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Special Counsel Files Revamped Indictment Against Trump; Israel Rescues 52-Year-Old Hostage from Hamas Tunnel; Moscow Responds with Anger Over Telegram CEO's Detention. Fears Mount of Renewed Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired August 28, 2024 - 00:00   ET

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

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JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, I'm John Vause live from Studio H here in Atlanta. Coming up this hour on CNN NEWSROOM.

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KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: The Justice Department has rewritten the charges against Donald Trump.

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VAUSE: Another attempt to hold Trump accountable for election interference with a new indictment, same charges and a workaround for a controversial ruling by the Supreme Court.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quaid Farhan Al-Qadi was rescued by our elite forces in a complex operation.

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VAUSE: Or maybe he was found alone somewhere in Gaza. Israeli officials insist he was in a Hamas tunnel. The eighth hostage recovered by the Israeli military. Only 105 to go.

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ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Then one of them slit his throat with a big sharp knife.

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VAUSE: Seven years after the world said never again, it's happening again in Myanmar with the Rohingya Muslim minority again the target of a vicious and deadly government crackdown.

ANNOUNCER: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN NEWSROOM with John Vause.

VAUSE: Former U.S. President Donald Trump is once again facing charges in the January 6th election subversion case with special counsel or prosecutor, rather, Jack Smith filing a new indictment in federal court Monday. The charges against Trump remained the same, four counts related to his alleged attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. But now prosecutors have narrowed the focus of their case to comply with last month's controversial ruling by the Supreme Court, which granted presidential immunity for official acts while in office.

Trump is still accused of obstructing Congress' certification of the 2020 college results on January 6th. That's when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. And at 36 pages long, the new indictment, nine pages shorter than the original, and among the many changes, removing all references to official acts as well as the 45th president.

Here's CNN's Katelyn Polantz.

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POLANTZ: The Justice Department has rewritten the charges against Donald Trump related to the 2020 election, focusing around his role as a candidate, as he tried to spread lies of election fraud. So this is the case that's existed for a year in federal court in Washington, D.C., and was on hold as the Supreme Court looked at questions of presidential immunity. They said that Trump couldn't be prosecuted or taken to trial on things he was doing while he was president officially, after the election while he was still serving, even on January 6th.

And so the Justice Department has now responded by going to the federal grand jury in Washington and cutting down the charges against him. They've cut out things like what Donald Trump was saying to the Justice Department and officials there about spreading allegations of election fraud across the country. And instead, they are making the focus be about Donald Trump and what he was told by his campaign and what he was telling private advisers of his to do to try and spread this idea of election fraud, especially in battleground states, and to block Congress from certifying his loss of the election.

One of the things, though, that is very important going forward in the coming days we're going to see a lot of discussion about this is the role of Mike Pence as the vice president. Pence is still in this charging document against Donald Trump. The rewritten, pared-down version. And Pence is very likely to be a witness both in the coming weeks, in upcoming proceedings that have yet to be scheduled, and then if the Justice Department is allowed to bring him in as a trial witness before a jury.

That's because the Justice Department now says Mike Pence was not always just in the executive branch under the Constitution. He was working for the Congress or he was presiding over Congress as president of the Senate on January 6th. And that's how Trump was trying to pressure him to block the election result.

Katelyn Polantz, CNN, Washington.

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VAUSE: To Los Angeles now and attorney and legal affairs commentator Areva Martin.

Thanks for being with us.

AREVA MARTIN, ATTORNEY AND LEGAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Hi, John.

VAUSE: OK, so here's one line which wasn't in the original indictment, but it's in this new slimmed down version. "The defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interests as a candidate in being named the winner of the election."

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Yes, this is some of the differences here. And as CNN reports, prosecutors repeatedly added language describing Trump as a candidate, describing his alleged co-conspirators as individuals who were not government officials during the conspiracies and who were instead acting in their private capacity.

OK, so the special counsel appears to be standing by the four original charges while taking into account the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. But has this weakened the case against Trump?

