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Suspects in Custody, Two Being Treated For Wounds; Explosions Heard in Early French Raids; Brother Calls Suspect to Surrender; Two Air France Flights Diverted Due to Bomb Threats. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 18, 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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[09:32:46] ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to our continuing coverage of the Paris terror attacks and the new raids that we have witnessed that took place starting early this morning here in a suburb of Paris. A new report, two of the suspects apprehended this morning. We're told that seven are in custody. Two of them are being treated at a Paris hospital for wounds they received during the police raid. Our Poppy Harlow is on the phone. She's at the hospital with more.

Poppy, what do we know about these -- about these two?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): What -- what we know is that our affiliate here, BFM, on the ground in Paris, has said, and I'm standing outside the hospital, two of those suspected who were arrested in the early morning hours today after that dramatic police raid are being treated here at (INAUDIBLE) hospital. This is about half an hour, Anderson, from where you're standing right now. This is in the north of Paris.

What I can tell you is that according to BFM, one of those suspected terrorists was arrested with a wound to his arm, went into surgery this morning. The second arrived here about 11:45 a.m. local, that would be 5:45 a.m. Eastern Time, went into surgery with more -- a more serious wound to the arm.

The security here at the hospital is incredibly tight, Anderson. When we got out of the cab just a moment ago, they approached us immediately, a police officer with an assault rifle telling us to get out quickly and for the car to keep moving. They do not want any vehicle stopping in front of this hospital. You've got people in the neighborhood, children, parents standing by wondering what exactly is going on. I would say more than a dozen police officers in front of this hospital in (INAUDIBLE).

When you look at this -- the big picture here, now you've got a web of at least 15 people that could be much, much larger. The key here for the doctors is going to be to keep these men alive so that they can be interrogated. Any answers to lead to my more suspects in all of this is critical because, again, they don't know how big this web is, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. I mean that's one of the things that's so interesting about the raids this morning, not just the idea that the alleged ringleader of the attacks on Friday, this Belgian man who's in his late 20s who's well known to law enforcement intelligence agencies in Europe and in the United States, who's been said to have planned other attempted attacks in the past. The idea that he is not in Syria, as authorities had said -- had thought as early as -- you know, as soon as -- little ago as yesterday, that he actually may be in Paris, Poppy, that's a huge piece of news for French citizens to now absorb.

[09:35:25] So much of the focus over last several days has been Belgium and the nexus it seems of that Molenbeek region, neighborhood in Belgium. But now, with the raids this morning in Paris, it really returns and certainly puts this back on the front burner for French citizens, for Parisians, that there could be other cells in this city currently operating. Poppy, we'll continue to check in with you. The events taking place throughout -- throughout the region, both here in France and in Belgium.

The predawn raid here in Paris. Three locations all on one street. The sound of gunfire and explosions cutting through the early morning calm as French police stormed two apartments in the Saint-Denis neighborhood. The raid unfolding, as our Atika Shubert was delivering a live report.

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ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very unusual. But they were moving in the crowd here looking for something and have now moved down the street. You can still see one of them here still operating. They're showing their photo to -- oh, and an explosion has just gone off. This is still very much an ongoing operation. That was quite a large explosion in that direction. A second one now. Just hold on. No gunfire that we can tell so far. A third explosion. Fourth. That was much larger. Police asking them to move back. There are a number of military soldiers that are now being moved into the front as well.

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COOPER: That was the scene earlier this morning. Senior international correspondent Fredrik Pleitgen picks up the story now from that same neighborhood in Saint-Denis.

Fred, first of all, let's talk about what we know about what went on. Bring us up to date, just the latest information on exactly how many people now have been taken into custody in that raid.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Anderson, these raids began about 4:30, or 4:25 early in the morning. And what happened was exactly what Atika was describing there. There were some explosions. There was gunfire going on. I was actually able to speak with a gentlemen who witnessed some of that and he said he was absolutely terrified as all of a sudden there were these bursts of machine gunfire and he was told to get off the streets, to get away and to get into his apartment and to lay low there, as more and more police forces then moved in.

You then had those several explosions. There was one female suicide bomber who blew herself up apparently as police officers were trying to enter into that apartment. In total, the police are saying that two of the terrorists were killed, seven people are in custody, but certainly this is something that did take a very, very long time. And, you know, we've been out here for hours now as well and there was a gigantic police force here. There were specialist squads that they had here, a team called the BRI, that was getting ready to move into that apartment. We saw them at the ready, standing in front of it, their weapons drawn. Some of them had shields in case someone fired out of the building. And then at some point they found out that they had apprehended all of these people.

And now what you're seeing here, Anderson, we can pan over there a little bit, there is sort of a slow drawdown still underway here. What the police have actually done now is they are starting to set up what seems to be sort of 360 degree surveillance cameras here to continue to keep an eye on what is going on here on the ground as, at the same time, they are sort of starting to pull some forces back. But this was a massive operation. Well over a hundred police officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel. We saw one police officer getting led away. He seemed to have some sort of limp in his foot. I -- it's not clear whether or not he got hit, whether or not he was wounded. And then at some point they declared that this operation was over. That two of the terrorists had been killed. And, again, that seven of them are in custody. And, of course, they will be interrogated and the authorities here hope to get some hopefully valuable information from them to see if there's anyone anywhere else involved in any sort of terrorist activity, Anderson.

COOPER: Right. And we know cell phones found near the scenes of -- or some of the scenes from Friday's attack were part of the link that led authorities to more raids. It's given authorities certain pieces of information to go on. The question is, did the raids that occurred this morning at those -- those two apartments and in that church that we saw. Is there more intelligence to gather there, not just from the suspects themselves, but are there cell phones, are there computers that they can look that might lead them to get a sense of where other suspects may be.

