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Ringleader of Paris Attacks Confirmed Dead; Police Launch Multiple Raids in Belgium; New ISIS Video Vows Attack on New York City; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 19, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Costello in New York. We have breaking news out of Paris. The ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, has been killed. That's according to French -- the French prosecutor's office. So let's head to Paris and Anderson Cooper, he has more.

Hi, Anderson.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Carol. Yes, a huge news today out of Paris. The ringleader, as you said, of the Paris attacks confirmed dead, fingerprints a short time ago proving that he was killed in one of yesterday's raids just outside the city in the neighborhood of Saint-Denis.

We're going to break down what his death means to a city that is certainly scarred by the attacks and his terrorist group already naming New York as its future target in that video that we've been talking about.

I want to turn to my colleagues who have done quite a bit of digging on this ringleader. Terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank is joining me here at the Place de la Republique, and international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson is joining me as well.

Paul, let's start with you. We talked about this a little bit before but this obviously a big victory for French intelligence, for French police who were able to move quickly on intelligence. But to your point earlier, there is a larger network, which remains very much in place and very interested in continuing attacks. And there's still a manhunt out for the eighth terrorist, possibly a ninth.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Absolutely right. And what I'm told by officials is there are about a half dozen Belgian and French jihadis or part of ISIS who have moved up the hierarchy of ISIS, who have been working together to plot attacks against France and Europe. Abdelhamid Abaaoud was just one of them. But there are others as well who may have even more stature in the group than him. And those include Fabien Clain. Fabien Clain was the guy who claimed responsibility for ISIS and the audio tape that came out just a few hours after the attack.

The French believe that he's been working together with al-Abaaoud to launch a string of terrorist plots against France. And in fact, just a few minutes ago, the Interior minister of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, said of the half dozen terrorist plots that they've had in France in the period since the spring, Abdelhamid Abaaoud has been involved in four of those. And the belief is that he's been working together with other French and Belgian ISIS operatives in Syria, that they're quickly turning around fresh recruits, giving them a one or two-week training course and then sending them back to launch attacks.

That they're responsible for that attempt on the passenger train with those three American heroes saved the day. And also, though, a plot in August where somebody was tasked by al-Abaaoud to come back and to attack a concert hall.

One other interesting thing about Fabien Clain, the guy who's working together with al-Abaaoud, back in 2009 he's thought to have been responsible for plotting an attack against the Bataclan concert hall.

COOPER: All the way back in 2009. Incredible.

Nic Robertson, do we know much about the connection between this alleged ringleader and this so-called eighth terrorist, Salah Abdeslam, who there is this international arrest warrant out for, who is believed to have been the eighth terrorist involved in the attacks Friday, was apprehended, was pulled over, in a routine stop after the attacks in France, heading toward Belgium, and was released.

There were two other people in the vehicle with him. Those two people arrested later over the weekend in Belgium but later released. They said they basically just went to pick him up. Actually, excuse me, they haven't been released. They're actually going to be charged with helping him come back to Belgium. But do we know much about the connection between these two?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, Salah Abdeslam was living in Belgium. Of course, Abaaoud was of Moroccan descent but Belgian, a Belgian national living in Belgium. So the opportunity for connection there, sheer proximity and sheer shared ISIS values and ideals. So there's an immediate link there.

Also the Interior minister, Bernard Cazenueve here said -- made it very, very clear that he said that Abaaoud was, you know, in connection with other jihadists here in France, that the investigation to push that forward will continue.

We've also learned as well through a source familiar with the investigation here that it was the Moroccans, of course, Abaaoud of Moroccan origin but Belgian national, it was a Moroccan intelligence that tipped off French officials that Abaaoud was in fact on French soil. They tipped them off of that on the 16th.

COOPER: Wow.

ROBERTSON: That's two days, barely, before the raid on Saint-Denis, which trapped him. So the French clearly moved very, very quickly. But the opportunity for the connection between Abdel Salah and Abaaoud clearly in the same milieu of people, if you will, in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, would certainly have given them more than adequate opportunity to connect. Details beyond that are not entirely clear. But obviously for intelligence officials, a strong working supposition there.

[10:05:09] COOPER: Yes. Paul, I'd also heard, I think, a Belgian official said just a short time ago that they had actually spent some time in jail or prison together. And if that is, in fact, the case, as this Belgian official says, and it seems to be, that's yet another evidence of the role that internment, that prisons, that jails, actually play in furthering recruitment in many places.

CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right, Anderson. And Abaaoud and those two brothers involved in the attack, they all knew each other. They all kind of grew up together, involved in gangsterism together. I've been told that by Belgian officials.

COOPER: They're all -- these are all petty criminals --

(CROSSTALK)

CRUICKSHANK: They were in jail together, at least one of the brothers was in jail for some time for robbery. And in jail, I mean, the message that goes out to these youngsters that are going into jail, is that you can atone for your past behavior, it's a redemption if you join our cause. And they also give them an explanation for why they were getting involved in all this kind of thing and also alcohol and drugs and girls and all that.

You are corrupted by the infidel West, this is a way for you to wipe the slate clean, and what we can promise you is martyrdom, is paradise. They're very selfish in their motivation. They want to have all those rewards that they're being told about in heaven. They really believe this. I mean --

COOPER: But also, many of these people could be psychopaths and just -- you know, want to kill people. And this gives them a justification for doing that.

CRUICKSHANK: And Abdelhamid Abaaoud was -- have sadistic kind of tendencies. This is a guy who brutalized people in Syria, drag the corpses of half a dozen Free Syria officers behind his car. There's some things that he's -- they're too horrific to kind of describe on air. There's this video that we have, CNN has this video, where he's behind some sandbags in 2014 in Syria, during a battle and you can hear him talk about how he gets pleasure from seeing the blood of the infidels being spilled.

So this is a guy that they were dealing with who managed to come all the way back to Europe despite the international dragnet against him.

COOPER: Right. Incredible. Paul Cruickshank, thank you. Nic Robertson as well.

There have been a lot of developments over the last 24 hours. Want to show you some chilling video that captures the ISIS attack on a Paris cafe. This was one of the cafes that was struck on Friday night and one woman's incredible escape from near certain death. She was down on the ground. Well, one of the terrorists came directly above her, pointed his gun right at her. Unclear whether he fired and the gun jammed or whether for some reason he just walked away, but she was able to get up and run away after that. You'll see that. It comes from DailyMail.com. CNN's Chris Cuomo walks us through it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CO-ANCHOR, NEW DAY: You can see glass window shattering as the gunman starts firing from outside. People running in to escape the bullets. Everyone diving out of the way and hiding behind walls desperately looking for cover.

The gunman showing no signs of mercy, coming right up to the edge of the cafe, aiming at a woman defenseless on the ground. But in one of the more miraculous moments, either the gun malfunctions or the gunman misfires and the woman gets up and runs away.

From another angle, you can see two employees ducking behind the bar as bullets start flying, one of them managing to flee down a flight of stairs as fear grips the cafe. The other helps a woman who had run inside after the siege began. People seen tossing chairs and tables out of the way to find safety as the attacks continue.

The glass and dust clouding the camera's view of the cafe. Terror rocking the city of Paris, bringing a lively Friday night to deadening silence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: An incredible video there and an incredibly lucky woman to escape near certain death. In Belgium, police launching a new wave of raids as the government is promising a new crackdown on Islamic jihadists.

We want to go to our Ivan Watson, who's in Brussels with the latest on that. Do we know much about these raids, Ivan?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly the investigators here say there's no real time to celebrate the death of Abaaoud. They're very busy looking for the missing fugitive, Salah Abdeslam. He's suspected accomplice in the Paris attacks. Notably, those two men had been convicted together of the same crime of theft in 2011 and ended up spending a month in prison. So they knew each other by effectively being convicted partners in crime, Anderson.

The raids that the police have conducted this morning at, at least a half dozen locations, three of those search warrants related to the Paris attacks. And in those raids, the police detained at least two people. We're trying to find out a bit more about that, Anderson.

In the meantime, reactions here, well, the government so far has not reacted officially to the death of Belgium's most notorious jihadist but talking to people on the streets here, well, one man said, hey, there's one less terrorist now, I'm a Muslim man and there's nothing in the Quran that I've read that says that it's OK to blow yourself up and kill other people.

[10:10:11] But another woman in her 60s, speaking a mixture of French and Arabic said she was sad about the news of this man's death. And she blames the U.S. and France bombing Muslim countries for this situation. And that opinion kind of gets at some of the disaffection that exists in some communities here that could have led to the recruitment of hundreds and hundreds of people of Belgians who have joined the ranks of ISIS in recent years -- Anderson.

COOPER: We should also point out, the United States gives an extraordinary amount of aid to Syrians who are trying to avoid the conflict there.

