Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

European Authorities Arrest Terror Suspects in Belgium; Reach of ISIS Terrorist Plots Examined; Kerry: Paris Terror Attacks Are Not the New Normal; 27 Governors Say They Won't Take Syrian Refugees. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 17, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- vowing, fist of all, revenge against those who carried this out, saying we will search for them everywhere. No matter where they are hiding we'll find them in any place in the planet and punish them. He didn't name ISIS of course, overtly but he said the air strikes in Syria would not just continue. They will be intensified to show that the criminals -- to show the criminals so they understand that revenge is unavoidable. So the revenge against ISIS, Vladimir Putin clearly putting the finger of blame at that group and vowing to strike even harder than they have been at the rebel group inside Syria in the days ahead.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Matthew, thank you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Matthew, so discoveries on the Russian front here in France. Who did the violence on Friday is known. Who planned it is also a big focus of the investigation, and now they believe they know the man who was the planner of the Paris massacre. They know his name. They know that he's planned other plots in the past. And they believe they know where he is in Syria. However, CNN has learned that western intelligence were determined to kill this man but couldn't find him and couldn't get it done in the last few weeks.

Let's get the latest from CNN senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Clarissa, it is so easy to say they should have got him. They know who he is, they know what he does, they know where he lives, but that last piece of actual identifying and striking is huge.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is huge, Chris. And what we know now is that French authorities as recently as a month ago had tried to track down and locate the master mind of these Paris attacks. His name is Abdelhamid al Abaaoud. He is a 27-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin. And he's believed to be responsible for other attacks as well. In January a plot that he was masterminding was thwarted. But he was able to escape. He was able to get back to Syria it is believed. And we know now the department of Homeland Security in a report as far back as May was saying they believed he was a risk that they believed the group was developing capabilities to possible carry out complex attacks here in the west.

Now, we are also getting more information about what these attackers were doing into the days leading up to Friday. According to a French weekly news magazine they were staying in a Budget hotel, and in those hotel rooms they have reportedly found pizza boxes and also syringes. Those syringes now being tested for possible traces of explosives.

And meanwhile, of course, the main focus here on the ground in Paris and across the country is on finding that eighth attacker. Overnight another 128 raids. France's interior ministry announcing today that 115,000 soldiers, police, paramilitary forces are fanning out across the country obviously to provide protection for the French people but also to try to drill down on the location of this eighth attacker and the network that likely would have been needed to help facilitate and orchestrate these attacks.

CUOMO: Obviously a lot of attention on that eighth attacker and that vest they believe is it still at large. But what happened here in France now reverberating elsewhere, specifically in Belgium has become a real hot spot. That's where the man hunt is focused now. We have senior international correspondent Ivan Watson there. Ivan, what's the latest?

IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, I just got off the phone with the Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt, and he's given much more details about some of the suspected attackers in the Paris attack. Notably three suspects that he says Belgian authorities had spoken with, had been monitoring prior to the Paris attacks. Two of them being the Abdeslam brothers, Ibrahim and Saleh. Ibrahim who blew himself up in Paris, and Saleh who is the subject of an international manhunt right now and is now at large.

The Belgian federal prosecutor says that Ibrahim first caught the attention of Belgian authorities the beginning of this year after he apparently tried to go to Syria from Belgium and was returned to Belgium by Turkish officials. He was then brought in for questioning in February of this year and eventually released when told -- when he said that he did not any longer want to go to Syria. And the missing brother, Saleh, was also questioned at that time and eventually released.

Now, the federal prosecutor says they do not have the manpower here in Belgian to monitor all of the hundreds of people who want to go and fight and join the jihad in Syria, that they have their hands full just following around 130 Belgians who have actually gone to Syria and then returned back to here, that they are the highest priority to be monitored right now.

