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Stopping Trump; Paris Terror Suspect Captured. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 18, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:03]

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And this guy reached out at just the right time. And it's really helped him. I get a little welled up just thinking about it now.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Getting a little teary.

MARQUEZ: It's lovely.

BALDWIN: Miguel Marquez...

MARQUEZ: I mean, there's this -- it says a lot about America. And given all the terrible things happening in this world...

BALDWIN: Thank you.

MARQUEZ: ... to see this...

BALDWIN: I needed that. I needed that on a Friday.

MARQUEZ: To see this, it's lovely on a Friday.

MARQUEZ: Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Miguel Marquez.

MARQUEZ: You got it. Have a great weekend.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: Here we go, top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. This is CNN's breaking news.

We're waiting for a news conference from the Belgium prosecutor as we are learning that explosions and shots are still ringing out through streets of Molenbeek. This is a neighborhood just outside of the capital there in Belgium. Police capturing one of the world's most wanted men. This is still an active situation.

It is unfolding as I speak. But here is the news. We can confirm here at CNN that Salah Abdeslam, one of the fugitives suspected in the massive coordinated Paris terror attacks last November, has been captured alive. Here's what we know at this point in time.

He was caught during this raid in this Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, an area plagued with terror cells and radicalization. Abdeslam, who we're told was shot in the leg during his capture, is the suspected driver of the car that dropped off three suicide bombers at the soccer stadium in Paris on that Friday night.

And one of those suicide bombers who he dropped off was his brother who detonated his vest and killed himself during that attack. Immediately after those attacks, we know that Abdeslam fled. He was even stopped, questioned by police, who, at that time, didn't realize who he was, and so they let him go.

He has been on the run for four months now evading law enforcement. And finally this week officers raided a different home in the Brussels area. They actually found his DNA fingerprints on a glass, sparking this intense hunt to track him down.

And the news that he had stayed actually so close to the scene of this crime in Paris shocking so many in the terror community, who believed perhaps he had fled all the way to Syria.

Let me begin our coverage this hour by going straight to Belgium to Chris Burns, our freelance journalist who's on the ground in this community where these explosives are still going off and shots are still being fired.

So, Chris, tell me what you're seeing there right now.

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, there are a number of streets that are blocked off. The police have cordoned off a number of streets as they continue their search.

There's obviously still a lot of police activity after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam here in this neighborhood. We did hear some -- two very large explosions in the past hour about 30 seconds apart. In an area where they had sent, the police had sent, some police with bomb- sniffing -- with sniffer dogs.

And the police are also, a number of them are equipped with riot gear, with helmets and shields, because some of the local youth -- there have been sort of standoffs with youth here. It's a rather tense situation.

At the moment, where we are, we don't see a lot of activity behind us, but there are police who are guarding the streets as the searches continue. The police have cordoned off also an area where Abdeslam had been arrested and captured, that area also a lot of police, including the riot police. So there is continued action here.

There have been searches like these other the past few weeks, especially since the November attacks in Paris. Arrests just about every week. But, of course, with Salah Abdeslam being arrested today, a lot more media attention and a lot more police presence, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, Chris Burns, thank you so much in Molenbeek, Belgium.

Let me bring my panel in now, Bob Baer, CNN intelligence and security analyst and former CIA operative, Juliette Kayyem, CNN national security analyst and former assistant homeland secretary. Michael Weiss, CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror." And Aaron Cohen, former Israeli forces special operative.

So, welcome to all of thank.

And Bob Baer, let me ask you first, put this in perspective for us. How significant, how huge is this capture?

BOB BAER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, it's huge, Brooke. They're going to be going into a lot of safe houses. They're going to get a lot of new leads. A lot of the evidence is not transmitted over the Internet. They have no other way to get it.

They're going to get more associates, bomb-makers, and so forth. Once you start these series of raids, they could go on for weeks. I think by the end of it, they will be close to, you know, mopping up this network that did the November 13 attack in Paris.

