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Over 200 Girls Remain Kidnapped In Nigeria; 60 Days, Still Nothing from MH-370; Tenants of LA Apartment Complex File Lawsuit Against Donald Sterling

Aired May 05, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Wolf. Hi, I'm Martin Savidge in for Brooke Baldwin today. It's a pleasure to be with. But I will admit not to start the story like this.

The nightmare is confirmed. Three weeks after more than 200 girls were pulled from their beds, forced under transit (ph) gunpoint, and taken deep into the Nigerian force, the terror group that took them is finally claiming responsibility. In a rambling and repulsive hour long video you hear chilling claims from the leader of the militant group, Boko Haram.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABUBAKAR SHEKAU, BOKO HARAM LEADER: I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Boko Haram means Western education is sin, explaining why young girls, at least attending school have long been targets of these kinds of violent attacks. And three weeks in now, the Nigerian government seems to be no closer to finding the girls. And that is sparking an onslaught of complaints and the launch of the international twitter #bringbackourgirls.

The Nigerian president don't know where the girls are, but he vows that they get them. a few dozen have managed to escaped but 223 girls are still in the hands of their captors. Crowds now from Los Angeles to London over the weekend rallied. They are demanding that those girls be returned to their families. And now we are learning that d U.S. is sharing relevant intelligence with Nigeria.

So let's bring in Richard, now that we have explain most of that to you. He is the deputy director and fellow for the African program at the center for strategic and international studies.

And Richard, thank you very much for being with us.

RICHARD DOWNIE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND FELLOW FOR THE AFRICAN PROGRAM AT THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Thank you.

SAVIDGE: OK. So you have seen the new video now from the leader of Boko Haram. What do you make of it?

DOWNIE: Well, first of all it confirms what we have suspected for several weeks now that it was, in fact, Boko Haram that was responsible for taking these school girls hostage. I think the main take away from the video is the fact that you have Abubakar Shekau, the leader is just pure gloating. It is really designed to inflict maximum emotional impact, maximum emotional damage on the parents of the girls who have been taken.

And the timing, I think, is important as well. It comes a couple of days before Nigeria hosts a big meeting of the world economic forum. It's time to create maximum embarrassment for the Nigerian government, I think.

SAVIDGE: Yes. It comes as you say the time of the world is now focusing very clearly. And obviously, you know, terror groups, their desire is to shock which they clearly have done here. What else do you think is the motivation behind these kind of kidnappings?

DOWNIE: Well, I think it's to put maximum pressure on the Nigerian government. Remember, this is a government that is under a lot of pressure, not just from terror attacks from Boko Haram, but the system corruption allegations, also instability in other parts of the country and we are approaching an election period. Early next year, Nigeria will go to the polls. It's widely expected that president Goodluck Jonathan will stand in those elections. I think Boko Haram is trying to put maximum impact on President Jonathan as an individual to make it clear that Boko Haram has got the beating of him right now.

SAVIDGE: Goodluck Jonathan is the president, What do you think of the Nigerian government's response to the kidnapping so far? There have been some within Nigeria that have criticized saying that the president is not mostly the victims appeared to be Muslim. And he is also not from the tribe, at least from that region up north and that's the reason he doesn't care. What do you think of the government's response.

DOWNIE: It's been awful, frankly. These girls were taken in the middle of last month and really it was not until last night that we had the first lengthy comments from the president, which lends credence to this allegation that the government is not sufficiently invested in this crisis. That it doesn't care enough.

I would portray in terms of the president not being from the affected area or for him being a Christian rather than Muslim. I think there are clearly major regional sectarian ethnic religious device in Nigeria. But I think the problem is a political problem that unfortunately history has proven the fact that the political class in Nigeria, this is simply does not care sufficiently about its own people.

SAVIDGE: Well, let's hope that with the world's focus now, that that may change.

Richard Downie, thank you very much for joining us. OK. Now to a story I know very well. Sixty days and with not a wing, not a seat, nothing from flight 370. It is back to the drawing board. After scouring 1.7 million square miles of ocean and racking up more than 3,000 hours of air searches alone, officials say that it is now time to recheck their calculations. Essentially it's going to be a data audit on all the information that they have gathered so far since flight 370 vanished. And that includes the Inmarsat satellite data that led searchers to believe, at least that it ended up in the southern Indian Ocean.