MARTIN: Well, this is such a weird turn of events, John. No one expected this controversial, this unprecedented, shocking determination by the Supreme Court that essentially says Donald Trump can commit a crime, particularly if he tells his Justice Department that he's going to commit a crime. In fact, this Supreme Court decision literally gives a play-by-play handbook to Donald Trump as to how to engage in conduct that otherwise would be illegal just by informing his Justice Department.

It clearly is going to make it more difficult for the Justice Department to move forward with this case, to build a case that will sustain scrutiny, both at the court level and even assuming he gets past this judge at the trial level, because so many of the elements of the story, of the narrative have had to be removed in order to comply with the Supreme Court determination. All of the references, they're all with 30 references, John, to the Department of Justice, those have all been removed.

Of the unindicted co-conspirator, Jeffrey Clark, who was the interim attorney general at the time of this conspiracy, has been again removed from this superseding indictment, so clearly the Justice Department's herculean task to overcome what these Supreme Court has done by essentially giving Donald Trump a blank check to do or to engage in any conduct that he deems appropriate.

VAUSE: Yes. The Supreme Court's decision back in early July was sort of the original sin here, if you like. Trump posted his response to this reworked indictment on Truth Social. It reads, in part, he says, for them to do this, them being the Department of Justice, immediately after our Supreme Court victory on immunity and more is shocking. I've also been informed by my attorneys that you're not even allowed to bring cases literally right before an election. A direct assault on democracy. This is an unprecedented abuse of the criminal justice system.

And he goes on and on and on. You know, Trump is referring to a Justice Department policy which is called the 60-day rule. Notably, it's now called the 70-day rule, which was yesterday. Trump also claimed this revised indictment had all the same problems of the original when in reality suggests the opposite of that may actually been the case here. All those issues maybe have been resolved.

MARTIN: Yes. Clearly, the Justice Department was trying to comply with this Supreme Court determination that any of the actions that Donald Trump engaged in that were deemed official, that he is immune from any charges with respect to those acts. So that's why we see references to the other attorneys, the other advisers, these private attorneys as private citizens. That's why we see references to Donald Trump as a candidate versus Trump as president.

And that's why all the references and conversations with respect to anyone in the Justice Department have been removed. The question still remains for Judge Chutkan, is she going to determine that this superseding indictment complies with the parameters that have been outlined by the Supreme Court's decision regarding immunity? We know that pretrial hearings are likely to be scheduled forthwith, and this judge is going to have to make this determination.

And ultimately, John, this case is probably headed back to the Supreme Court because no matter what this judge determines with respect to actions that are private versus official, we can expect and count on Donald Trump's team appealing the decision by the trial judge and taking this case all the way back to the Supreme Court.

VAUSE: And with that in mind, you know, we should make note here that it was the six-conservative majority on the Supreme Court with the three liberals opposed, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the three liberal judges, spoke to CBS about her concerns over that ruling by the court's conservative majority in favor of presidential immunity issue.

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KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same.

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VAUSE: And you mentioned there is this expectation that whatever happens here, it's going to end up at the Supreme Court in some manner. There's this expectation now that whatever Trump wants, he'll get it from the Supreme Court. And that's -- we haven't been there before. We have haven't been in this situation before.

MARTIN: It's really a perilous time to be in, to be in this situation where Trump was allowed to or was able to, I should say, to make those appointments, those three conservative appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, and even with respect to appointments at the trial court level.

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We look at what the judge in Florida did as well, John, throughout the case involving confidential records that were kept at Trump's personal home because she determined that the special counsel had no authority under the Constitution, which was against 150 years of precedent as it relates to special counsel.

So Trump has stacked the federal judiciary at the trial level and clearly at the Supreme Court level with judges that are willing, as you said, to give him pretty much anything that he asked for and we should expect that if he wins in November, this entire case likely goes away, as is all of the federal cases against him.

