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ISIS Situation Static in Syria; Protests Shut Down Highway; Gunmen's Mentor; Social Media and Terrorism; Imam Denounces "Radical Islam", Extremism; Authorities Investigation Al Qaeda Claim of Responsibility; Brothers in Blood and Terrorism

Aired January 15, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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


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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Despite months of punishing air strikes by coalition forces, the U.S.-led operation against ISIS might not be working. According to reports, the terrorist group appears to be gaining ground in Syria with one-third of that country now under ISIS's influence.

Since August, coalition forces have carried out about 800 air strikes. Despite military efforts in Syria, one expert tells "The Daily Beast" ISIS has not lost any key terrain.

So let's dig deeper with our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr. Barbara, what are you hearing from Pentagon officials?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. I just finished talkking to a senior official here, and he says their information, the U.S. military believes the situation in Syria with ISIS-controlled territory has been fairly static since November. But what the military is emphasizing is these air strikes were never meant to solve the ISIS problem in Syria.

And the Pentagon, to be clear, has been saying that right since the beginning. Air strikes are not the solution, they say. The other part of the strategy, of course, is to arm the moderate Syrian opposition, get them up and running, get them fighting ISIS, the Assad regime, dozens of other rebel groups.

Syria, a very complicated situation on the ground because, unlike over in Iraq, you don't have any intelligence really from the ground. You're not working with a country that has asked you in there. The airstrikes that have been in Syria, there have been a lot of them. But it's not about taking territory back. It's much more about hitting ISIS supply lines, ISIS targets that might be trying to influence across the border in Iraq. So, two very different situations. The Pentagon emphasizing the airstrikes, in their view, were never meant to solve the problem.

Carol.

COSTELLO: As far as arming those moderate rebels and training them, do we know how that operation is progressing? STARR: Well, just the very beginning stages are in the works of trying

to vet people, you know, make sure that they legitimately, if you will, are moderate rebels. That if they do train them, if they give them arms, they're not going to just go back and take up arms in some other fashion, if you will, that they really will go back and fight.

This is a very complicated situation as well. There are a number of countries in the region that have agreed to host the training of these rebel forces. They, obviously, can't do it inside Syria. But, you know, I don't think anybody in the Pentagon is overly cheerful about any of this. It will take a good, long while, they say months, if not years. It will be very slow going.

ISIS -- interesting, across the border in Iraq, the feeling is that ISIS may be a little more stagnant. The feeling is that ISIS now has extended its areas so much, indeed, that they have to consolidate what they have. They have to worry about governing and controlling the areas they have because if they can't do that, ISIS, too, will have opposition to spring up. So it, you know, it really just couldn't get more complicated.

COSTELLO: Right. Barbara Starr reporting live from the Pentagon this morning. Thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, he is the common link between she bomber Richard Reid, 9/11's Zacarias Moussaoui, and now two of the Paris gunmen. But who is Djamel Beghal? We'll tell you next.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: All right, we have a situation to tell you about that's ongoing in Boston. On Interstate 93, right through the downtown area, you can see police officials on the scene and emergency personnel. Apparently some protestors, about 30 of them, from Black Lives Matter, chained themselves to I guess construction barrels that were in the street and police actually had to cut the chains to remove the protestors, but they did effectively shut down part of Interstate 93.

With me on the phone from the Massachusetts State Police, Lieutenant Daniel Richard.

Welcome, sir.

LT. DANIEL RICHARD, MASSACHUSETTS STATE POLICE (via telephone): Good morning.

COSTELLO: Is the situation under control now?

RICHARD: It is. Well, it's becoming more under control than it was over the past two hours. We had two separate locations on I-93, which is the major interstate that runs through the city of Boston, and, you know, thousands of people use it every day to get to work. In Medford and in Milton we had protesters shut down traffic.

COSTELLO: And describe to me how they were protesting.

RICHARD: The individuals that we dealt with this morning unloaded heavy barrels into the roadway, attached themselves to the barrels and they also attached themselves to each other and crossed across the highway, bringing traffic to a standstill.

COSTELLO: Did they chain themselves together?

RICHARD: They -- I don't -- I'm not exactly sure how they've -- what they've attached themselves with. I believe it may have been zip ties. However, the investigation will prove out exactly how they attached themselves. It was quite an effort to get them separated and to get them off the highway. As a matter of fact, we just got word that the last protester was taken from the northbound side in Milton.

COSTELLO: Can you tell me a little bit about the efforts to remove them.

RICHARD: The efforts to remove them was a coordinated effort between the Massachusetts State Police, our local partners in law enforcement and the fire departments. Special equipment had to be brought in, in order to get the protesters out safely from the barrels that they had attached themselves to in the different attachment devices that they were utilizing out in the roadway. So it took quite some time to get through there and get a safe resolution to this incident where nobody, no rescuers or protesters, were injured.