[08:05:00] Now, a third brother Muhammad Abdeslam, he was brought in for questioning this weekend and then released. There are no criminal charges against him. And he's come out defending his family since his brief detention. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (via translator): You also need to understand that in spite of the tragedy, my parents are in shock. We do not realize yet what has happened. My family and I are affected by what happened. We found out by TV just like many of you. We did not think for a moment that one of our brothers was related to this these attacks. (END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Chris and Alisyn, the Belgian federal prosecutor confirms the car that Saleh Abdelhamid he was traveling in when he was briefly stopped by French authorities after the Paris attacks, he did show up here in Brussels, though he is still at large and considered to be a real danger. A third suspect, Bilal Hadfi, 19, 20 years old lived in Brussels, blew himself up in Paris, he was also known to the Belgian authorities as having gone to Syria to fight. What they didn't know was that he had come back to Europe. They did not know that he had smuggled himself back into Europe, and that is a major concern that the authorities have now. Back to you, Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Ivan, you have given us a lot of information to try to talk about and dissect. So let's bring in our CNN senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward. She's back with us. Also CNN terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank. Paul you have more information even about the mastermind.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind believed to be somewhere in Raqqa, Syria. He was close friends with a guy on the run, the eighth attacker. They were both part of the same street gang in Molenbeek, Belgian. They were both defendants in the same trial for robbery in 2010. They go way back. That is one of the circumstantial pieces of evidence pointing perhaps to his involvement.

But he's also been responsible and suspected for a whole host of terrorist plotting against Europe, most notably that plot in January against Belgian. But also according to "Le Monde" he's suspected to have been connected to and communicating with the guy who launched the shooting attack in the Jewish museum in Brussels in May of 2014. And also suspected according to "Le Monde" as having links with the train attacker --

CAMEROTA: The thwarted train attack by the three American heroes.

CRUICKSHANK: The three Americans. Also suspected to have links to the guy who tried to plot an attack against churches in Paris in April of this year. And mostly interestingly in August according to "Le Monde" there was a French ISIS fighter who came back to France. He was arrested. And he told interrogators here in France he had been recruited by Abaaoud to launch an attack against a concert hall in France and more attacks were in the works. He claimed to have backed out of this plot. So there is significant intelligence pointing to Abaaoud organizing a string of terror attacks, a campaign against France and other European countries. And there is real concern this is not over, it is just beginning.

CUOMO: So Clarissa, speak to the frustration that we learn we knew so much. We knew so much. We knew who it was. We knew where they were. We knew all these other things that he was connected to. Then there is that last space that winds up being most important, which is the, well, then why didn't you get him? How much more difficult is this little space than everything else we're hearing they knew? WARD: I think it is always easy with hindsight to say why didn't we

connect the dots? Why didn't French authorities put this together and realize based on all the things Paul was just saying here? But there is one key thing that Paul did say there, that Abaaoud was in street gangs before, that he was essential a street guy back in Belgian. And that is something that's really changed the face of terror as we know it. Many of these young guys who are fighting with ISIS inside Syria have criminal backgrounds of varying degrees.

And what does that mean? I used to talk to an American who was subsequently killed by a drone strike. He told me that back in the U.S. he had actually killed somebody. Not in the name of Allah or God, but because of a drug deal gone awry. This is the sort of background that you're seeing for a lot of these guys. And what does that mean. It makes them that much harder to catch because these guys are savvy. They know what they are doing. They are street smart. They have dealt with the police before. They know how the system works. They know how to fly under the radar. They know how to avoid protection. And perhaps most frighteningly they know how to by weapons.

CRUICKSHANK: I'm just amplifying the points Clarissa was making. I was speaking to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official about this. He said basically what is happening is there is a super street gang going from Belgium from all of these neighborhoods over to Syria. They all know each other and they all kind of work together.

CUOMO: Why are they doing it? What's the motivation?

[08:10:00] CRUICKSHANK: Well, the violent ethos of ISIS is really appealing to them. They already have this violent ethos of the streets in these neighborhoods in Belgium, these inner city neighborhoods. These people are essentially radicals who have become Islamized, rather than Islamists who have become radicalized. There's a big difference from those people who are more ideological in the past. These are people involved in gangsterism, petty crime. They have all sorts of contacts to get all kinds of weapons, really easy for them.

(CROSSTALK)

WARD: And there's a real desire --

CUOMO: We're getting new information. We had been reporting the last couple of days that this isn't just about France. They're working with all European partners. News comes of three arrests in western part of Germany related to what's going on here. That speaks to what investigators are telling us that these raids have sent people scattering all over the place.

WARD: And we're in the European Union. There are no borders here. They are open borders. We asked ourselves how could French authorities not be following every person who comes back from Syria? The answer is they don't know that they've come back from Syria because they don't fly back to France. They fly to Belgium. They fly to Latvia. They fly to another EU country and then they make their way here by land.

And I just want to come back to what Paul was saying about the motivation. For many of these young man, it is the same thing that motivates them to join a street gang. They want power. They want to have some meaning in their life. They want to make their mark. I worked a lot on the "Charlie Hebdo" cases and what was so remarking about the Kouachi brothers, they wanted to go down in history. A lot of this is vanity. A lot of this is pride. This is a classic disaffected youth desire to make your mark, to have everybody know your name.