[15:05:00]

BALDWIN: Aaron, to you just on just the sheer tactics, because all the genesis of this capture was, in part, what happened on Tuesday, at a separate location, in an apartment, where, you know, one individual who was involved in the Paris attacks, he was killed, and two others, including Abdeslam, you know, slipped out through the roof and that is what then began this massive search for this eighth attacker.

What are these police raids like? How intense? And, also, they never know, when they're banging down that door, what or who is on the other side.

AARON COHEN, FORMER ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES COMMANDER: Yes, Brooke, the type of the type of tactics that are being deployed right now by the Belgian special weapons and tactics team is what's called slow and deliberate clearing.

It's designed for what's known as high-threat, close-quarters battle, which is essentially what this unit is geared to do. We have similar units in Israel. They're essentially a paramilitary organization with the powers, you know, to arrest as a law enforcement agency.

And you will notice in the footage that you're rolling, they're moving very slow. So, unlike, you know, the films where they're running into rooms and busting down doors and moving very fast and rapid, it's just not the case with terrorists.

And from the beginning of your report, you said that there was ongoing and that there was potentially shooting that was ongoing or there was explosives that were being heard. With these types of clears, they move very, very slowly and they perform what's called a pressure cooker technique, which is, essentially, they're going to breach the door using an explosive or some kind of ram.

They will throw a flash bang, which is a nonlethal diversionary device which creates a very loud bang and a very bright light to be able to basically shock whoever's inside the structure. And then they will start prying and cornering and pressing their way into the structure really, really slowly, because what happens with terrorists is they will fire back at you. They're not afraid to die.

It sounds like the indoctrination with these guys was very extreme. Obviously, they killed almost 130 people. So that indoctrination process means the team has to work super, super slow. That's what they're doing, house to house, very slow, flash bangs, controlled and slowed movement.

Belgian authorities don't want to risk any more. And they don't want any more additional risk to their team members than they do -- not one of these terrorists is worth any one of these cops getting killed.

BALDWIN: Yes. So that's happening right now in this community outside of Brussels. But back to November, I mean, let's just remember, 130 people were killed as a result of those coordinated terror attacks at the Bataclan and the stadium and multiple other cafes in the heart of Paris.

And so, Juliette, my question to you is this. We're already hearing from a lawyer representing the victims' family saying they want Abdeslam extradited to France. But Americans died as well. I'm just curious if the U.S. has any say over what happens to him.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, they won't have a determinative say.

We obviously have some sort of jurisdiction. There was a young woman from California who died in the attacks. So that gives some semblance of jurisdiction, but we would never go into France and say it's ours. We wouldn't be allowed to. The law really wouldn't work that way. What it does mean is that the FBI has been involved and will continue to be involved. We have a lot to learn.

So people should think about what happens now. There's going to be the legal front and the intelligence front. The legal front, it is going to look relatively familiar to U.S. audiences. It's different in Europe, but, nonetheless, there will be an extradition, there will be a trial.

The intelligence front, just picking up on what Bob was saying, is now that we have him, fingerprints, who else was with him, look, it's hard to hide for four months, right? And so obviously there was an apparatus that was supporting him and with the approval of ISIS in Syria or Iraq or wherever else.

So that apparatus, now we have a way to begin to investigate that apparatus. So just look at it in terms of two different tracks right now.

BALDWIN: So two points out of that I want to follow up on.

First to Michael, the fact that he was able -- a lot of -- Belgium's been in hot water. How could all of these people have been living in these communities and then not go, you know, detected for knowing what they were up to? Are you surprised at the fact he sort of stayed so close to home for so many months?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: No.

I mean, one of the aspects of these repairing to these communities is as a terrorist you inspire fear in those around you and you make them that much more reluctant to talk to law enforcement and security. U.S. counterterrorism officials tell me that they always get very nervous when they see a community sort of contract in terms of its outward openness to the outside world or to external kind of conditions and communities.