COSTELLO: Were there arrests, sir?

RICHARD: There were arrests. Currently we have 17 arrests out of the Medford scene and between six and eight arrests out of Milton. The numbers are not totally confirmed yet, but there have been -- those people have been arrested and will be arraigned later today.

COSTELLO: And, you know, it's one thing to peacefully protest, but this is another thing, isn't it?

RICHARD: Well, it certainly is. It is a protest that endangers not only the protesters, and that -- it endangers the thousands of people that use that roadway to come to work or to enter into the city of Boston, a major thoroughfare. So public safety is our major concern and we were able to alleviate this particular problem in a safe manner where there have been no injuries.

COSTELLO: All right, Lieutenant Richard Daniel -- or, Daniel Richard, I'm sorry. Lieutenant Daniel Richard, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

RICHARD: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: He was once known as the premiere al Qaeda recruiter in Europe, and now we're learning that Djamel Beghal, shown here with Cherif Kouachi in 210 surveillance photos, not only served as a mentor to Kouachi and the kosher market gunmen, Amedy Coulibaly, he was also on the radar of U.S. authorities shortly before the September 11th attacks. CNN's Deborah Feyerick has been digging into this. What more can you tell us?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what's so interesting about this man is that he really bridges the pre and post 9/11. He came to the attention of the CIA director at the time, George Tennant, who was briefed on him in July of 2001, just two months before the September 11th attacks. And the reason he hit the CIA radar is because of the planned attack to bomb a U.S. embassy in Paris. That information was then passed on to the president in a daily briefing. Again, this was at a time when al Qaeda chatter was really at its highest.

Beghal helped radicalize two of the Paris terrorists. And this is sort of the link and the bridge that is -- that makes him important. But he also was connected to the Finsbury mosque. And the Finsbury mosque, he knew shoe bomber Richard Reid, 9/11 Zacarias Moussaoui, as well as his own mentor, a cleric by the name of Abu Hamza al-Masri, who, coincidentally, was sentenced to a life term in New York City on Friday, the day the Paris sieges took place.

More importantly, tracking, he was in prison for a matter of months -- I'm sorry, for a matter of years, but then he was released. It's unclear whether U.S. authorities ever knew that he was released. But within a year, he was back in prison for another plot. This one in which he helped -- he recruited both Coulibaly and Kouachi. So it really shows sort of the continuum. It shows just how important he is within the spectrum of al Qaeda and the way the old al Qaeda and the new al Qaeda are really one in the same. It's just an evolution. You don't go to Afghanistan to train anymore because Yemen's the place where you get your training.

COSTELLO: Well, it's interesting because we all thought al Qaeda had been so weakened it wasn't able to do these things anymore. Everyone was concentrating on ISIS, right?

FEYERICK: Right. Well, that's exactly right. But what ends up happening is that they simply sort of pop up. They're like these pop- up stores. It just depends. You may lose your center, but you pop up everywhere, you know, in different places, in different forms. And the theory is still the same.

And, interestingly, you mention ISIS. You're absolutely right, Coulibaly identified with ISIS, not al Qaeda. So the brother Kouachi and Coulibaly may have sort of talked about doing sort of this simultaneous attack, even though for Coulibaly it wasn't sanctioned by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it's just -- they're all the same is what a lot of experts and security sort of people I'm speaking to saying. It's important to know who you're dealing with. But in the end, the ideology is the same and the goals of these groups are also similar.

COSTELLO: Deborah Feyerick, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Social media sites have been a key recruiting tool for both al Qaeda and for ISIS, but they face a challenge from the U.S. State Department which has launched its own online campaign. The name, "Think Again, Turn Away." One tweet sent out yesterday by the State Department reads, "a picture's worth 1,000 words. No smiles for Iraqis living under ISIS rule, no joy, only fear #thinkagainturnaway." Another tweet says, "interesting fact, five Nobel Peace Prize winners since 2003 were Muslim, living testimony to true principles of Islam." The big question is, does this work? Joining me now, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom.

Welcome, imam.

IMAM MOHAMMAD ALI ELAHI, ISLAMIC HOUSE OF WISDOM: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being with me this morning. So the United States is trying to fight back with its own propaganda campaign online. Do you think that's effective?

ELAHI: Well, I wonder how serious our government and western governments in general in their dealing with ISIS. To be very close to Saudi Arabia, that is the source of ideology and energy of this Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram, al Qaeda and other criminals and not even to talk with the government and the nations that are fighting ISIS, like Syria, that lost more than 70,000 people just in 2014 out of these criminal terrorists. So we must be really serious and to take this matter with the governments and the nations that they are serious about fighting terrorism.

