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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

French Terror Attack. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 15, 2016 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're all going. That's Sunday at noon. And John and us, we'll be there all week.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks so much for joining us AT THIS HOUR.

BERMAN: "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

That world now knows the name of the 31-year-old Frenchman who plowed through a dense crowd on a sea front promenade last night in Nice, France. But the world is at a loss to understand why. And to stop these attacks that are in no way exclusive to France, but have taken such a toll there since the "Charlie Hebdo" assault a year and a half ago.

This time the weapon was a large commercial truck. The witnesses and some authorities also say the driver was firing gunshots as he mowed down revelers who had just watched a fireworks' display on Bastille Day, the French national holiday.

(VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Eighty-four people were killed and last hour the investigating prosecutor said 52 others have been critically hurt. We know some of the dead and injured are children. The rampage was stopped more than a mile from where it began when police shot that driver to death. He's now been identified as Mohamad Bouhel, a citizen of France, a resident of Nice, and of Tunisian descent. Authorities have spent the day at Bouhel's apartment, and his ex-wife is now being held and questioned.

I want to stop here and bring in my CNN colleagues Clarissa Ward and Nic Robertson, both of them reporting live.

And, Nic, you're out in front of this murder's actual home. Are they finding any evidence that might lead to a motive for this?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, what the police have said so far is that the prosecutor gave us details of the raid here a little earlier today. He said that they've taken away telephone and IT equipment. They also say that they have recovered a cell phone from the cab where he was shot dead by the police as they brought his murderous rampage in that vehicle to a standstill.

What we've been able to see here and learn here indeed today by going into the apartment, I've been able to look in through broken door and see inside the apartment that this murder came from. You can see the drawers have been pulled out. There are things lying around on the floor. There appears to be a sort of an LCD computer-type screen in there. But the police left the apartment that way after they finished searching it. It looks as if it's had a very rough and ready search there.

We've also spoken to neighbors here, and the neighbor here described him as being - she said he was very odd. He would - he would - had a stare. He had a fixed look about him. He wouldn't say hello. He would only - he would only nod at her. She said she used to see him about four times a day. He would come and go at different times of the day. She used to see him with a bicycle, coming in and out of the apartment with a bicycle.

And what we've heard from the prosecutor today is that the surveillance camera footage picked up - picked up Mohamed Bouhel approaching the 18-ton refrigerated truck that he drove into the crowds at about 8:30 in the evening yesterday evening and then later the police say that the only things, apart from a weapon and several fake weapons found in the vehicle, were a bicycle. It appears that he rode to this truck late yesterday evening, put his bike in the back of the truck, pondered for a couple of hours, and then began the attack. The prosecutor says that this time, of all those people that are injured, a significant number, 25, of those 52 injured, 25 are still in comas, still their situations very, very precarious, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And, Nic, just quickly. The prosecutor and others alluding to the idea that there's no intelligence to suggest that he belonged to any mosque, that he was on the radar of any intelligence service. So are we to think at this time that this is any kind of a group affiliated terror or that this is just a sick mass murder?

ROBERTSON: Well, there were - there were some other details as well from the prosecutor because he said that he'd been given a suspended sentence for an activity very early this year, been given a six-month suspended prison sentence in March - May, rather, for being armed and behaving in a violent way. So that is an indicator that - of irrational and dangerous behavior that had brought him into contact with the police.

[12:05:16] However, these were just criminal, criminal charges, as the prosecutor said. They weren't following him. The counterterrorism authorities weren't following him. They hadn't opened what's known as a (INAUDIBLE) in France, which is an intelligence document where they will monitor you the information they gather about you. It goes into this document, if you will.

So in terms of sort of terrorism related to radical Islam. He wasn't on their radar. He was only on their radar for being violent with a weapon. Enough to get a six-month suspended sentence. And at this time, the police will undoubtedly be looking back at the details on that case to see what else, if anything, they should have seen, might have missed, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Nic, standby if you will, please.

I want to go over to Clarissa, who is standing by live on what just, you know, within 24 hours, was a scene of celebration, the promenade in Nice, now a site of mass carnage. Just take me to the aftermath, the processing of this crime scene, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you wouldn't know it, Ashleigh, but this is one of the most lovely sites that the spectacular city of Nice has to offer. The Promenade des Anglais, a very popular tourist destination. It looks out on the sparkling, beautiful Mediterranean Sea.

