Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

New Zealand Reeling from Shooting Deaths of 49 in Mosques; Eyewitness Mohan Ibn Ibrahim Interviewed about New Zealand Attacks; North Korea May Suspend Talks with U.S. Over Nuclear Arms Control; Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) Connecticut Interviewed about New Zealand Attacks. Aired 7-7:29a ET

Aired March 15, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[07:00:11] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. We start with breaking news of the most horrible variety.

New Zealand is reeling from a terror attack. At least 49 people have been killed. Dozens more are injured.

Authorities say gunfire erupted inside two mosques in the city of Christchurch. The bloodshed took place as Muslims gathered for Friday prayers. Right now, we know one person has been charged with murder. Three other people are in custody.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it's a mistake to think for a second this is just about New Zealand. The suspect is believed to have posted an 87-page manifesto on social media before the attack. It is filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. He talks about invasion. Where else have you heard that?

The killer talks about replacement, the very same type of language you heard in Charlottesville. The manifesto calls President Trump a symbol of white identity.

Muslims in New Zealand are being urged to stay away from places of worship. At this hour, much of Christchurch remains in lockdown.

CNN's Anna Coren is covering this for us with the breaking details -- Anna.

Reporter: John, as you say, the death toll currently stands at 49, but there are dozens more that have been seriously injured, suffering severe gunshot wounds, so that death toll could very well rise.

As you say, three men have been arrested, one charged with murder. That is an Australian citizen. He is 28 years old. Police yet to reveal his name, but he is due in court on murder charges in Christchurch tomorrow morning.

This man, he released video of the attack of his killing spree live. He streamed it live on Facebook. Before that was this 76-page manifesto that you mentioned.

This killing spree was something so horrific, something I have never, ever witnessed before, but it goes for some 17 minutes. The killing spree itself lasted six minutes.

But you see this man, he drives to the mosque. He gets out of his car with semiautomatic weapons. He walks into this mosque firing, mowing down everybody in his path. You can hear the people who were there praying, moaning, crying out for help; and he just keeps firing. He is cold. He is calculated, and he is frighteningly calm.

He reloads in the corridor. He then walks out and continues to fire. But on the pavement this -- this time picking off people who had obviously come out after hearing this rapid gunfire. He reloads at the car, walks back into this mosque, and the killing spree continues.

But this time, you can see dozens of bodies slumped on the ground, whether people have been killed, whether they're lying there hiding, whether they're playing dead. He then goes up to each those bodies and, at pointblank range, he executes every single one of them. It's absolutely frightening.

He then walks out. He sees a woman, shoots her from the distance. Goes up and kills her. Gets back in his car, is shooting from the windscreen, shooting outside the passenger windows, shooting indiscriminately.

I mean, this is -- these are the actions of a deranged, a deranged individual who wasn't acting alone, but we do know that he then traveled to the next mosque where he continued his killing spree.

Let's now listen to one of the eyewitnesses.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHMOUD NASIR, WITNESS TO MOSQUE SHOOTING: We heard, you know, the fighting, and it was from the main entrance, the main entrance of the building. And then everybody just run toward the back doors, just to save themselves. We saw many injured, bullet in arm. And (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Baltar (ph) lied there. She was just lying in the road. And I don't know how many people died.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COREN: This is something you do not see in New Zealand. The last mass shooting was in the 1980s, and six people were killed. Something of this level, of this degree, is just unheard of. New Zealand is a peace-loving country. It welcomes migrants. It welcomes Muslims.

And the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, she reiterated that in her press conference today. She said, This is not New Zealand. We are home to those migrants, to those Muslims. We are not home to these people with these violent extremist views."

CAMEROTA: Right. I mean, that's an important message in the is just one person. This is just one sick, disgusting psychopath. And so obviously, New Zealand can't change their spirit, but I understand the temptation this morning.

[07:05:05] Anna, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

Joining us now is our Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent; Levi West, director of terrorism studies at Charles Sturt University in Australia; and Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates.