And, you know, unfortunately, it is a tough time for us as Muslim and for our faith of being targeted by two types of terrorism, the physical one, the criminals and the terrorist organizations and also the psychological terrorism of Islamaphobia, now they call it (INAUDIBLE) in Germany. And looks like these terrorists and these extremists, they are helping one another and they are very, very happy. They are making business for one another. They are making their markets popular.

And then the main target and the main victims here, we are the mainstream Muslims and our prophet and our faith. We are there to condemn folks (ph) (INAUDIBLE) recently Charlie magazine, though I disagree with the content of the cartoons and I believe that the freedom of speech and expression comes responsibility. But the crimes of ISIS and al Qaeda and other, Boko Haram, much worse than, you know, the problem of cartoons. So we don't need these guys. We need people like Martin Luther King.

As a matter of fact, this Sunday, Interfaith in Dearborn is coming to our mosque in order to honor the non-violence movement of Luther King because he represents the message of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. And we have something, somebody like him, in fact Ali al-Sistani in Iraq, and former president of Iran Khomeini (ph), and now President Rouhani, he brought the resolution of antiviolence and terrorism to the United Nation last year.

So really we need to deal with the serious people. We leave this story of all this conversion that you are already talking about. For Saudi Arabia, for the last 30 or 40 years, they have spent been billions and billions of dollars to promote their ideology. It's not Islam; it's just Rahabism (ph) and Salafism and it is a kind of sick mentality that says even building a snowman for fun for the kids considered blasphemy.

COSTELLO: Imam. Imam.

ELAHI: So we have to be careful about this.

COSTELLO: Imam, I'd like to center on how we can prevent the radicalization of young men and women here in the United States. What would be the most effective way to do that?

ELAHI: Well, it is to say there is no such thing as radical Islam. Islam is a religion of reason, a religion of peace, a religion of respect for human rights, religion of responsibility. And any mentality and any kind of teachings that are against human common sense, against peace, against ration rationality, against respect for human life and human property and human intellect and human integrity, it is against Islam -- and this is why we consider these guys, they're real enemies of Islam.

But unfortunately we don't receive the support from the world in our fight against terrorism. We need to provide more awareness and education to the families, to themselves. Unfortunately, many of these youth, they are unmosqued (ph), they don't come to the mosques. They learn all this sickness and all this poison and barbarism online from those terrorist organizations. And they are supported by our close allies, like Saudi Arabia.

COSTELLO: Right.

ELAHI: And this is really the problem that we have to make the right, political decision and let them know that that is not jihad: that is genocide in the name of jihad. They are doing a rape in the religion. They are --

COSTELLO: All right. I have to -- I have to leave it there. Imam Elahi, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it. I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: A protege of Osama bin Laden is claiming credit for the slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo offices eight days ago. The top al Qaeda leader in Yemen, Nasr ibn Ali al-Ansi calls the Kouachi brothers, who carried out that attack, heroes of Islam.

I want to head back to Paris and Jim Sciutto. He's in front of the Charlie Hebdo offices. Is it really possible that this plot was three years in the making and that al Qaeda in Yemen actually helped these two brothers plan it?

JIM SCUITTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It is possible, but there's a whole range of possibilities as to what degree, to what degree AQAP helped them plan. I've spoken to U.S. officials who say that it's still not clear that AQAP executed direct command and control. It is possible that they gave them some training, some funding, and then the freedom to pick the point in time, the place, and the target some years down the road. But sleeper cells have existed before. Their instructions could have

also been to lie low for a number of years so that you fall off the authorities' radar screens and then carry out the attack. It's still a question that U.S. intelligence certainly is seeking to answer. U.S. and French intelligence services both as well trying to determine if and how al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula communicated with the Kouachi brothers after one or both of them came back to France from Yemen in 2011.

Our Nick Paton Walsh tells us more now about the al Qaeda commander who is now seizing the spotlight.

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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nasr al-Ansi, age 39, before his ambitious claims today has trotted al Qaeda's warped globe. He once fought in Bosnia, one biography says, and then bin Laden apparently took notice of his military prowess when al-Ansi attended camps in Afghanistan at the height of the group's haven there under the Taliban in 1998.

Dispatching him to the Philippines to spread their toxic brand ahead of 9/11. But after that attack changed the world, he soon found himself detained back in his native Yemen -- it's unclear why -- for six months only. Afterwards, he seemed to have devoted years to study at an Islamic university there. Perhaps it was Yemen's turmoil that drew him back to jihad in 2011, fast becoming a senior figure, mostly seen addressing the camera at length and here giving military lessons.