Joining me now, Jeff Wise, CNN aviation analyst.

And Jeff, they are checking their data now. Trying to figure out if it was actually accurately interpreted. Why did it take so long to come up with this?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, it's really an incredible turn in attitude. You know, we spent much of last month with this full bore, full throated enthusiasm saying, you know, this is a promising lead, we're about to find this wreckage. We could be hours or days away from finding the black box in the wreckage and then nothing. Complete stunning reversal. You know, they were so confident about their data and analysis of it. And they just didn't find anything. So now, they are having to do that gut check and to sit back and think, OK, what did we do wrong? How come we promised this plane and we didn't find it? What can we do differently? It's really kind of a stunning change.

SAVIDGE: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I'm beginning to wonder, is there a question of competence here? Do they even know anything about where that plane may be?

WISE: I think they are asking themselves that same question.

You know, one of the really interesting things that happened last week was the Malaysian government finally released this preliminary report. And in it, they had a chart which showed the area where they are searching and the route that they presume the plane must have take on the get there. What's really interesting is that the plane was flying extremely slowly, changing its speed and changing its direction as it went.

Now, I find that very interesting because, you know, you have to presume some motive on the part of the person who is taking this plane or, I mean, there a lot of people have been talking about the so- called ghost ships scenario. They give it perhaps that weren't incapacitated and the plane flew it on its own.

Well, if the investigators assumptions are correct, then they are ruling that out. They are saying that people -- whoever was flying, it was making this speed and heading directions that they went. So that's very interesting right there.

Now, why someone would fly so slowly, and yet making course changes as they went. Super baffling. SAVIDGE: Yes. If you could answer that, you have pretty much solved the whole thing. $60 million spent so far with no real leads. At what point do officials scale back this search? Is it smart to just keep blindly going?

WISE: I don't think it is very smart. You know, to look on the bottom of the sea, that is a very painstaking difficult and expensive process. You can look at a very small area at a time. There is a lot of comparisons drawn to Air France 447. But that was really very different case. I mean, we knew here Air France 447. Why was it went disappear? And it turned out to be within like seven miles of that point.

Here, we have no idea. I mean, frankly, we don't even know which hemisphere of the globe that is in. And so, I think we are going to have to really go back and start. You know, we have gotten in such a habit of saying, you know, it's in the southern ocean. But now, I think in the absence of any confidence on the part of their authorities, we really need -- I think we should try to go back and start from first principles again and say, OK, what is the data and what do we know? And I think this really should increase pressure on the authorities to release and then not to beat at that (INAUDIBLE), but to say once again if you can release that Inmarsat data, and the analysis you have been doing to the public, let's let the world take a look at it.

SAVIDGE: Yes. I think there is a lot of skepticism. I think people are saying, you know, there is a lot more known that you're not telling us but we don't know it just yet.

Jeff Wise, thank you very much.

WISE: Thanks very much.

SAVIDGE: Coming up in the NEWSROOM, wife of Clippers owner Donald Sterling posing at a health inspector? A housing rights group, that is, claims that she harassed tenants in her husband's buildings. We will have that story.

And then in the Ukraine, violence taking another turn. Can sanctions against Russia really work? And if not, what do we do then?

And then later, a routine flight turns terrifying for passengers and crew after turbulence rocks a plane in mid flight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were going and all of the sudden there's a drop, like you are going down at the bottom of the roller coaster and things just flew up in the air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: So the big question, what causes turbulence like that? Can it be avoided? There's a lot going on in the NEWSROOM. Stay right here. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: The temporary leader in Ukraine is warning for all to hear that Russia wants his country gone. I think the word he used was eliminated. That warning fellow the sudden migration of separatist killing in to the large city of Odessa. That is a long way from the border region with Russia where ethnic clashes began and continue.

Reports from that region say that Ukrainian troops appear now to be moving more assertively in the face of red spy (ph) for Russian fighters who have seen government building in a challenge to the central government and to the west. Russian troops, some 50,000 elite fighters, they are revving their engines at Ukraine's borders posing a possible threat of invasion and limiting Ukraine's option to move against the insurgence.