And the area behind me now, which is all closed off as police essentially comb that massive crime scene, more than a mile long, for clues as to how exactly this happened. But last night this area would have been filled with throngs of thousands of people gathering, both French residents, also tourists from all over the world, gathering here to witness the fireworks display for Bastille Day. Bastille Day, of course, being France's independence day.

And it was against that backdrop, and that symbolic event that the attacker took this 18-ton refrigerated truck, as you heard from Nic, and began mowing down people as he drove down the promenade. And we actually heard from some witnesses, they were describing that initially they thought there was some kind of an accident, that he had lost control of the vehicle. And it was only after they saw that he was accelerating and zigzagging into the crowds that they realized that this was a major attack.

What's interesting, Ashleigh, is that a short time ago, a couple of hours ago, the motorcade of France's president, Francois Hollande, passed through here. And it was very telling to see the reaction of the crowd. I would say it's a very different vibe from what we saw in Paris, where there was shock, where there was solemnity, where there was silence, where there was solidarity. Today, we saw people actually shouting at the president's motorcade, calling him a murder even, calling him things that we can't say on television. And when I went and had a discussion with people, there were some very acrimonious, heated debates going on among people about the issue of security in France, whether there's enough of it, and whether the government has done enough to protect its own people, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Well, it's been a hell of an 18 months for France without question. Clarissa Ward, than you for your live reporting. Nic Robertson doing an excellent jobs getting those inside images, Nic, of that apartment, thank you for that.

The survivors say that by the time anyone knew what was even happening last night, it was just too late. You have heard their stories on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): A lorry arrived and smashed into everyone. Everyone.

PAUL DELANCE, TRUCK RAMPAGE SURVIVOR: It seemed like thousands of people running towards us. And if you didn't run with them, then you would have been just trampled yourselves. So we just ran along, not knowing anything. Not knowing what was even going on.

ERIC DRATTELL, TRUCK RAMPAGE WITNESS: I didn't even realize what they were. We heard these sounds, the pop, pop, pop sounds. And my wife, though oddly enough she's deaf, she recognized the sounds as gunfire.

ANDY MCARDY, TRUCK RAMPAGE WITNESS (voice-over): I was working last night and I - all of a sudden there was - at the end of the fireworks display, we heard this - the - a lot of screaming, gunshots and then people just started running in all directions. And a lot of them headed into our restaurant trying to find an escape route. It all happened so quickly. Literally, passed here - passed by in a flash and - and we heard the gunshots and that was it. Then it was just pandemonium, because people were just running in every direction.

DELANE: At the same time I was thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't be running. Maybe I should be looking for a place to hide, because we couldn't hear any bullet shots. The music was so loud that there was literally just screaming and running that we saw. So it was - it was just mass confusion.

KARIM LAAMARA, TRUCK RAMPAGE SURVIVOR (through translator): There were people crying. People covered with blood. It is so sad.

[12:10:03] DRATTELL: We saw a child's stroller, a pram (ph), that had been obviously run over. And then later as we were being allowed to go back to our hotel, we could see bodies all over the - the road, but honestly couldn't tell which were children and which were adults.

LAAMARA (through translator): There were people on the ground, yes, only people on the ground. Many, many. I was trying not to look. I tried to look up. I didn't want to see. It was too painful. Too painful.

DELANE: I would also like to say, I'm sorry to France. I love you. And - and I wish you courage for the - for the future and for all the families that were affected. And God bless you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: The horrors of this attack are only multiplied by the children who were run down by that truck or trampled by the crowds. In many cases, doctors struggled to identify them because they had been also separated from their parents.

We know the name of only one small boy who died last night alongside his father. They are Americans from Texas, 51-year-old Sean Copeland and 11-year-old Brodie Copeland. CNN's Atika Shubert is at the Pasteur Hospital where many of the injured are being treated right now.

Atika, we've been getting the updates and the number as it stands now, and it may change, is that 10 among those dead, 10 among the 84 were children. And we're at, I think, 202 injured. I can't imagine the scene where you are.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a staggeringly high number of young children that have been killed in this attack. And the reason for that is because it was a fireworks display. It was a family event. Everybody was out for a good time. It was basically the Fourth of July here. It was Bastille Day.