What this means is that Salafi jihadi clerics start going to ground inside mosques. That usually tells them that there's an imminent attack when everyone kind of goes silent. And it's because these guys are going around doing in Europe what essentially they do in Iraq and Syria, which is intimidate people into submission.

[15:10:02]

The fact he was hiding in plain sight, as the cliche goes, again, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't surprise me at all. These guys usually stay very close to scene of the crime, because when they move, that's when they get snared.

BALDWIN: Bob, former CIA, you know, you know how this works. How -- what is in it for Abdeslam to talk? How do they get him to talk?

BAER: A lot of these people, of course, the Belgians will not use torture and neither do the French. But they will just get worn down over time. They will cut deals for the families.

There's all sorts of incentives. And he doesn't particularly look -- sound hard-core to me. Otherwise, he would have put a vest on and blown himself up. So I think there's a good chance this guy will care under a professional interrogation.

You know, he's been on the run. He's tired, and et cetera. And he's got -- right now, he's got nowhere to go, except is cut a deal with authorities.

BALDWIN: All right, let me ask all of you to stand by. Thank you so much.

More on this breaking story out of Belgium, including we're watching for this news conference. We are going to hear from the Belgium prosecutor, shedding new light, new information on this incredibly significant capture here, this eighth Paris attacker caught alive.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage. We will be right back.

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[15:15:23]

BALDWIN: And we're back with our breaking news. Thank you so much for being with me on this Friday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Huge news out of a community just outside of Brussels, Belgium, as we have confirmed that one of the attackers from the coordinated -- 130 people killed, hundreds injured from that Friday night Paris terror attack. This individual has been captured alive.

Let me show you some video. And you can see. I cannot tell you definitively if this is Salah Abdeslam, the man we're referring to as this eighth attacker, or not, but clearly, as police are dressed in riot gear, they are not too gingerly tossing someone inside of this car.

Who that someone is, we don't know. We just know two people have been apprehended, one of whom is this attacker, Salah Abdeslam.

Michael Weiss is back with me. Aaron Cohen is back with me, and also Buck Sexton has been seated, CNN political commentator, former CIA counterterrorism analyst.

But on this video, and we can keep playing it, Aaron, let me just bring you back in. From your tactical perspective, what are you seeing there?

COHEN: They have a suspect in custody. The hood is pulled over his head, so they're protecting his identity.

The vehicle looks like it's parked pretty close to the exit. They want to get him in that car quickly. The gear that they're wearing isn't riot gear. That's SWAT gear or special weapons and tactics gear. They have got carbines or carbine-style weapons that they're deployed with, with ballistic helmets. And that is a raid team.

And essentially they have pulled him out of that building. They have cleared that structure. And you can tell by their body language, the way they're handling him, that they're not happy with that guy at all. They're being a little more aggressive with him. That could mean that, in fact, is Abdeslam.

Or it could just mean that he's not being compliant. But either way, this is a take-no-prisoners type of deal as far as how they're -- as far as the body English of how they're putting him in the car. You have got another guy who's running away to cover some streets there and to probably push some media back.

I feel like this was a successful snatch and grab or a successful arrest here. It also seems they're putting him into an unmarked vehicle, Brooke, which for...

BALDWIN: Why?

COHEN: It would seem like that's for security reasons, in order to be able to lower the profile of the transport of whatever suspect that is. So that could mean...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Why lower the profile and why the hood? Why not say, hey, here he is, we got him?

COHEN: Because it's an unsterile area.

They have -- they want to get him into that interrogation room. They don't want anybody to take a shot at that guy or have him get hurt, just for security reasons. Or I don't know, maybe that's just a vehicle that they have in their unit that they pulled up which is more convenient.