In the last months, he's made three striking statements, some say to recast AQAP's image in the jihadi world where rival jihadists ISIS have risen in notoriety. He first berated the savage beheadings familiar to ISIS.

NASR AL-ANSI, SENIOR AL QAEDA IN YEMEN MEMBER (via translator): The prophet commanded us to benevolence in everything, even in killing. It is not from benevolence to record the way of killing or slaughtering and posting it for the people so the sons of the killed see it, or his daughters or relatives. This is among the ugliest of matters.

Obama made a decision that caused things to go in a completely different way than we wanted.

LUKE SUMMERS, BEHEADED ISIS HOSTAGE: I'm Luke Summers. I'm 33 years old. I was born --

WALSH: Secondly, he scolded Barack Obama's bid to use special forces to rescue American hostage Luke Summers, saying they sought a different outcome. And at the close of last year, in al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine, he called lone wolf attackers like the gunman who took over a Sydney cafe, the quote, "lions of Allah".

Today's claim a naked bid to associate the older brand of al Qaeda with the newest horror Europe is reeling from.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Beirut.

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SCIUTTO: U.S. officials are now examining the video in which AQAP claims credit for this attack. They say they think the video itself is authentic but, again, they're not ready to determine yet whether al Qaeda helped carry out the Paris assault, to what degree it helped carry out the assaults here.

Still to come, blood brothers and partners in crime. The Kouachi brothers are the latest in a long list of siblings behind terrorist attacks. The motivation driving these siblings to extremism, right after the break.

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COSTELLO: We first saw the killer's faces and heard their names just hours after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo. Sharif and said Kouachi, they were French brothers with Algerian roots. They were also immigrants orphanned at a young age.

I want to go back to Paris and Jim Sciutto. Jim, the moment authorities revealed to the world that these were brothers, many people had this sick sense of deja vu.

SCIUTTO: No question. Family affair, really. The Kouachis not the first siblings to wage jihad together. Far from it, in fact. It's a pattern we've seen many times before. Our Jason Carroll has the story.

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JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Said and Sharif Kouachi, partners in crime, brothers who share not only blood but also an extremist ideology. But they are far from the only set of brothers who have been tied to terrorism.

Boston bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev immediately come to mind. They're accused of killing three people and wounding more than 200 after detonating pressure cooker bombs at the marathon in 2013. But even before Boston, before the brothers' deadly plot, there was already a long list of siblings terrorists.

Six of the 19 hijackers responsible for the attacks on 9/11 were actually brothers who worked in teams. Take the al Hazmi brothers, Nawaf and Salem. They sat together on American Airlines Flight 77 before hijacking and crashing it into the Pentagon. A year later, 2002, in Bali, three bombs, three of the terrorists were bothers. More than 200 people killed as a result. 2007 -- a failed plot. The plan this time was to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Three of the would-be terrorists convicted were also brothers.

Why so many siblings connections? Dr. Harley Stock is a forensic psychologist.

DR. HARLEY STOCK, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: Being a lone wolf self radicalizing jihadist is a hard thing to do, hard to be by yourself doing this. It's always good to have some help. The other issue is who do you trust? So obviously having a family member you can trust is helpful.

CARROLL (voice-over): Just two years ago here in south Florida, two men who again just happened to be brothers were charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. Both pleaded not guilty.

(voice-over): Those two brothers are Sharia and Raiz Kazi (ph). A man who would only identify himself as a Kazi (ph) brother says the allegations are not true.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know my brothers are innocent. They never did anything wrong.

CARROLL: Counterterrorism experts say oftentimes even in the face of overwhelming evidence, families of the accused stick together. They say that tight family bond can be tough for investigators to break.

ROBERT MCFADDEN, TERRORISM EXPERT, THE SOUFAN GROUP: If you have the small group among brothers, cousins, very close friends, it makes it that more difficult for a leak to get out or to penetrate that cell with an outsider.

CARROLL: Experts say the tightest bond of all may ultimately be beyond blood. It is the bond of extremist ideology, the same one that drove the Kouachi brother. The same that is likely to lead more to murder.

Jason Carroll, CNN, Miami.

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SCIUTTO: A crucial investigation here not only for the authorities but the world, getting inside the minds of these extremists and finding out how and why these brothers turned to terrorism. As Jason just showed us, one that hits extremely close to home for Americans, Carol. And you know we talk a lot about influences when it comes to extremism: who influences recruits to radicalize? And it stands to reason, I suppose, that someone you know well, someone you're related to, can be sadly a likely candidate for that.

COSTELLO: And someone you trust, you're right. Jim Sciutto, thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.