And so in the aftermath, parents were separated from their kids. This is the children's hospital in La Voie (ph) and doctors here say is was as if you were witnessing a massive car crash with 50 or more kids being brought in all at once, many of them without their parents. So they struggled to identify the kids, even as they were trying to treat these massive injuries. And the way they described the injuries is they had - it's pretty graphic stuff, but essentially that limbs were twist and mangled. They had massive chest injuries. Quite a few head injuries. And they said it's not just because of being crushed by the truck, but many - especially of the youngest children, were simply stampeded over. In fact, we know of a young three-year-old boy who's now inside being reunited with his parents, but still in serious condition. Three children remain in critical condition. One of them has not been identify. His parents have not yet been found.

So it's pretty grim scenes inside. But many of the kids have been able to be reunited with their families. And we did speak to one 16-year- old who found her mother, but she is so traumatized by what she saw, she could even finish a sentence with us before she broke down in tears. And this is something that, very sadly, is going to live with them for the rest of their lives, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Atika Shubert for us. Of course, it was a family event, and an international event as well, so there were all those people that need to be notified if countries around the world.

Atika reporting for us live outside the hospital. Thank you for that.

We really are left to wonder who this man was. Who was this man so capable of such a heinous attack, targeting so many people, so many little kids? And why France? Why Nice? Fareed Zakaria joining me next with his thoughts.

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[12:17:53] BANFIELD: If the truck driver responsible for the terror attack was a practicing Muslim in Nice, no one knew it. That's according to a senior Islamic leader in France who ran the attacker's name and says he is not affiliated with any mosque in that area. Not affiliated.

Police are trying to learn all they can about him, about that man, who they say is French, is 31 years old, is of Tunisian descent. The president of France gave a statement a short time ago saying he believes that the city of Nice was targeted because it is famous, because it is beautiful, and because the attacker wanted to harm the very idea of French national unity.

I want to get Fareed Zakaria, of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," in on this.

That may be so and - and we hear that kind of thing. It almost sounds like a platitude after a terror attack, that these people want to harm everything that we stand for. But at the same time, I think we're forgetting the bigger issue, that this is now becoming so standard, some are starting to use the word normal. The leadership in France actually said, this is something we now need to live with, terrorism. And yet Christiane Amanpour asked Secretary Kerry of the United States, is this the new normal after the Bataclan and he said, no, absolutely not. What is it, Fareed?

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, CNN'S "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Well, you remember that John Kerry, when he was running for president against George W. Bush, said something similar. He said, we have to regard terrorism as fundamentally an ongoing law enforcement problem. And he got widely criticized for it. There was a sense that he didn't reflect the American mood, the fighting spirit.

And that's what you're dealing with here. On the one hand, there is a practical reality that terrorism does exist. We are in this new normal in the sense that we're going to have to be vigilant, you know, at a kind of ongoing basis. We're not going to solve the problem tomorrow.

But yet people want to hear that fighting spirit. They don't want to hear a sense of fatalism or defeatism. And I think that's what you're capturing is the tension between not giving into some kind of fatalism, and yet recognizing that practically it does mean your day- to-day life has changed.

[12:20:04] BANFIELD: Well -

ZAKARIA: This is not a one-off.

BANFIELD: Something has really changed. Clarissa Ward just reported from the scene of the carnage where they still have to pick up the detritus of what happened last night. That the mood is different. She covers all of these things. She goes from one attack to another. And she said after the Bataclan, the mood was solemn, shock, devastation. And after this, anger. They're yelling at their president, work on security, do something about it. That things are shifting. At least from her perspective there, it feels different.

ZAKARIA: You know, one hates to - at this moment, I think, it's a moment of mourning and kind of somber reflection. I hate to point fingers in any way or do too much of a kind of analysis, but there is a difference here between the Bataclan and this one. The Bataclan was essentially a soft target. It's impossible to protect all the nightclubs and places like that in a city like Paris. This was a public - these were public festivities. This was the Bastille Day celebration. You knew there were going to be large crowds there.

There is an interesting question about whether there could have been better protection. Where - you know, again, one hesitates to say any of that because the response -

BANFIELD: Against a truck on a street? ZAKARIA: Right. Right, a truck on a street.

BANFIELD: What are you going to do, it was already barricaded off?

ZAKARIA: Precisely.

BANFIELD: You know?

ZAKARIA: So - so, maybe that's what people were thinking, which is, you know, this was an obvious potential target. The Bataclan was not. But I think that the real issue is, people get scared and fear turns to anger.

BANFIELD: And then we want to point fingers.