Ivan, what is the problem with the Belgian's intelligence services? I mean, everybody points to Belgium as sort of the weak link in the intelligence chain among European countries.

WATSON: As one investigator here explained to me, their services are stretched thin. Just trying to keep track of around the 160 Belgian nationals and residents who all traveled to Syria to fight with groups like ISIS and have since returned. And on top of that, they have hundreds and hundreds more who have either traveled to Syria and are believed to be there fighting with ISIS or are hoping to travel there. So they say they simply don't have the manpower to handle all of this.

Another narrative that has come up from among Belgian officials is that the external borders of Europe are not being protected well enough. So they can't tell if they've issued an international arrest warrant against people like one of the suicide bombers from Paris, they did not know that that man had come back from fighting in Syria. They did not know he was back in Europe until he blew himself up in Paris. This is going to be a big question that's going to have to be discussed in the days and weeks ahead -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. A lot more news to be done in terms of data sharing between European countries. Ivan Watson, thanks very much, reporting from Belgium.

There's a lot more ahead in this next hour. Still to come, ISIS unleashing yet another threat against the United States. This time a vow to strike New York City.

Up next, why the city's mayor says his community will not be intimidated. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:16:40] COOPER: Welcome back. We want to bring you up to speed on our breaking news at this hour. Right now a lot going on here in Paris. Embracing the news, the city is, that the attack ringleader is confirmed dead. Fingerprints a short time ago proving that he was killed in one of yesterday's raids, the raid in Saint-Denis just outside the city.

There obviously is concerned about the so-called eighth terrorist who's still out on the loose, the man known to have been involved in Friday night's attack, as well as a potential ninth who may have been seen with him. That arrest warrant coming out of Brussels. We'll have more on that later. Let's go back to Carol Costello in New York.

COSTELLO: All right, thanks, Anderson.

Back here on American soil, New York City officials are sending a firm message to terrorists, we will not be intimidated. That pushback after ISIS unveiled a new video threatening another attack. We have made the decision not to show you that video, because, frankly, that's exactly what ISIS wants.

With me now to talk about this, the threat in New York, and how authorities are dealing with it CNN's Boris Sanchez. He's live from Times Square. Good morning.

All right. Obviously, we're having technical difficulties. Boris cannot hear me. But I was in Times Square just yesterday, and there's a large police presence there. New York City Police are asking residents here to be hyper vigilant but they're certainly saying, please, do not panic. We have the situation under control. We're on high alert and you should be on alert, too.

Also, this just into CNN -- oh, we have Boris Sanchez again? Boris, can you hear me in Times Square?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, sorry, about that, Carol, I couldn't hear you just a few moments ago. Obviously the ISIS threat coming from that video that was released by ISIS yesterday, we're not showing the video but in it you can see preparations for different kinds of terrorist attacks. And the one that's really concerning is a portion of the video where you see someone take a bomb and apparently place it inside their jacket and zip it up. Interspersed with that clip are shots of Times Square here in New York City.

New York officials, though, are saying it's not really something to be worried about. Not only is the video not something new, the footage from the video is actually recycled. But they say threats against New York City come all the time. Mayor de Blasio and police commissioner Bill Bratton spoke about this yesterday saying that New Yorkers should not be worried.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, NEW YORK: But the people of New York City will not be intimidated. We understand it is the goal of terrorists to intimidate and disrupt our democratic society. We will not submit to their wishes.

WILLIAM BRATTON, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: There is, as we have repeated frequently, no city in America that is better prepared to defend and protect against a terrorist attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: And it really isn't something new, Carol. You might recall, in 2010, not 100 feet from where I'm standing, there was that failed car bombing attempt, that Nissan Pathfinder, the detonator essentially fizzled and the car didn't explode. Obviously a close call here. Certainly a reason for officials to be vigilant. So we've seen added patrols out here, tactical teams as well as a bomb-sniffing dog walking around, aside from the standard NYPD officers that are here in Times Square. So certainly something that they are looking out for, Carol.

[10:20:03] COSTELLO: All right. Boris Sanchez reporting live from Times Square. Thanks so much.

This just into CNN. Eight Syrians have turned themselves in at the Texas border in Laredo. The Department of Homeland Security says they are members of two Syrian families including two men, two women and four children. They were taken into custody by border control and turned over to immigration officials for more processing. They're now being held at a Texas detention center about 100 miles from the border.

