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Amanpour
Tunisian President on Bardo Museum Attack; The Lure of Terrorism; Imagine a World. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired March 23, 2015 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Tonight: the Tunisian president tells me the museum attack in the capital could have been a lot worse. The
terrorists were wearing suicide vests.
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BEJI CAID ESSEBSI, TUNISIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The police stand up and they were shot down. And they didn't have the time to get
these vests to work because had they done so, then we would have had a major catastrophe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And after another group of foreigners, this time medical students traveled to Syria to work in ISIS hospitals, we wonder
why. I'll a jihadist turned double agent and about what lures the fighters.
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AIMEN DEAN, JIHADIST AND MI5 AGENT: The ideology of the Islamic State is so potent that it liberates the inner psychopath.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
Fifteen people have been arrested in Tunisia. Those are the latest numbers following last Wednesday's deadly terror attack in the capital, Tunis. A
massive manhunt is now underway for another suspect who is on the run. He was one of three militants who carried out the attack on the Bardo National
Museum, which killed 23 people, most of those tourists.
Today, Tunisia's prime minister fired six police chiefs over the incident. The Tunisian government admits more than 3,000 citizens have gone off to
fight for ISIS, more than from any other country in the world. And yet the Arab Spring was born in Tunisia and it's considered its greatest success
story.
I asked President Beji Caid Essebsi how Tunisia can crack down hard on the terrorists without sacrificing its transition to democracy and human
rights. He joined me earlier from the presidential palace in Tunis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: President Essebsi, welcome to the program and thank you for joining me.
Can you tell us who the attackers are?
ESSEBSI (via translator): They're Tunisians, of course, but they trained in Libya, which is a neighboring country. And there were quite a lot of
them. Two were, in fact, shot in the Bardo Museum. A third is on the run.
And there are 15 people who have been arrested because the police undertook remarkable work. A couple minutes after the attack, they were in situ.
And in so doing, they avoided this attack becoming far worse and involving a lot more casualties.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, is it Islamic State?
ESSEBSI (via translator): Islamic State claimed to be responsible for this, but we will be undertaking our inquiry to find out exactly who is at
the head of this.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, were they wearing suicide vests?
ESSEBSI (via translator): Lucky for us, they didn't work. They had them but they didn't work, because the police turned up and they were shot down.
And they didn't have the time to get these vests to work because, had they done so, then we would have had a major catastrophe, because they did have
explosives, which were of a highly dangerous nature on them.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, the world is shocked not just by the terrible loss of lives but because it happened in Tunisia, the success story of the
Arab Spring.
ESSEBSI (via translator): It's very possible that they wanted to try and go against our social and political steps which we have undertaken and
where we have succeeded. We had a president who was voted in by universal suffrage.
And at any rate, what I can assure you and assure all of you and all of your viewers is that the political measures which we have undertaken will
continue and we will never be harmed by this sort of thing.
AMANPOUR: Can you explain to us, Mr. President, how, as the most successful nation in the Arab Spring, the most number of militants going to
Syria, Iraq and other ways, come from Tunisia?
Why is that happening?
[15:05:00] ESSEBSI (via translator): First of all, because we had three and a half years of government which was very weak. We didn't take the
necessary measures to stop this at the bud. And also we had a social situation which was quite difficult.
We had a lot of unemployment amongst young people and particularly young people who have the university degrees. We had poverty; we had whole
regions which were marginalized and which were not part and parcel of our development program because, for several years, we encouraged development
in certain regions and we neglected the inside of the country to the benefit of the beach areas, the coastal areas.
But also, as I said, we have economic and social plans which, of course, have encouraged and favored certain areas. And for this reason perhaps the
young people went off to Syria and Iraq and because they found young people who were happy to be brainwashed.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, how do you tackle this and maintain commitment to human rights and democracy?
ESSEBSI (via translator): The human rights commitments will still be abided by. It's not necessary to win over these aggressions (sic) and
these fanatics for our human rights to be in any way affected. We now are for freedom of expression, for freedom of gathering, for freedom of
demonstration. But we are not for the freedom to harm others and to encourage people who wish to base themselves on this model.