Farhana, I want to start with you. Obviously, this is a crime against civilization, but it is specifically targeted at Muslims. And I just don't know how Muslims are supposed to absorb that this morning. What are the conversations that the community's having?

FARHANA KHERA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MUSLIM ADVOCATES: It has been a very difficult last 12 hours or so, as I heard about this news and absorbing it, started reaching out to my friends, my colleagues, and just what I'm seeing even on social media.

This is just absolutely heartbreaking, and my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families at this time.

I think what is really -- a common theme I'm hearing is that, unfortunately, this is not surprising. The American Muslim community has experienced horrific attacks, motivated by people who are inspired by white nationalist causes, whether it's attacks on our mosques, attempts to attack our communities, from Islamberg to Kansas. So this has been going on for some time.

And I think that the question that I'm really sitting with this morning, Alisyn, is this should be a wakeup call. The attack in New Zealand, we have seen horrific attacks against, not against just Muslims, but the Jewish community, the Sikh community, not only in the United States but around the world now. And this should be a wakeup call for political leaders to prioritize tackling this issue and preventing and deterring these types of attacks from occurring in the future.

BERMAN: I've got to say, it should be a wake-up call, but it seems clear to me that the alarm clock is broken, because the language used in this disgusting manifesto is very similar to that that we heard of the killer at the Pittsburgh synagogue: invasion, other, anti- immigration.

And, Clarissa, it is clear that some of this language, which is coming from some of the highest places in the land in the world, is being weaponized now and being weaponized, Clarissa, all around the world.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, that's right. If you go through, if you pour over, John, this 87-page -- I really hate to even call it a manifesto; it's more of a self-interview act of narcissism by a sociopathic murderer/terrorist. But he does lay out very clearly and almost playfully at times, I would say, prevalent far-right-wing tropes and memes that are being spread all over the Internet but which have also seeped into the mainstream political discourse.

He talks a lot about the idea of invasion, of all the migrants coming from Muslim countries taking over white people. Of the fact that Muslim communities have a higher birth rate than white Anglo-Saxon communities. He talks a lot about this idea of replacement, that their values, the white nationalist values are being taken over.

And very clearly, what struck me going through this is similar the language is not just to certain ugly discourse that we now hear in the mainstream political world, but also to groups like ISIS and al Qaeda. This manifesto is designed to provoke a retaliation. It's designed to try to create a wedge in liberal Democratic societies, and to precipitate more violence with the hopes of having a sort of all-out ideological war, akin to the one that we saw during the crusades.

And I think it's very interesting the language that's used. ISIS always called the West crusaders. He, too, calls himself one of the Knights Templar, again an allusion to the crusades. Both of these abhorrent groups and ideas using very similar language, John.

CAMEROTA: That's always been striking, Clarissa. The -- I mean, extremists are extremists.

BERMAN: The same hate playbook.

CAMEROTA: The same hate playbook, often the same language. It's really striking. And so --

LEVI WEST, DIRECTOR OF TERRORISM STUDIES, CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY: I think there's a --

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Levi.

WEST: The important thing, I think, is that they're sitting on, above all of that, is fascist ideas. So the ideas of supremacy, and the idea of existential threat from an outgroup is a set of fascist ideas. We find exactly the same concept sitting in Nazism and actual socialism. And whether you then tweak that to suit white supremacist audience, or whether you tweak those ideas to suit a jihadist audience, the core of those ideas are fascism. And I think it's easy to get lost in -- in the weeds of exactly which manifestation that is.

I think the other important thing to keep in mind is that using terms like "psychopath" diminishes the responsibility that he has. There's nothing to suggest that this guy had mental health challenges of any description. His manifesto is clear and consistent with a whole bunch of ideas like -- that similar people have undertaken actions motivated by the same kinds of ideas. And I think it diminishes the level of responsibility that he ought to carry for what he did to suggest that he is evil or a psychopath or has mental health issues when we don't have any basis of which to assume that.