Also, we're learning new details about five Syrian men who were detained in Honduras before being busted with fake passports. An Honduran immigration official now says that group is not linked to any terrorist organization.

Let's get right to CNN's Alina Machado. She has more on this in Miami. Good morning.

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. We just received that information from the Honduran Office of Immigration Services. Not only do they say that none of the men are linked to a terrorist organization, but they're also saying that four of the five men are students. The five Syrians had traveled through five countries, including Lebanon, Turkey and Brazil, before they were stopped in Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras, yesterday.

As you mentioned, all were using fake Greek passports when they were detained. Greek authorities and Interpol were involved in tracking the men, but we still don't know why these men were being tracked. Authorities in Honduras believe the men were headed to the United States, likely planning to travel by land through Guatemala and Mexico.

The men were supposed to appear in court today, but their court appearance has been delayed for a few days so authorities can investigate further. They are each facing charges of falsifying documents and identity fraud -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And I know you've been in touch with immigration officials, Alina. Do you know anything more about this Syrian family trying to cross the border in Texas?

MACHADO: Well, Carol, as you mentioned, these were two Syrian families that showed up at the Laredo border crossing in Texas. Both families are now being processed at two detention centers.

What we don't know is how often this happens along the border. How many Syrians have crossed either legally or illegally across the border? We have calls into the Department of Homeland Security and hope to get numbers from them in order to put this into context, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. I'll let you get back to it.

Alina Machado, reporting live from Miami.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, breaking news this morning. The ringleader of last week's terror attacks, was he part of other plots? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:26:44] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello in New York. Thank you so much for joining us. Breaking news in Paris where officials say the ringleader of Friday's terror attacks has been killed. And we now know he may have been responsible for more than one terror attack.

Let's head straight to Paris and Anderson Cooper. Hi, Anderson.

COOPER: Hey, Carol. Yes, we want to bring you up to the minute on the latest developments in the terror attacks here, obviously, a lot of fast-moving pieces to the investigation. The suspected ringleader, as you said, confirmed dead just a few hours ago. French authorities said fingerprints show that the ringleader is one of two people to die yesterday in the raid in saint-Denis. Of course the other female who detonated an explosive device.

In neighboring Belgium police launching a half dozen raids in and around Brussels. They're targeting people they say are connected to Bilal Hadfi, one of the suicide bombers who detonated outside France's national stadium on Friday night. That part of the multiple coordinated attacks that took place on Friday.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio says the city will not be intimidated by the latest ISIS threat. A newly released video vows an impending attack on New York and shows a would-be bomber zipping up his jacket to hide a suicide belt, though, a lot of the images in that video have been seen before.

Let's return to the death of the suspected ringleader of Friday's attacks. It is obviously the biggest news out of Paris this morning. CNN's Nic Robertson joins us, also Therry Arnaud, a journalist with BFMTV here in Paris.

Therry, let me start with you. Obviously, huge news here in Paris. Also, though, French authorities have decided to extend the state of emergency for another three months. What does that allow intelligence services, police to do that they couldn't do previously?

THERRY ARNAUD, BFMTV JOURNALIST: Well, it makes it a lot easier to conduct searches, for example. You don't need a warrant from a judge. You can just go out and do that. It allows also for house arrests on a much more sound legal basis, much quicker, much more efficient that's been -- that is the two main things that the French government wanted to go in and make easier, faster and more readily usable. COOPER: And extended for three months as we said.

ARNAUD: Yes.

COOPER: Nic Robertson, what's the latest we know about the -- how they identified the bomber -- excuse me, how they identified the ringleader of the attacks on Friday. It was done through fingerprints, right?

ROBERTSON: It was done through fingerprints. We're told that there was multiple impacts on his body. It's not clear -- I mean, the first reports that we had yesterday going back to the raid was that this person was hit by a sniper. Then there was reports he was hit by grenades. Then there were reports that he -- perhaps he was injured as a result of his cousin, who was the female suicide bomber, detonating her explosives.

But now the prosecutor said multiple, multiple impacts. So despite the fact that there were a lot of facial images of him, a lot of pictures of his face out there, it did take that forensic testing to make sure that they had got their man. The prosecutor, of course, last night at his press conference saying -- this was almost 12 hours after the raid had taken place -- that it was still too early to call who this person was, that the building was so destroyed, it was going to take a long time to get that DNA or to get that DNA evidence, the forensic testing done over 24 hours later.