So let's talk more about this and what it means. Joining us now from Columbus, Ohio, Colonel Peter Mansoor, United States Army, retire. He is a professor of military history at Ohio State University.

Colonel, thanks very much for joining us.

We're getting these reports now that the Ukrainian army may finally be pushing back and stiffening its shoulders, if you will, and trying to make a stand in the east. Are you hearing that as well?

COL. PETER MANSOOR, RETIRED U.S. ARMY: Well, yes. They can't allow the Russians to just simply take over the major industrial part of the country. They (INAUDIBLE) in what happened in the Crimea. But there will be much more push back given what is going on now.

SAVIDGE: And we talked about those Russian forces, tens of thousands of them now ringing eastern Ukraine. And they post, obviously, possible threat of invasion of seem to be ramping up pressure against the Ukrainian government. Are there military options available to the west, say to NATO to try to upset the Russian president or to somehow encourage of basket of full its horses back? Is there a military option?

MANSOOR: Well, there certainly are military options. The question is, is there a political will to use them? And I don't think there is any stomach in the European capitals to face off in a military confrontation with Russia. So having NATO, for instance, intervene in Ukraine, I don't think it is in the cards. I think NATO will focus on bolstering NATO member states such as the Boltic States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and then Poland.

SAVIDGE: Right. Just in case anyone listening does not know, Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

We are getting also a new statement now from the Russian foreign ministry. It is less than two hours old and let me quote it for you.

Quote "so called authorities in Kiev are continuing a war against their own country. We urge the organizers of terror against their own people to come to their senses. Stop the bloodshed and withdraw their troops," unquote.

Let me ask you and see if you discern any subtext there regarding the Russians' intention specifically when it comes to the possibility of invasion, then stepping in to protect the Russian minority.

MANSOOR: Well, I think that is their playbook. They have no doubts infiltrated Ukraine with Russian special forces. That's not units they are assisting whatever local militia and local strong men that they can find. They are taking over government buildings and they are trying to create a situation whereby Russian forces will have to "intervene," quote-unquote, in order to protect the Russian minorities or Russian speakers. It will be an engineered crisis and one that Vladimir Putin will be the one engineering.

SAVIDGE: OK. If the west pretty much agrees that there will not be a military option, then, what about sanctions? Do you really think they work. Will they be effective against Russia and changing the mind of Vladimir Putin, if in fact he is the one calling the shots?

MANSOOR: Well, certainly not the minimal targeted sanctions that have been put in place to date. They won't influence him. More extensive sanctions could but it will take years, perhaps, to play out. We could see this vis-a-vis the sanctions against Iran which have taken half a decade or more to finally convince Iran to come to the negotiating table. And it would be the same with Russia. Sanctions would take a long time to play out.

And the other thing about sanctions is the one thing that would really hurt Russia is sanctions against the export of oil and gas, but most of that goes to western Europe. Sanctions against that would hurt their economies. And again, I don't see a lot of willingness in western capitals to do that.

SAVIDGE: Right. Many of them are just coming up of the horrendous economic period. They are just starting to have a recovery. To have energy suddenly become hugely expensive or not available would be disastrous.

MANSOOR: It would be very difficult for western Europe to do that and the western Europeans would say, why are we going to do this for people in Ukraine a long way away and let them sort out their own affairs. I think that overtime, you can ramp up the sanctions. Again, you can isolate Russia diplomatically. Make them pay a cause and then maybe over a long period of time get Russia's (INAUDIBLE) and pullback.

But in the meantime, they are going try to slice off more pieces of Ukraine and connect Crimea with Russia, via a land bridge. Right now, Crimea is isolated.

SAVIDGE: Right. I get the, you know, the geography part. Do you think it would end with Ukraine? I mean there are other former Soviet satellites. Do you think that Putin has his eyes set on them as well especially if they got a large minority population of Russians?

MANSOOR: Well, precisely. Putin and other Russian elites were really incensed by the end of the cold war and the way it ended. The way Russia was treated. And they really feel that they want to become a great power again. And they will start with what they call the (INAUDIBLE). That is states in areas bordering Russia, that have Russians speakers that they can want to reconnect with the motherland. And I don't think that Ukraine will be the last area just as I don't think Crimea will be the last part of the Ukraine that Putin try to seize.