[07:10:07] CAMEROTA: Yes. Levi, I've been struggling with that. I'm glad you brought that up. I've been struggling with that this morning. Because what is the word to describe someone who, in cold blood, looks at someone and, at pointblank range, who he doesn't know, shoots them in the head as they're praying, however old they are, children, elderly, whatever, and does it 49 times? I don't -- I'm struggling with the language this morning of what we should use. WEST: If he has an ideological motivation, he's a terrorist. It's as

simple as that.

The fact that we can't understand his motivations or we don't agree with his motivations doesn't mean that they're necessarily incoherent or irrational or whatever the case may be.

You know, once you adopt the foundational assumptions of the ideas that he believes in, then what he was doing makes perfect sense. If you accept those foundational assumptions.

So it's still a rational decision, if you believe the same things he believes to be true about the world. So if you believe that the white race is under existential threat, because Muslims and other communities are going to outgrow us in terms of fertility rates, then the actions that he's taking starts to makes sense. But writing it off as either evil or mentally unstable, because we can't understand it, diminishes our capacity to analyze it.

BERMAN: And Farhana, I am struck by the globalization of this killer's thinking.

Inside this manifesto, he talks about events all over the world. He has a knowledge of the Second Amendment battles in the United States. And I'm not bringing up that to talk about gun control. I'm bringing it up to talk about the fact that this is a guy keyed in to some of the discussions and the tension points that are happening everywhere.

KHERA: Yes, absolutely.

WEST: That just means he's got Internet, right?

KHERA: Absolutely. And we've seen this time and time again, where there is clearly this kind of -- the racism, the anti-immigrant fervor that's motivating these groups. And this movement has really just metastasized across the country.

I mean, it was just actually a year ago that President Trump retweeted a tweet from a racist British group called Britain First and its anti- Muslim videos and images. It's a group that's responsible for attacks on Muslims in Britain.

There are -- there have been government officials in the United States who have hosted people like Geert Wilders, a Dutch government official, who stokes anti-Muslim hate and bigotry.

So there's definitely a disturbing exchange of ideas, and one might even say coordination, at times across the border.

And I just want to go back to my earlier point, too, John, which is that we really need our FBI director to prioritize how to address this issue of this threat. You know, after 9/11, Director Mueller said the No. 1 priority of the FBI is going to be counterterrorism. And let's see that priority focusing on the white nationalist threat.

I'd like to see officials in Congress call Director Wray up to the Hill and brief them on what the FBI is doing to make this a priority.

CAMEROTA: Farhana, in terms of the solutions, I want to stick with you for one more second, because what about Facebook? What about Twitter? What about the fact that the playbook was on there?

KHERA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, they claim to be trying to use artificial intelligence to crack down on some of these words that are loaded. But it's not working.

KHERA: Yes. It's a real issue that we have. We've been talking to Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube for several years now, expressing our concerns about the ways in which these platforms are being used and abuse.

Frankly, we've seen Twitter be more responsive than Facebook. We do think Facebook is kind of turning a bit of a blind eye and not doing as much as it can be doing to proactively remove this content.

They do things in other countries to proactively remove content as a result of those governments requiring Facebook to do that in order to be able to operate in those countries. And we need Facebook to step up and to do more to regulate the content on its platform. It -- social media companies have a role to play, as well.

BERMAN: I don't think there's any question -- go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

WEST: -- they had -- I have the main shooter -- Twitter had the main shooter's account down hours after the incident took place. Twitter is very forward leaning. But --

CAMEROTA: I want it beforehand.

WEST: -- there's real challenges --

CAMEROTA: I want it -- I want this shut down before the massacre.

WEST: He hadn't done anything beforehand. So the posting that he put up that said, "I'm going to do something" was on 8chan, which is down in the bowels of the Internet. That's not a regular social media platform that most people access and not the kind of thing that necessarily gets monitored in the same way.

And if you were to try and task Facebook and Twitter and intelligence and law enforcement with responding to every posting that went on the Internet that suggested that someone was going to do something, then the resourcing that would be necessary, and most of the time, nothing happens.