CAMEROTA: Paul, I want to ask you about the big news that we're reporting today which is that Russia says definitively today that that Metrojet was brought down by a bomb. They have connected it to ISIS. So now ISIS seems to be in a different category. We now know they can bring down a plane with a bomb. They can plan a coordinated attack in a city like Paris. They can according to at least one infiltrate a refugee population previously unknown. Are they now in a different category than we had through previously?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, here's the concern. This is the richest terrorist group in history. They control all that territory in Syria and Iraq. And also let's not forget in places like Libya just on the southern -- you know, of the Mediterranean. And also they have an expanding presence in Yemen and in the Sinai Peninsula. So lots of places where they can plot attacks. The have all these westerners coming in, more than 6,000 westerners. So if they decide to pull the trigger, they decide to go all out and they have nothing close to doing that yet, then I think we have a severe problem here in the west that needs to be much, much more urgency from all our political leaders.

CUOMO: We keep hearing of this phrase "recognition of reach." And we just saw it again. Breaking developments here in the investigation. Not just France, not just in Belgium, now in Germany, three arrests. We're also getting sources efforts about efforts in Italy. So, Michaela, this effort is expanding as they try to find answers as to who was involved before the next attack.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: And I can imagine that will further expand. Alisyn, Chris, we'll be back to you in a moment. Let's give a look at the headlines at 13 minutes past the hour.

Growing fallout after officials revealed at least one suspect in those Paris attacks slipped into Europe hidden among Syrian refugees. Now more than half of U.S. governors say Syrian refugees are simply unwelcome in their states. At least 27 governors oppose administration plans to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the U.S. next year. We're going to speak with the first governor to go on the record fighting the administration's plan, Alabama's Robert Bentley, later this hour.

The mother of James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by ISIS last year, she will appear on Capitol Hill today. Diane Foley will testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing focused on terrorism financing. She told a D.C. area reporter that air strikes that likely killed Jihadi John are, quote, "small solace" because they simply won't bring James back. Jihadi John is believed to masked man who executed the western journalists including James Foley.

That's a quick look at your headlines. Let's get back to Paris, Chris and Alisyn, to you.

CUOMO: All right, Michaela, thank you very much.

Secretary of State John Kerry obviously here in Paris meeting with the foreign minister, trying to figure what to do next. French President Francois Hollande asking for ramped up efforts. So what is going to happen next in this battle to defeat is? We have an interview with Christiane Amanpour and Sc. Kerry. Everything laid out for you straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:14] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary of State John Kerry speaking out about what he's doing here in France and what needs to be done to battle ISIS. He sat down with Christiane Amanpour. She asked him if what we saw unfold in Paris is the new normal, the new face of terrorism, given the fact that the administration says that the strategy against ISIS is working. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Absolutely not. No, this is not normal. It will not be normal. It will not become normal.

This is an aberration. But it is a reflection of what foreign fighters have been able to do going to Syria and coming back and being able to spread their vile ideology to other people or even through the social media.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: That is his answer but it certainly still brings the question into sharp focus. If it's working, if this is when it is working, is this what we have to accept as reality?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and my question to him whether this was the new normal was precisely that. Is this what we citizens accept now? And you heard him say emphatically no.

And to that end, Alisyn, he also said that, you know, they are very pleased they have an ever increasing ever resolute coalition, naming all the countries in the region, naming Russia, Europe, obviously, and said that, you know, the political process as well he felt was working or potentially could provide fruit. I was quite surprised by his prediction of quick fruit that might be born. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KERRY: There is a new awareness. People are coming together in this coalition, which we built. I mean, the coalition has only been in existence for a year, one year.

[08:20:04] One year ago, we didn't have a coalition. One month ago, we didn't have a political process in place, which we now have with Iran and with Russia at the table, which gives us an opportunity to perhaps get a ceasefire in place within the next three, four, five weeks, and move to get Assad transitioning because he's the magnet for this terrorism and then begin focused on Daish itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So, Russia's participation is an opportunity. He says, isn't this interesting to see, you know, Obama and Putin have to work together now?

AMANPOUR: Well, there was that amazing picture of the more huddled, along with Susan Rice in Antalya, and to be frank, the U.S. administration, other Western governments were pretty angry with Russia when they started bombing and frankly started actually taking control of the skies and saying to the U.S., hey, we're in the neighborhood, keep your planes away from ours.