Now he doesn't have jurisdiction even as president over those state cases in theory. But we should expect that if he does win he will put tremendous pressure even on those state prosecutors to dismiss those cases as well. And this is all against the basic premise of the Constitution that no one, no one is above the law.

VAUSE: Just very quickly, Trump is now actually blaming at least to some extent President Biden and Vice President Harris for last month's assassination attempt on him. Here he is.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When this happened people would ask, whose fault is it? I think to a certain extent it's Biden's fault and Harris as well. And I'm the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me.

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VAUSE: We don't know. It may be true. The government acted out of a belief the DOJ had been weaponized. But the only person who's been saying that consistently is Trump, echoed by his supporters. There is zero evidence of that. So in many ways, if Trump believes this, he only has himself to blame.

MARTIN: We've heard these kinds of baseless claims made by Donald Trump so many times, John. He makes these kinds of claims. He repeats these claims over and over again as if by repeating them, they somehow become true. But he never ever produces any evidence to support these kinds of claims. There is absolutely positively no evidence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had anything to do with the attempt on Donald Trump's life, just like there's no evidence that Joe Biden had anything to do with the charges that were brought against Donald Trump.

Those charges were brought by the Department of Justice, by a special counsel, not directed by Joe Biden, who has been very clear about the separation of his office and any charges brought against anyone by his Department of Justice.

VAUSE: It is notable that a grand jury brought the same charges against Trump in this indictment just like they did the first time.

Areva Martin, thank you.

MARTIN: Absolutely. Thanks, John.

VAUSE: Well, as the race for the White House continues to heat up Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has agreed to her first in-depth, on-the-record interview with a journalist since President Joe Biden dropped his bid for a second term. The vice president and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will sit down with CNN on Thursday during their bus tour through the battleground state of Georgia.

Harris has been criticized for going for months without -- as the Democratic standard bearer without facing scrutiny, which comes from formal interviews with journalists apparently.

CNN's chief political correspondent Dana Bash will be asking the questions, that's legitimacy itself. You can watch the conversation right here on CNN, Thursday 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong.

A 52-year-old Israeli hostage has been rescued alive from the tunnels beneath Gaza. Farhan Al-Qadi is in stable medical condition after being held for nearly a year. His brother says he was shot in the leg when he was kidnapped on October 7th. It appears that wound was poorly treated and he was operated on without anesthesia. Officials say Al- Qadi was rescued from a Hamas tunnel in Southern Gaza in, quote, "a complex operation," or was it?

CNN's Jeremy Diamond has our report.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Israeli hostage Farhan Al-Qadi is taking his first steps of freedom. After 326 days of captivity an Israeli military helicopter has landed in Gaza to take him to Israel, back to his family. Moments earlier Al-Qadi was rescued by Israeli special forces who were combing through a network of tunnels in southern Gaza.

REAR ADM. DANIEL HAGARI, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES SPOKESPERSON: We cannot go into many details of this special operation but I can share that Israeli commandos rescued Quaid Farhan Al-Qadi from an underground tunnel following accurate intelligence.

DIAMOND: Al-Qadi is the first Israeli hostage to be rescued by Israeli forces operating in those tunnels. Seven others who have been rescued were being held above ground. An Israeli military official said the forces found Al-Qadi alone without his captors.

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At Soroka Medical Center each step brings these men that much closer to the brother they feared might never return alive. They're running toward the whirl of a helicopter delivering their 52-year-old brother back into their arms. Al-Qadi has visibly lost weight, but doctors say he is in good medical condition. His family is overjoyed.

It is a joy that cannot be explained, his brother Hatem says. More than the joy you get from a newborn baby. This is a man who has been resurrected.

Al-Qadi, a member of Israel's minority Bedouin community, now on the phone with the Israeli prime minister, thanking him for getting him home and reminding him that other hostages are still waiting. The Israeli prime minister currently engaged in ceasefire negotiations tells him he is committed to returning everyone without exception.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.

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VAUSE: To Jerusalem now, and Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization. He's also a former hostage negotiator.