[07:15:10] So you can't treat every piece of posting that happens on social media that says, "I'm going to go in," as if someone's going to actually follow through with it. The other half of that is that, according to the New Zealand prime

minister, none of the four people who apparently are in custody were on any watch list of any description with either New Zealand or Australian intelligence. So then you've got nothing to triangulate that posting back to -- you know, this guy's of concern. He's now posted information that suggests he's going to do something. But it's not as sort of simple as all of that.

BERMAN: All right. Guys, stand by for a moment, if you will.

Joining us now on the phone is Mohan Ibn Ibrahim. He witnessed the massacre at one of the mosques.

Mohan, thank you for being with us. I'm sorry to put you through this again, but tell us where you were and what you saw.

MOHAN IBN IBRAHIM, WITNESSED ATTACK (via phone): Hi. I was actually inside the mosque on the right side. So if you have ever seen the whole video of the mosque, and it's a big mosque. So the shooter was coming from the main entrance, from the main door.

And then he was coming inside, and when I heard, I was in the front side of the mosque, inside on the right side. When I heard the first shot sound, I thought it was an electric shock, so I thought something happened. And later on, it was just continuously, like, shooting and coming inside slowly, because he was killing all the people who are in the entrance.

And then there was a door on the right side which was for the ladies' section entrance. By that door, I -- I was running out of the mosque on the backyard side of the mosque, where people normally park their car. And I have to run around six to 700 millimeter and to jump out of the main wall of the mosque to go in the street.

And when I was jumping and I was standing in the house, which was off side from the mosque; and from there I was -- you know, like hearing the sound of the shooting, it was like continuously happened for ten to 15 minutes.

And then I was running towards the main -- the main -- the main gate by the backside of the area. So there was -- there was a road, and by then the police had came, the ambulances came, and I saw lots of people who were injured in the road, because the gunman was shooting when he was coming out of the mosque, as well, randomly. Whoever he has seen in the street.

BERMAN: Mohan, again, I'm so glad that you're OK. I'm so sorry you went through this. Tell me about your fellow parishioners. Who are the people who pray at this mosque?

IBRAHIM: Just community people. Like, a special prayer on Friday. And the prayers start at 2 p.m. This incident happened around 1:40 to 1:45. There still lots of people yet to come to inside.

And the thing is, we -- we were waiting, like, you know, people come late because Friday is obviously an official day in New Zealand. So lots of people come just maybe five minutes early. So those are the communities that I have seen the people who come regularly to that mosque.

BERMAN: Mohan --

IBRAHIM: Normally, it's --

BERMAN: I'm afraid to ask, but did you lose any loved ones in this attack?

IBRAHIM: Yes. I have seen two -- I know one of the -- one of the old person, he was (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And what happened like he -- he used to go to the mosque by the wheelchair. He always in the wheelchair. And I was really hard about him. And later on, I saw him on the street. He's good, but his wife passed away.

BERMAN: I'm so sorry.

IBRAHIM: Dead on the spot. And another person who was largely (UNINTELLIGIBLE), when shooter was coming from the backside, the front entrance; and he's dead, as well.

BERMAN: I'm so sorry for the loss of your friends, Mohan. And I know this only happened to you a few hours ago. Have you thought about the why?

IBRAHIM: Yes.

BERMAN: Why would someone do this?

IBRAHIM: Yes, that's -- I do not. I'm speechless. I cannot -- I cannot calculate, because I am living in this country for six or five years. And I never thought that I'll face something in this time on a Friday, when lots of people get -- get out of the official -- a special prayer every Friday.

So I don't know why it's been so crazy. I don't feel safe anymore, because I believed that New Zealand (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this country, but not anymore I can claim that.

BERMAN: Mohan Ibn Ibrahim, again, thank you for being with us. We're sorry you went through this. We are sorry for the loss of your friends. We are thinking about you in this very difficult day.

IBRAHIM: Thank you so much.

BERMAN: Thanks, Mohan.

CAMEROTA: We'll have much more of our breaking news coverage straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, North Korea says it is considering suspending nuclear talks with the United States and says it will soon decide whether to resume nuclear and missile testing. President Trump said he left the summit in Vietnam with a promise from

Kim Jong-un that there would be no missile testing. So this would be a huge reversal.