But it seems to me it's a mobile car. It's smaller. It's easy to zip around. It's going to lower the signature of that suspect. And I think it's a good security measure, what they're doing right there. The hood over the head, let's cover the guy's face. Let's not give anyone any intel about who it is that we're bringing in to custody because we don't know want to know what we're doing until the investigation and the interrogation, like Bob Baer was referring to, is complete.

They want to get this guy and take him to the station and get him in the hands of intelligence authorities to be able to extract every piece of information they can find out about ISIS down the road and what happened.

BALDWIN: Bob Baer was right on.

COHEN: Yes.

BALDWIN: And, again, let me say -- I have issued this five times. Let me say it for a sixth time. We do not know who this individual is who is in a hood and being tossed in this car. Is it Salah Abdeslam, this attacker, who they have captured? Is it the other individual who they have put in custody as well? We just don't quite know.

Jim Bittermann is now with us. He's live in Paris there.

And, Jim, you live in Paris, you lived through all of this, you covered all of this, you know, from the very beginning here. I mean, the fact that they got him and they got him alive, what will this mean for the French?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think a great deal.

In fact, we're hearing some of it this evening, especially from the victims' families. They have various associations connected to the various attacks that took place on November 13, and through these associations, some of the presidents and lawyers for the associations are trusting themselves, saying how happy they are that he's been captured and captured alive.

Among other reasons, the fact that this probably means that there will be a trial, a trial here in France, in which they will probably get a lot more information about the last few moments of their loved ones' lives. The families here have been complaining that in fact they haven't gotten a lot of information from authorities.

[15:20:00]

There's a parliamentary commission that's been investigating the attacks on the 13th of November. And they just the other day were walking through the Bataclan theater where so many deaths took place. and the families complained they weren't being made part of it and they weren't hearing from the parliament, they weren't hearing from security authorities.

So this -- the potential of a trial of Abdeslam, will perhaps raise their spirits a bit and bring a little closure into this picture for some of them. I think it will mean a great deal on a personal level. On an official level, there's a lot of self-congratulation this evening because I think they feel that this was a very successful operation and a very successful demonstration that French and the Belgians could cooperate.

There's been a lot of complaints here about not having good cooperation with Belgian authorities, but clearly in the last few months that has changed. French police were up there today with the Belgian officers as the arrests were being made today. And they were there earlier in the week, on Tuesday, when the shoot-out took place, and the French police officer was wounded in that shoot-out.

So there's been quite close cooperation across the border. That's something I think that they're sort of saying tonight that we're hearing from security authorities, they're very happy the way it's gone, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes. Jim Bittermann, thank you so much. I'm happy for Paris tonight. This is obviously huge, huge development in the wake of what happened last November.

Buck Sexton, to you, sir. You know, I think it's just important reminding people. I was reading as we talk so much about this community outside of Brussels, this is actually where the weapons came from after "Charlie Hebdo" and that kosher supermarket shoot-out, those weapons came from Molenbeek as well. Why Belgium as this hotbed?

BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, there's a number of reasons why Belgium hasn't been able to deal very well with these situations that are similar to what we have seen elsewhere in Europe.

You don't have a particularly -- you have at least some minority of a Muslim population in the country that's not that well integrated. I think it's notable that they stayed in this neighborhood.

BALDWIN: For four months.

SEXTON: You do see that -- for months without anyone finding out about this.

There's no way that there weren't a bunch of people that have not yet been arrested who were at least aware or should have been aware of the situation. This is a neighborhood that now everyone knows specifically because it is a hotbed of radicalism. It's had a spotlight on it from the international media starting with this attack and afterwards.

And even before this attack, people knew this was a place where you had returning foreign fighters from Syria. It has been this sort of jihadi launch pad for quite some time.

So these individuals, because there's more than one. We have had a couple now that were killed in shoot-outs. That they would stay and feel comfortable staying in this area raises, quite honestly, some very troubling questions about first of all who knew about...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Well, wouldn't they trigger alarms if they dared to step too far outside of the home?

