And I supposed terrified them into silence. If they were roughed up by their - you know, the Kouachis who caught them, caught them, you know, snooping through the apartment and seeing the weapons, what did the woman tell you about her fears for her security now? I suppose the fact that she wouldn't even open the door for you and spoke through a crack probably speaks volumes. But why is she so in fear now that the two brothers are dead?

MACKINNON: Well, I was speaking to her on Thursday. This is about 24 hours after the attack that she told me this. And so at this point the two brothers were still at large. And she kept saying to me, they're going to kill me just for talking to you. They're going to kill me just for talking to you. And, you know, she opened the door a little bit and was out in the hallway. She spoke only in Arabic, which perhaps tells you about the - sort of one of the integration problems that France has with its Muslim community. She's a Tunisian immigrant herself.

And this - you know, at the same time, when you talk not just to the neighbors, but to others in the neighborhood about the - about the brothers, there were other reasons for concern. The president of the local mosque related an anecdote to me in which the older brother, Said, had gotten up and basically had a confrontation with the imam during Friday prayers after the imam had said -- suggested that Muslims register to vote in the last French election. And he - and Said Kouachi said, that's not your role as the imam to tell people to vote. And to challenge an imam in the middle of Friday prayers, you can imagine it would require - you know, it's a very remarkable act. And he said the brothers left peacefully on that account, but - you know, the entire neighborhood seemed to be aware that they were in a radical direction that was at odds with the French state. But no one wanted to talk to police. And when I asked about that, they - the question - the answer was, we'd rather deal with it within the community. Obviously that didn't really work.

BANFIELD: Well, you know, radical, at odds, the entire neighborhood knowing, all if these things are so distressing. And I think that word barely scratches the surface knowing now what we know about what they actually did possibly with those weapons that the woman's husband saw. Do you know if there's just intense regret? That there's a change of heart and feeling about keeping silent about these kinds of things, or is this just par for the course?

MACKINNON: I understand that other journalists who have gone back to the same address have been told by the husband, who's now answering the door rather than the wife at the neighbor's place, that, you know, he's saying, oh, you know, this is not - this is not what happened. And you can imagine at this moment he's probably worried that, you know, that there will be legal implications to having known about his neighbors having a cache of arms and not having reported that. So, obviously, there's regret on that level.

But I think the problem, you know, it speaks to the facts that the Muslim community in the (INAUDIBLE), the suburbs of Paris, doesn't see the police as a protector or as a potential ally. They see them as an adversary, as someone that's supervising them and against them. And so there's -- there just simply weren't those links, even 24 hours after the attack on "Charlie Hebdo" last Thursday, you know, I was surprised that the police hadn't spoken to this neighbor yet, the police hadn't gone to the mosque and spoken to the head of the local Muslim association. In both cases, I was there before the police, which I found really strange.

BANFIELD: And knowing how murderous and ruthless those two brothers were, perhaps it's no surprise that they were able to inflict the kind of terror in those neighbors as well. Mark, great reporting and just a remarkable tale. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

MACKINNON: Thank you.

BANFIELD: Mark MacKinnon from "The Globe and Mail" in Canada.

The attack in Paris is already affecting a high-profile terror case here in the United States. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, is on trial right now. And the France attack has now prompted his lawyer to ask the judge in that case to make some pretty significant changes. We'll tell you what they are and what the judge had to say about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: We have some breaking news we want to bring to you. And it has to do with some images. Images that heretofore we did not know existed inside that kosher deli in Paris where so many hostages were held for the better part of a day last weekend before the associate of the Kouachi brothers, Amedy Coulibaly, shot four of them dead and police were able to storm the deli and shoot him dead and rescue the surviving hostages.

Let me just get you up to speed on what's happening. These are apparently from surveillance video. And we're processing the photos right now. As you can understand, with a scene like that, it takes some pretty skilled editing and some careful observation before we can release those. So that's what we're in the process of doing right now. But to get you the news about what those images actually show, let me just sort of go down the list and let you know.

Apparently the killer appears to be holding a handgun in one of the images, which is different than some of the weaponry that we saw the Kouachi brothers use. They were using automatic weapons to carry out their murderous attacks. Coulibaly also appears to be wearing the fatigues and what seems to be a bulletproof vest, very similar to what the Kouachis were wearing during their murders at the "Charlie Hebdo" magazine business.

The employees of the market are apparently seen taking down the surveillance cameras. I can imagine that's because they may have been ordered to do so by the killer. There are apparently - and this is graphic, and I apologize -- there are apparently bodies that are on the floor of the market. There is a baby stroller that's abandoned in the aisle. Perhaps not a surprise, as that was one of the reports. And some of the photographs of the surviving hostages afterwards showed a man who was clutching what appeared to be about a two-year-old toddler as he ran from that grocery.

And there was also another report of a woman who was with her baby in the freezer who had been saved by a Muslim worker at the grocery. She'd been hidden with her baby and some other hostages in the freezer.

There are also people who are huddled together in the aisles, presumably the hostages. One can only imagine who were probably privy to the murders of those people who were lying on the floor of the grocery. And there was also, understandably, groceries and items littering the floor of the Hypercashen (ph) market east - in the east side of Paris. So some pretty remarkable images that are coming in to our offices.

We -- like I said, we are processing those pictures and we will have them for you just as soon as they're ready for air and it shouldn't be much longer. So do stay with us for that. But some pretty terrifying images still to emerge of that murderous, murderous series of days in Paris in which so many people lost their lives.

When we come back, more on this. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: If you're just joining us, our breaking news is pretty alarming. Some images that have come in to CNN. And as we're processing the images, you may be very familiar with what the outside view of the attack on the Hypercashen (ph) market in east Paris looked like. It was that hostage-taking at the kosher grocery in which it was surrounded by French forces for hours upon hours because Amedy Coulibaly, who was inside, had held, at the time, anywhere from six- plus hostages inside. It turned out 10 people had escaped as he blew in and began firing on grocery store customers. Fifteen, however, were held. Four people were murdered. And their bodies were on the floor.

We watched almost live as this played out in east Paris. But now we're finding out that there are images from inside. So these are the images you're probably familiar with. Hypercashen, the store in which they actually ended up charging in simultaneously with the operation that was happening with the Kouachi brothers north of Paris.