CNN's Paula Hancocks live in Seoul with the breaking details -- Paula.

[07:25:00] PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, this was a press conference that the vice foreign minister gave to reporters who are based in Pyongyang.

And she effectively said that -- THAT Kim Jong-un is now deciding whether or not he even wants to continue diplomatic talks with the United States. And, as you say, whether he's going to respect and keep that moratorium on nuclear and missile launches.

She also said, quote, "The U.S. were too busy with pursuing their own political interests and had no sincere intention to -- to achieve a result."

They also pointed out once again, as they did at that midnight press conference in Hanoi after Mr. Trump had left the country, that they weren't asking for all sanctions to be lifted in return for giving up the Yongbyon nuclear facility. They were only asking for some of those that really affected the North Korean people.

Now, we don't know for sure whether or not that is accurate.

One interesting thing, though. The vice foreign prime minister did not criticize Mr. Trump himself, saying that the North Korean and the U.S. leader do still have a special relationship, talking about "The chemistry between them is mysteriously wonderful."

Instead, what she did was lay the blame for this failure of the Hanoi summit at the doors of the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and also the national security adviser, John Bolton.

Back to you.

CAMEROTA: Paula, thank you very much.

Now to this breaking news. At least 49 worshippers murdered inside two mosques. Dozens more are injured in this terror attack in New Zealand.

Joining us now to talk about this and more, we have Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.

Senator Blumenthal, thanks so much for being here.

Just another sickening morning, just another sickening mass shooting, mass murder at the hands of a white supremacist. We're seeing more right-wing extremism around the globe, as you know. What are your thoughts?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: A heartbreaking day and, of course, our prayers go out to the people of New Zealand, particularly the loved ones and survivors and victims.

But words do have consequences; and we know that at the very pinnacle of power in our own country, people are talking about good people on both sides.

CAMEROTA: You mean the president talking about it. I mean, I know it's hard to even call this out. I've heard this from a guest this morning. They're having a hard time calling this out for some reason.

BLUMENTHAL: I think it's more than the president. It's the people who enable him and who fail to stand up to him and speak out.

And we're seeing some glimmers of spine now in the United States Congress, some of my colleagues in the last three votes standing up to him and saying no to his trampling on the Constitution. But it also more than words. The president has defied constitutional norms and principles in declaring a national emergency. Words have consequences, like saying we have an invasion on our border and talking about people as though they were different in some fatal way.

I think the public discourse from the president on down is a factor in some of these actions.

CAMEROTA: I mean, we don't have to guess, actually, at this. We don't have to connect the dots ourselves. This is what the suspects say.

This guy put out, I mean, according to authorities, put out this manifesto where he connects the dots between the rhetoric that he likes to hear and his violent action.

I'm wondering what you think of the president's quote to Breitbart that he said. And I just want to read it to you. This was from this week. He said, "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people. But they don't play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad." How do you interpret that?

BLUMENTHAL: I interpret that kind of comment as a danger to peaceful transition of power in our democracy. That's one of the fundamental principles of our Constitution, that we have that kind of peaceful transition of power and respect for the rule of law, which that kind of comment utterly betrays.

We are at a break-the-glass moment for our democracy. And so, on an issue like the transparency of the Mueller report, which I think is vital so that America knows the facts and evidence that are found there; on an issue like the declaration of a national emergency when there is one, usurping the powers of Congress on spending guaranteed by the Constitution. We need to speak up and stand out. And I think my Republican colleagues need to show a little bit more backbone.

CAMEROTA: But if this is a break-the-glass moment, do you hear what President Trump said there as that he would not relinquish power, as that there won't be a peaceful transfer of power in 2020 if he loses? BLUMENTHAL: There certainly are glimmers and hints of that fact, and

that's what is so, really, alarming, even terrifying in a remark of that kind. Because it encourages people who may, in fact, say, "We are going to resist. We're going to go to the streets. We are going to stop that kind of peaceful transition of power."

[07:30:00]