Michael, jump in on that, like the fact that communications, whether I don't know if they have been encrypted or not, but they would certainly send off alarm bells if they dared go too far.

SEXTON: Usually, what you see in this -- and this is similar to, for example, Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, a case I worked at the NYPD.

As soon as he did that, he knew he had a limited time to get on a plane, to get back to Pakistan to get out of here, because if he stayed in New York, we were going to find him. Right? And he got actually pretty close. He made his way to the airport. It's interesting in this case perhaps the decision was made it would be too hard to get out of the entirety of the E.U., that he might get caught in transit, and so he would lay low in a neighborhood that he knew best.

That makes sense. But then you also have to ask the question, how is it the authorities in Belgium who are focused on this area...

BALDWIN: Didn't know.

SEXTON: ... and are talking to I would assume human sources in this area and have surveillance capabilities weren't able to figure any of this out until now.

It's a good day for them, but it's also a day that raises a lot of questions.

BALDWIN: Jump in.

WEISS: You have this Schengen sort of border-free travel in Europe.

You have a linguistic component. Belgians speak French, they speak German. There's a huge francophone contingent within ISIS that has been trained up in Raqqa. The defector from one of their spy services that I interviews in October told me he had trained up two French nationals that had returned to France.

It's very porous, not just in the physical sense, but also in the kind of communal sense. All the reasons that Buck has given. I would add one more. The ability to procure weapons in Belgium is much easier than it is in France.

BALDWIN: Why is that?

(CROSSTALK)

WEISS: ... national.

It's a huge weapons export country. You will recall in January of 2014, I believe, or, I'm sorry, 2015, the single largest firefight in the history of modern Belgium since World War II took place in Verviers, which is Eastern Belgium, outside of Brussels, of course.

Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks, was involved in that. They recovered a minor arsenal -- actually, not so minor -- a huge arsenal, I should say, of assault rifles. They had explosive devices. They had GoPro cameras, indicating much like Paris and "Charlie Hebdo" and the kosher marketplace attack in France, they were going to film whatever atrocity they -- and apparently also confiscated or stolen police uniforms.

[15:25:00]

So they would smuggle as law enforcement. This is a European problem. We're focusing now on Belgium. I feel sort of bad we're beating on Belgium.

(CROSSTALK)

WEISS: The French have this problem.

In the U.K., the British are terrified because ISIS is more or less -- if you look at the propaganda videos they put out in the wake of the Paris attacks, they had a bullseye, a target sight superimposed on David Cameron's face in their grim iconography. They're saying that, the U.K., your time is next.

And because they just got -- the British just killed Mohammed Emwazi, they feel a sort of blood lust to retaliation. This isn't just Belgium. We're just looking at the one place where they have been successful so far.

SEXTON: In the era of AQI, you had attacks in Britain. You had even before the Iraq War the jihadist attacks in Spain.

So this is nothing new on the continent. But I think what we do see here is how deep the ties actually run specifically in Belgium. There are dozens. You have 10 involved in the attacks. Dozens of people had to be involved in logistics, facilitation, spiritual sanctioning.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: It's the apparatus, and it's all of the questions you raise and the fact that hopefully they will get him to talk, and will reveal said apparatus, because he couldn't have just been hiding all by himself.

WEISS: There's a good chance they get him to talk.

If this guy did chicken out, like, as Bob Baer said, he wasn't ready to blow himself up, he's probably not the most...

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: He kind of chickened out twice in a sense.

WEISS: Yes.

BALDWIN: Buck Sexton, Michael Weiss, thank you so much.

SEXTON: Sure.

BALDWIN: More on the breaking news in just a moment. Again, we're watching and waiting to hear from the Belgian prosecutor shed light on what exactly has happened, this significant capture.

We're also learning much more about what happened in a closed-door meeting of Republican leaders plotting the best way to stop Donald Trump from reaching that party's nomination, the 1,237 magic number. Michael Smerconish will join me on that next.

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