Thanks for being with us.

GERSHON BASKIN, FORMER HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR: My pleasure.

VAUSE: So this was a joint rescue operation by IDF commandos and the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, and for the Israeli prime minister, it seems all part of his overall grand strategy. Get all the hostages home. Here he is.

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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We are working relentlessly to return all of our hostages. We're doing this in two main ways. Negotiations and rescue operations. The two of these together require our military presence on the ground and constant military pressure on Hamas. We will continue to act until we return all of them home.

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VAUSE: This is the eighth hostage rescued by the Israeli military, which means one rescue on average about every 40 days. At that rate they'll take 4,160 days or just over 11 years before the remaining 104 hostages actually get home.

From the get-go it seems military rescue operations were never a realistic option here. Why is that?

BASKIN: Well, just so you gave the numbers right here, there were 110 hostages released in a negotiated deal with Hamas back in November of last year. There remain 108 hostages inside of Gaza today. Israel has managed in almost 11 months to return eight hostages, plus another nine bodies of hostages, I believe, who were alive in Gaza and got killed after entering Gaza, either by Israeli bombs or by Hamas shooting them and killing them.

This is not the way to bring them home. They are negotiating with Hamas through the Egyptians, Qataris and the United States for a deal. But I must comment that they are negotiating a bad deal because the deal that's on the table is for a six-week ceasefire during which time 32 hostages would come home. In other words, another 76 would be left in Gaza for further negotiations. This is not the way to go.

We need a deal that's going to end this war in three weeks, a maximum of three weeks and bring all the hostages home. And that's the deal that they need to be negotiating now. And my message is to the United States government, to the Qataris and the Egyptians to put that deal forward because I know that Hamas will agree to it. I know that the people of Israel will agree to it. We only have our prime minister who probably won't agree to it and we need to pressure him to agree to it.

VAUSE: It's worth to hear those numbers again because of the 250 people kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th, our count is around 105, you say 110, but whatever, the number thereabouts, they've been released during the ceasefire. And as you say, compared to the eight rescued by the IDF, I mean, it's quite staggering. And, you know, so if Netanyahu is being really honest when he talks about every effort being made to bring those hostages home, then that would mean every effort is being made by Israel to get that ceasefire.

And as you say, the reality is the prime minister seems determined to keep this war going and not just the prime minister, there was those far-right members of his cabinet, which are also all gung-ho for destroying Hamas and continuing this war to the bitter end.

BASKIN: Right. And it has to be understood that there is no ultimate victory against Hamas because Hamas is an ideology and an idea. And you can't defeat it militarily. The longer Israel stays in Gaza, the Israeli army remains in Gaza killing people in Gaza every day, the more armed insurgency against Israel we will see along with those numbers that we talked about, or the numbers of Israeli soldiers who have been killed and are coming home dead every day, or almost every day, as well.

And more than 7,000 Israeli soldiers who have been wounded since the beginning of the war. And let's not forget the more than 40,000 Gazans who have been killed and the total destruction of the Gaza Strip. This war is a disaster and it has to end. We need to put pressure on everyone here to get it over with. We get now have seen widespread disease in Gaza. There's food and water shortages. This is a humanitarian catastrophe that we need to have ended. And there needs to be a ceasefire that will bring all the Israeli hostages home.

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VAUSE: With regard to this rescue as it is, there's one very important detail, at least one which the IDF revealed to CNN's Jim Sciutto. Listen to this.

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: We are told that he was found alone. Do you believe that his captors had abandoned him? NADAV SHOSHANI, IDF SPOKESPERSON: Well, that's one of the options

that's being looked at, but we are also looking into more information in that area and we're trying to keep our information to ourselves so we can keep operating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: I mean, what sort of information is he talking about there? What sort of intelligence are they going to get from this Mr. Al-Qadi, the hostage who was rescued? And, you know, if he was found by himself was this even a military rescue?