[09:40:21] Still to come, the brother of a suspected terrorist, who is still at large, the so-called eighth terrorist who's believed to have been involved in the attacks on Friday night, his brother sat down for a one-on-one interview with our Erin Burnett. Up next, why he says his family is still in shock and how he says one of his brothers changed before the brutal killing spree.

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COOPER: Surrender. That is the message from the brother of two men tied to the brutal terror attacks in Paris. Now, right now, authorities are on the hunt for this man, Salah Abdeslam who they say may have helped carry out last week's killing spree. He's believed to be the eighth member of the terror squad that hit on Friday.

On Tuesday, his brother Mohamed sat down with CNN for a one-on-one interview, discussed how he believes his brothers were radicalized. Listen.

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ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Mohamed, what you say? If Salah is watching this interview somewhere, what do you say to him about what you want him to do and about what he's done?

MOHAMED ABDESLAM, BROTHER OF SUSPECTED TERRORIST (via translator): I would tell him to surrender. That's the best solution. To contact the authorities.

I know it must be difficult to watch on TV some actions to try to find him. And you can see that some of these actions to find him are impressive. But he must not be afraid to surrender, to explain. But of course if he has something to do with it, he must accept responsibility.

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COOPER: While the massive manhunt for Abdeslam pushes on, authorities are combing through evidence trying retrace his last known whereabouts.

Joining me is now Samuel Rascoff. He's the faculty director for the Center of Law and Security at New York University Law. He's also the former director of intelligence analysis for the NYPD.

Sam, thanks very much for being was. You know, it's really fascinating. I mean, one -- of these three brothers, the one Erin Burnett talked to, he was arrested over the weekend but he was let go. He's not believed to have anything to do with this. But his two other brothers, one of them died in the attacks on Friday; the other is believed to be the eighth terrorist who got away.

Does it surprise you the kind of -- that this is kind of an interfamily thing? Not only that there's these brothers, but that there is so much in this one little neighborhood in Belgium? So many of these people seem to live in that area and know each other from that area, to have socialized together.

SAMUEL RASCOFF, FACULTY DIR. OF CENTER OF LAW & SECURTY AT NYU LAW: Exactly right, Anderson, and those are two really helpful points here. One is that, first of all, terrorism is a kind of family business. We saw in that Boston Marathon situation, where two brothers, the Tsarnaev brothers, participated together. And one reason why it's so important to have that family connection is that, if you're dealing with an intimate in the family, you're likely not to be communicating in such a way that intelligence agencies can pick it up. So it's great antisurveillance mechanism.

But the point about the neighborhood outside of Brussels is also vitally important here. It's a kind of the microclimate in which radicalization seems to have really taken hold. And it takes a village, in a sense, to produce a terrorist, and it looks like that may well have happened in this case as well. COOPER: You know, I think a lot of people, when they see the brothers talking and saying that they were unaware of what their brothers are up to, when you hear parents saying I didn't know my child had become radicalized, I think a lot of people find that hard to believe. Do you believe it?

RASCOFF: Well, I'm not an expert in family and pathology in families, so I wouldn't comment on whether the brother is credible. But I would say that there were many of the telltale signs of radicalization that could be heard in that interview that Erin did.

First of all the travel to Turkey, possibly travel to Syria. We'll know more obviously in the coming days. But that to me, more than anything else, is the giveaway that someone may be on the route to doing something quite significant. There's nothing better in the way of training a jihadi than contact in the flesh with jihadis and possibly participation in the jihad in Syria. So that to me was kind of very significant evidence.

As far as the external trappings of radicalization, the adopting highest forms of Islam, the giving up alcohol, the wearing a beard, those sorts of things -- those are very imperfect indicators. And I think we ought to be very skeptical of extrapolating from those kinds of external manifestations to any indication that this person is actually becoming a terrorist. Often as not, those signs are going to be false positives. So I think law enforcement can't really extrapolate too much from them. But travel to the front line, if in fact that's what happened here, would be very significant.

COOPER: Samuel Rascoff, I appreciate your being with us. Thanks very much, Sam.

We have a lot more to cover in the coming hour. Still to come, a scare in the skies. Two airliners bound for France made emergency landings. We'll tell you why. That next

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COOPER: Well, concerns over terrorism spread overnight to international air travel. There were a couple of incidents to tell you about. Two Air France flights from the U.S. to Paris were forced to make emergency landings because of anonymous bomb threats after the planes took off.

CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh has more. Rene, this I found particularly interesting because I actually flew back from New York last night on an Air France plane without any problem. Where were these planes diverted from?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know that one aircraft was -- had left LAX in Los Angeles. The other left Dulles Airport. And, as you said, Anderson, because of those phoned-in bomb threats, they had to divert. They could not go to their destination last night. [09:55:01]

Again, we should point out that receiving bomb threats for these airlines, that's not so much a unique situation, but the timing of all of this is what's noteworthy. We're talking about Air France flights, both of them bound for Paris. Of course, the timing, this is a point where Paris is trying to move forward. It's still dealing with the issues after the attack. And then you have these two bomb threats.

This was a 777 and A380, so hundreds of passengers were on board. They had to deplane. We know that the plane was checked. We know luggage was rechecked. And we're hearing from the airline that after they brought in the bomb-sniffing dogs, they did their sweeps, they determined that this was not a credible threat. And oftentimes, that is the situation with these bomb threats.

But again, in the climate we are living in, the airlines, airport authority, aviation security personnel not taking anything for granted.

COOPER: Sure. Rene Marsh, appreciate the update. Thanks very much on that.

Our coverage of the France terror attacks and the latest raids this morning, the ongoing manhunt, continue right after this break.

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