SAVIDGE: Colonel Peter Mansoor, thank you very much for joining us from Columbus.

Coming up, 223 girls kidnapped in Nigeria, they are missing now for weeks and now the shocking claim of responsibility. A terror leader in the country announcing that he has the girls and he intends to sell them. Hear from one of the girls who escaped in a few minutes.

And then next, Clippers owners Donald Sterling's wife, Shelly, posing as a health inspector. A housing rights group claimed she harassed tenants in her husband's buildings.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: The Clippers are heading into game one tonight in the second round of the NBA playoffs. But the future of the team's run off is pretty much still a mystery.

Owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life for the NBA after making racist comments. In the short team, the league will appoint a new CEO that work with the Clippers management and will precede the team's operations.

Sterling's estranged wife, Shelly, co-owns the team. She side on from the plan and also threw her support behind NBA commissioner Adam Silver. But Mrs. Sterling could stand in the way of selling the team. The sanction against her husband do not, I repeat, they don't apply to her.

This racially charge controversy isn't Donald Sterling's first though. In a 2003 lawsuit, tenants of the Los Angeles apartment complex, one of many that the billionaire owns, claimed that they were repeatedly harassed by the couple solely because of their race.

CNN's Kyung Lah spoke with one of the tenants who filed that suit.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The video is a bit dark and grainy but you hear her voice loud and clear.

The man recording this video from 2003 is tenant Daryl Williams.

DARRYL WILLIAMS, FORMER TENANT: I thought that it was awful strange that somebody from the health department would have an entourage.

LAH: It is because Shelly is Shelly Sterling, according to a judge, the wife of the building's owner, billionaire Donald Sterling. And she is certainly not from the Los Angeles health department.

On the video, Mrs. Sterling goes door to door. The housing right center claims to harass and scare black and Latino tenants.

CHANCELA AL-MANSOUR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HOUSING RIGHTS CENTER: I think it was a measure of last resort to try to claim if they were government agents in order to intimidate them.

LAH: Why? Multiple plaintiffs from the 2003 civil rights lawsuits against the Sterling claimed they wanted to change the complexion of the building.

AL-MANSOUR: He preferred Asians over African-Americans and Latinos. He told his management stuff that African-Americans smelled and they smelled like vermin whereas and he stated that Hispanics all they did was drink and smoke all day long.

LAH: This sham inspection was part of the campaign to get rid of the unwanted tenants. Tenants say the Sterlings turned off heat, shutdown elevators to the disabled and stopped trash service, even refused rent and forced evictions.

This latest controversy with the Clippers may reveal who Sterling is to the rest of the country, but lawyers in Los Angeles consider his past actions worse than his words.

AL-MANSOUR: What he did to his African-American and Latino residents in the buildings that he owned was life-changing for them. It took away a fundamental right that people have and the security that they have and that's the safe haven of their homes.

LAH: Al-Mansour regards this case as one of the largest and most widespread cases of discrimination any fair housing agency had ever seen in the country. The lawsuit eventually settled out of court. While the terms are confidential, the settlement is estimated to a cause the Sterlings millions.

WILLIAMS: This was my apartment.

LAH: Ten years later, Williams remains mystified why a billionaire's wife would bother to do this and why they would want to evict him so badly.

WILLIAMS: We rent his buildings. We support his basketball teams. We play on his team, but he is oblivious to that. As far as he is concern, he is like a plantation owner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAVIDGE: And our thanks to CNN's Kyung Lah for that reporting.

Meantime, Los Angeles' mayor Eric Garcetti said on "Face the Nation" that he believes that Sterling will fight to keep the clippers. And if that happens, Garcetti also hinted that he would potentially back a boycott of the team until Sterling agrees to sell. Coming up, the terror group, Boko Haram claiming responsibility for abducting more than 200 girls in Nigeria. But the real story here is about the victims and their families. Here from one girl who escaped next.

And violent turbulence, it drives the plane amid flight. Hear from the passengers. And can heavy turbulence like that ever be avoided?

We will be back right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)