We have a model, which we have set up in Tunisia, which aims at democracy. We are trying to put this in place. And I will tell you the movement is
irreversible. We are never going to go backwards in time.
The system we have is in place and anybody who wants to harm this system, we will defend ourselves against them vigorously.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, do you believe that the Ennahda Party are partners and that there is a place for moderate Islam, moderate political
Islam, in Tunisia today?
ESSEBSI (via translator): There's no political Islam in Tunisia. It's not Islam; it's a political movement which wants to instrumentalize the Muslim
religion in order to reach power.
Ennahda, which is a Muslim movement, tried at the outset to make sure that Tunisia should undertake a policy where Islamists may work freely. And we
contradicted this. And they accepted finally to take part in the government, but they did not enforce their former project. I think they've
given this up; they've renounced it.
And in Tunisia now, everything is different from the Muslim brothers you have in Egypt. They're two completely different ball games here. There's
been a majority for a long time here and we have an Islam which is open, transparent; it offers compromise and it's in full cohabitation with other
religions. That is the idea of the Quran and we will be going along this way.
AMANPOUR: And finally, Mr. President, for decades, Tunisia has been a tourist hotspot.
How will you convince tourists to keep coming to Tunisia and particularly you need that economic input as well?
ESSEBSI (via translator): It's true. Tourism is one of the main financial sources of the economy in Tunisia. And I am convinced, since we have the
experience of tourists who are still here, that no tourists asked to leave following the events of last week.
And particularly in Europe, there's a major movement which says that tourists should go to Tunisia and this would be the best way of showing
that the fascists and extremists cannot stop the development of Tunisia and cannot stop the tourists coming.
And we have the hope that this year tourism will be even better than last year.
AMANPOUR: Well, Mr. President Beji Caid Essebsi, thank you so much indeed for joining me.
ESSEBSI (via translator): I thank you for having interviewed me so that I could explain to our viewing friends in America and elsewhere that Tunisia
is still on its feet and is not on its knees. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[15:10:21] AMANPOUR: So fighting words as Tunisia fights to keep its young democracy alive.
Now Islamophobia is a rallying cry in parts of Europe right now. And France is fighting back against far right populists.
Despite the hype, Marine Le Pen's National Front Party failed to win the opening round of new local elections in France this weekend; instead,
former President Nicolas Sarkozy's Conservative UMP pit them to the post and claimed first. And experts are saying that puts a big dent in Le Pen's
bigger campaign, which is to be president in 2017.
After a break, as young Western medical students pitch in for humanitarian work in ISIS land, I get a look into the allure from Aimen Dean. His
journey from Al Qaeda to British spy.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
The discovery this weekend that 11 medical students, mostly from Britain, America and Canada, left their studies in Sudan to join ISIS in Syria, has
triggered a whole new wave of questions and soul-searching.
Even if they are not going to fight, what on Earth lured them to help in ISIS hospitals and are they terrorists or humanitarians?
Nobody would know better than my next guest, Aimen Dean, what draws so many young people to this life and how to stop them. He joined Al Qaeda as a
young man but he soon grew disillusioned by their brutality and he was later recruited by British intelligence.
Aimen Dean joined me here on set a short time ago with his fascinating story and his invaluable insights.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Aimen Dean, welcome to the program.
DEAN: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: First and foremost, how did you become a jihadi?
What was your first experience?
DEAN: It was in Bosnia in 1994. One of my friends was going and so the idea more or less started to brew inside my mind and so I went to them.
It was a jihad, pure and simple. It was defending those who were suffering from the Serbian genocide at the time.
AMANPOUR: Fast forward to today. The latest news in these pictures of more than a dozen British and American medical students, who've gone not to
fight for ISIS, they say, but to work in ISIS hospitals.
Do you understand this allure?
What is it that's causing so many to go over there?
DEAN: Well, the Islamic State is building a state, is building a society - - that's the first thing.