Now, after what happened to their civilians in the MetroJet crash, obviously, the U.S. and others are hoping that that will focus Russia into working, you know, more with the U.S. and striking ISIS, and striking those targets. And to that end, Russia apparently today, according to the Russian defense ministry, launched a massive strike on ISIS targets as the French are as well.

CUOMO: And told the U.S. about it.

But now, here is something that the U.S. authorities certainly don't like to talk about as much. But this war is felt by many to be something that Islam and countries with their populations being largely proportionate to Islam needs to own, this is their battle for the soul of what their faith is, because as you know very well and teach us all the time, so many Muslims, they don't call them Muslim, they are not. But they are Muslim.

And that fight, how much has to be owned by the region?

AMANPOUR: Well, you know what? Many say yes, we also have to stand up and say not in our name. And you can see going on all over social media right now. All sorts of groups from the United States, Europe, around the world saying, "not in my name".

So that is one thing. But -- and I think this is really important to focus on right now. There are more and more people saying to me -- listen, this is not about a religious war. This is not about just terrorism. That is just the means.

This is about a fascist totalitarian ideology with grand ambitions. They don't just want to stay in Syria and Iraq. They're talking about Indonesia, Constantinople, Istanbul, Rome, the seat of Christianity, you know, Damascus, Baghdad, all of those things, if they can get, that's what they want. So, the question really is, is the West -- is the coalition really

responding in a way like, for instance, the last time they did to 20th century fascism under the Nazis during World War II?

CAMEROTA: Right. And will they go beyond air strikes.

AMANPOUR: You know what? They are saying no ground troops at the moment, but they're talking about building up capacity on the ground, and presumably trying to build up local forces with the Kurds or others.

CUOMO: That is the key. There are plenty of ground troops. It is just who --

AMANPOUR: They need to be trained, armed --

CUOMO: Right.

AMANPOUR: -- given the ammunition, given the direction, really help.

CUOMO: And that it should be people from the region, especially the Turks, even the Egyptians, before even Americans or French or Russians, that that would be more meaningful in stabilizing the area. Will it happen?

CAMEROTA: Christiane, thank you. Thanks for sharing that interview.

CUOMO: All right. So, would you want Syrian refugees, given everything that's being discussed here, and all the potential risks in your state, on your block? Dozens of governors all over the United States are saying no, they want to block the administration's plans to bring in more refugees. It's started a debate in the United States about who we are when it comes to bringing people in. We have it ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:48] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Backlash against the U.S. plan to accept Syrian refugees is expanding here stateside, following news that at least one of the Paris attackers was able to get into Europe, claiming to be a Syrian migrant. At least 27 governors have come out against the administration plans to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the U.S. next year.

Legal experts say governors may not get the last word.

CNN's Martin Savidge joins us now following seemingly developing story.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

This is the sort of the latest iteration of NIMBY, not in my backyard, only in this particular case, it is the majority of state governors that have come out opposed as you point out to these Syrians locating into their states. The latest count and we can show on that, 27, Nevada was the most

recent add, that came in overnight saying no to any refugees from Syria.

There are a number of states that say just the opposite, seven of them in fact. There is broken down along party lines. New Hampshire being the exception. They have a Democratic governor and they too are the ones that are saying no. There are a number other states that are still undecided on this matter.

Is it legal? Can they do this?

Well, the State Department is a little on the fence but legal experts have said no. It is not a state authority to be able to say yes or no to anybody coming into this country. That is a federal power. However, states can make it difficult because once those refugees are here, many of the state governors control the purse strings of those various agencies in their state that would help those refugees.

So, that's the real problem here. They can make life pretty difficult. You can bet there is going to be a lot of negotiation back and forth between the State Department trying to convince these states to get on board that are opposed or they may just decide to take all of those that are coming and put them all in those states that have said they are willing to accept -- Chris.

CUOMO: Well, you frame it the right way. It is not just about law or politics, it's about culture. It's about defining who America wants to be. It's an ongoing debate.

So, let's have it right now. We have Republican Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. He is the first to formally announce he's refusing to relocate Syrian refugees to his state.

Governor, thank you very much for joining us. Please make the case for your action.

GOV. ROBERT BENTLEY (R), ALABAMA: Well, it is my responsibility as the governor of Alabama to make sure that the people of Alabama are safe and secure.