I just want to interrupt you for a moment because we've just received this image of the identity card that was talked about as being inside the cab of the truck that wrought so much hell and fire and brimstone upon these poor victims. This is the identity card of Mohamed Bouhel, who was gunned down, but not before he could slaughter 84 people and leave 202 injured. Among the dead, ten children. That's the identity card that was found in the truck.

And the prosecutor, and the French prosecutor, confirmed just a short time ago that the fingerprints of the dead man were actually matched to that I.D. So he had his own I.D. I assume he wasn't afraid to die.

I think we also have to be very careful in calling this any kind of, well, it's terrorism no matter who he may or may not have been affiliated with. But if it's any kind of group affiliation, we don't know that yet. No one's claiming responsibility. And yet -

ZAKARIA: And it seems pretty clear it's not ISIS, because they would have - they almost always immediately claim responsibility.

BANFIELD: Some say ISIS waits for any other operatives to clear the scene, to clear the area, to clear borders before. I mean, and that's a subject certainly for debate.

ZAKARIA: Yes. Yes.

BANFIELD: But before we get any facts about that in, we have the former speaker of the House in the United States giving an interview last night about Muslims in the United States. And in light of this terror attack, what we need to do as Americans about Muslims in the United States, this is what former Speaker Newt Gingrich had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: And let me be as blunt and as direct as I can be. Western civilization is in a war. We should, frankly, test every person from here who is of a Muslim background. And if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BANFIELD: It's important to note that this murderer, who's not affiliated with any mosque that we know of, no religious leader knows about this murderer belonging to any Muslim prayer group or - they sure don't think he's a practicing Muslim. So those kind of words from the speaker, apart from being against the United States Constitution, do they help or do they echo the concerns of many in America, and maybe some of those whom Clarissa Ward had heard as angry at the scene of the carnage?

ZAKARIA: Well, as you say, Ashleigh, there's fear, there's anger. And then the question of true leadership is, do you pander to that? Do you capitalize on that fear or anger? Or do you actually lead people? So what Newt Gingrich is saying, as you say, it's based on a factual misunderstanding. It's from - from what we can tell, this guy did not believe in Sharia. From what we can tell, this guy wasn't even a practicing Muslim. And we don't know much yet, but what little we know suggests he was not.

And that would be part of a pattern of these French attackers over the last year. They have not been particularly religious. They were radicalized and then picked up a kind of off the shelf ideology of violent protests. So if you were to look for people who were highly religious or believed in Sharia, which, by the way, I think is, in many ways, in many countries, very backward, these people were not necessarily violent. So you'd be testing on the wrong thing.

There is the second issue, which you point out, which is, what Newt Gingrich is saying is that somebody should be asked what they believe in. And on the basis of those beliefs, they should be stripped of their American citizenship and deported. That is a pretty unusual thing for a man who hopes to be vice president and thus president of the United States to be saying.

[12:25:16] BANFIELD: We - we have a Bill of Rights that actually runs contrary to that exact statement.

ZAKARIA: Right.

BANFIELD: And he is a scholar. Look, Newt Gingrich is no dummy, so I am astounded he would say that. I understand the sentiment behind it. A lot of people have that sentiment. But in practicality, it's just not do-able.

ZAKARIA: But the thing - well, and, again, you're - the people who believe in Sharia are often not the people who are violent.

BANFIELD: And you're - it's not you're a target.

ZAKARIA: Yes, you're mixing up -

BANFIELD: Yes. Yes. This guy's a petty criminal.

ZAKARIA: You're mixing up two bad things.

BANFIELD: Right.

ZAKARIA: People who want Sharia law may be backward, they may be socially reactionary, but they're not always violent.

BANFIELD: Yes.

ZAKARIA: The people who are violent have often been not - not particularly religion. So, you know, when you're looking for needles in haystacks, it's very important to figure out what it is you are actually looking for. And just succumbing to people's fears and fanning them doesn't actually help you find those needles.

BANFIELD: We don't know that this isn't another James Holmes who exacted his vengeance because he was troubled. I mean he was just troubled. And he went into a movie theater and he shot dozens of people. We just don't - we just don't know what the motives were yet.

Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much. I appreciate you bringing your perspective today on such a sad story.

And, also, I just want to give a quick plug. Fareed Zakaria has a program, "GPS," on Sundays, 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN. Thank you, Fareed. I appreciate it.

We have learned at least two of the 84 people who were killed in the attack were Americans, a father and a son, and that boy was just 11 years old. We're going to have their story for you in just a moment.

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