[15:15:00] That -- you know, they have the appeal of living under sharia rules for many people who are disaffected or feeling that they don't belong
where they live anymore.
That's the first thing.
The second thing also -- the Islamic State already closed many of the faculties (sic) and universities like Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq and Syria
for women to study engineering or humanities --
AMANPOUR: So they've banned them.
DEAN: They ban these faculties (sic) but they open more medical faculties (sic) for women to study. So basically they are directing hundreds and
hundreds of women to go and study medicine in --
AMANPOUR: Because they need them for the fight.
DEAN: -- absolutely -- you know, with the rate of fighting and the bombardment and obviously lacking, you know, they are always lacking people
who are wounded, so they need more and more doctors. And they want to -- you know, have as many as possible coming into --
AMANPOUR: They might need it.
Why are these people going over there?
DEAN: Again, it's the lure. It's the fact that first of all you are wanted. You are needed. And at the same time the fact that they are going
to serve a noble cause in their minds, the first-ever instance of a caliphate for over nine decades.
AMANPOUR: I spoke to a fellow journalist, who was a captive by -- one of ISIS' captives; fortunately he was released, a French journalist. He told
me they never talked to him about religion. He said it was much more political. And he talked about them being psychotic, like there was this
sociopathic being about them, the blood lust.
DEAN: Absolutely. Most of the people who come from the West are those who are not studying in religious seminaries. They are actually people who
just left night clubs and they were associating with drug dealers or gangs and then straight into the Islamic State.
Why?
It is a spiritual experience, enabled them to seek redemption for the sins they feel they have committed and the guilt they live with on daily basis.
And at the same time, the fact they don't know anything about Islam itself. They just go because they believe that this is the right path to take.
So they have nothing to offer in terms of theology or in terms of Islamic ideology.
AMANPOUR: So how then do you explain it, they're seeking redemption, these people, you know, these terrible, brutal beheadings and just the flow of
blood that we see?
DEAN: The ideology of the Islamic State is so potent that it liberates the inner psychopath.
They want to strike a blow for Islam. They want to take revenge on society; they want to take revenge on those who they deem as enemies and
therefore the Islamic State gives them that platform, liberates their inner psychopath and at the same time tell them you can kill and you will be
rewarded for it. You don't need to feel guilty at all.
AMANPOUR: Is ISIS more dangerous or less dangerous than Al Qaeda?
Let's face it, nobody has been able to pull off what Al Qaeda did on 9/11.
DEAN: In my opinion, I think the Islamic State is dangerous within the confines of the Middle East and they are dangerous also in terms of
destroying the intercommunal peace in Europe and the West because, with their lone wolves' actions, they are sowing the seeds of mistrust between
the Muslim communities living in Europe and the West and the host countries.
And that is, I think, where the destructiveness of ISIS is far greater than what Al Qaeda used to do.
AMANPOUR: What caused you to turn against Al Qaeda?
DEAN: Well, it was the 1998 bombings of the East African embassies of the United States -- I think in Nairobi and Tanzania -- proved to me that if
this is a beginning, God knows where the end will be. And I think I.
AMANPOUR: So you were revolted by what?
DEAN: I was revolted by two things. First of all, the amount of collateral damage -- let's say that, in a crude way, the Americans were the
target. Twelve Americans were killed. And they were diplomats. They were not supposed to be killed anyway under the rules of sharia.
However, 240 Kenyan citizens and other African (INAUDIBLE) were killed actually in that attack. Add to this the fact that the -- how they wanted
to justify it was what more or less caused me to rethink my role within that organization, the way that they justified the mass killing that took
place in Africa.
AMANPOUR: So you basically said -- I mean, this is not what I'm fighting for, to kill all these civilians?
DEAN: Well, remember that I went to Bosnia in 1994 because I wanted to protect civilians. So I think when I saw what happened in Nairobi and
Tanzania, I felt that this isn't what I signed up for.
AMANPOUR: Then you left. And, long story short, you were approached and turned by the British intelligence.
DEAN: Indeed, yes.
AMANPOUR: Do you think, from all the knowledge you have that the British intelligence has sufficiently and in a meaningful way penetrated ISIS?
[15:20:05] DEAN: I would say it's a possibility. You know, I would say is a strong probability that they have infiltrated ISIS, especially with
the greater number of people who are able to approach ISIS.
In fact, I would say that the presence of doctors there within ISIS is a great opportunity to infiltrate because, at the end of the day, they do not
dispose of doctors easily. They don't take doctors and send them on suicide missions.
So I would say basically that ISIS, by calling upon doctors to come, they might have opened a greater door for intelligence services to penetrate
them.
AMANPOUR: What is the most potent way of the recruiting?
And how can that be stopped?
DEAN: The recruitment is not happening on Twitter or on Facebook, as many people expect. Actually, it is happening through two main streams. The
first stream is their online video sharing because they say the picture is, you know --
AMANPOUR: A thousand words.
DEAN: -- yes, equal to a thousand words. The video is equal to a thousand pictures. And the videos that ISIS put appeal to the inner psychopath and
the inner adventurers of many people, like, you know, to go and fight. That's the first thing.
The second, most important recruitment tool actually are the people who are -- you know, who are there already, inside the Islamic State territories.
They are encouraged after they receive the indoctrination courses and the theological courses. They are given back their smartphones to contact
their relatives, friends, those who they know, through communication applications like WhatsApp or Telegram, to communicate on one-to-one basis
with people, to send them pictures of how they live and what they do, their weapons, their lifestyle, the markets, the hospitals, the education they
receive.
They are actually sending back a one-to-one advertisement campaign kind of thing.
That is actually how grooming works. It's not on the social media but actually on the -- in the communication applications on smartphones.
AMANPOUR: Depressing news indeed.
Aimen Dean, thank you very much indeed.
DEAN: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And terrifying indeed, an indictment of how our modern technology can help wash people's brains, as the Tunisian president put it.
And it's an interesting time, therefore, to be celebrating a centuries' old event right here in England.
King Richard III, one of Shakespeare's most infamous villains, was discovered lying beneath a car park in 2012. And now he's lying in state
in Leicester Cathedral before he gets a proper burial on Thursday. And long lines of visitors are expected to file a long-lost leader from the
15th century.
While in Singapore, the man who created their 20th century city-state will be visited by millions of grateful citizens as he lies in state, having
died of pneumonia earlier this morning at 91.
Next, imagine building a nation from the marshy ground up and turning it into of the world's most important financial capitals -- when we come back.
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[15:25:51] AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine building a whole brave new world from scratch. That was the life's work of Singapore's first
prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who's died at age 91.
And what a legacy he leaves. One of his son's, the current prime minister, today eulogized his father.
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LEE HSIEN LOONG, SINGAPOREAN PRIME MINISTER: He fought for independence, built a nation where there was none and made us proud to be Singaporeans.
We won't see another man like him.
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AMANPOUR: And there'll be seven days of national mourning and a state funeral on Sunday. Only fitting for the man who actually created the
state. In 31 years, Lee broke Singapore away from its colonial past under the British Empire and then saw it through an emotional expulsion from
Malaysia in 1965.
He turned the place from an Asian backwater to a city-state that's an economic powerhouse whose real GDP per person is even higher than the U.S.'
right now.
Lee Kuan Yew was also a controversial and authoritarian figure. He himself once claimed that Western democracy was incompatible with Asian values and
Singapore's devotion to law and order perhaps drew most attention and international condemnation when 21 years ago, 18-year-old American Michael
Fay was sentenced to caning for vandalism and petty theft. Even chewing gum is banned, only available in a pharmacy with a prescription.
Come to think of it, perhaps not a bad idea, since here in the U.K., cleaning gum off the streets and sidewalks costs 50 times worth the gum
itself and is the most expensive part of cleanup.
As Lee once said, all of this was the cost of creating, quote, "a first- world oasis in a third-world region."
And that is it for our program tonight. Remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.
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