BASKIN: Well, you know, there are two different narratives here. Two completely different narratives. The Israeli narrative is that they had the intelligence that he was there and they went into this tunnel and they found him. There's another story on the Israeli side saying that they happen to come to him as they were going through this tunnel looking for Hamas commandos and possibly hostages.

Mr. Al-Qadi said that when they heard the Israeli -- his guards heard the Israeli soldiers coming, they ran away. On the other side, the Hamas narrative is that they released him. My estimation is that there's a bit of truth in everything and a lot of lying in everything, and we really don't know what the story is, but what's important here is that if Farhan Al-Qadi is an Arab, he's a Bedouin, he speaks Arabic as his native language, and he might actually be the source of a lot more intelligence information than Israel has been able to get from the other Israeli Jewish hostages who don't know Arabic and don't understand what was being said around them.

So he might actually turn up to be a very valuable asset for Israel in terms of knowing a lot more of what's going on in the Hamas side, in tunnels and above ground.

VAUSE: But ideally, you know, a three-week plan to end this war seems like one of the best options here.

Gershon Baskin, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate your time.

BASKIN: Thank you.

VAUSE: With that, we'll take a short break. When we come back, Ukraine's president is a man with a plan, a new plan. He's selling that plan to win the war against Russia to the White House. Also ahead, Moscow lashing out after the arrest of Telegram's founder, calling a plan to delete messages on the app, quote, "utterly stupid."

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VAUSE: Another delay for the launch of the Polaris dawn mission. Bad weather at the splashdown point close to Florida means the space expedition is on hold for at least the next two days. The mission, when it finally happens, will carry a four-person team to the highest altitude of any crewed spaceflight since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago. Two crew members will attempt the first ever spacewalk by private citizens. Heating leak postponed the initial launched on Monday.

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It turns out that Ukrainian incursion into Russia may just be the start of a much bigger plan. That's according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He's going to need a lot of help to make this bigger plan come to life, though. Zelenskyy discussed his plans at a news conference Tuesday, adding he'll be traveling to the United Nations General Assembly in the coming weeks to speak with U.S. president Joe Biden, who he says is crucial to what is a multi-stage plan.

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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): One part of the plan that is already performed is Kursk Region. The second part is Ukraine's strategic place in the world security infrastructure. The third part is a pressure package, a powerful package to force Russia to end the war diplomatically. The fourth part is economic.

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VAUSE: And according to Zelenskyy, Ukraine's air defense systems intercepted at least 230 Russian airstrikes Monday, followed by a massive attack by Moscow on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

The Kremlin trying to calm fears that the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France could upend the messaging platform. Kremlin spokesperson says calls to users to delete sensitive Telegram messages are baseless. French officials say Durov's arrest is part of a broad criminal investigation involving serious abuses of the app. Many in Russia, though, say it's an attack against them.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen explains.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Russia state-controlled TV up in arms labeling the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov as a direct attack against Moscow.

NIKOLAI VAVILOV, RUSSIAN TV SHOW GUEST (through translator): I don't think it was an arrest. It was kidnapping, basically a hostage taking. Direct political and economic aggression against Russia.

PLEITGEN: PAVEL Durov remains in French custody. This video posted on Telegram purporting to show Durov and some associates. The caption saying they were having breakfast in Azerbaijan before flying to Paris. French prosecutors say Durov is the subject of a cybercrime investigation and alleging Telegram was complicit in, among other things, illicit transactions spreading child pornography and a fraud, by failing to moderate the content shared on the platform.

Telegram says Durov has nothing to hide, but Russia's foreign minister now insinuating that the arrest may be politically motivated, even though France's president denied politics were involved. SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator):

Apparently someone is hoping to somehow gain access to encryption codes. Now, this has already been proven by the actions of the French that Telegram is a truly reliable and popular network.

PLEITGEN: The 39-year-old Durov, often referred to as the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the world's most well-known social media moguls. Cultivating a playboy like image, often posting shirtless pictures of himself on social media, and even claiming he's fathered more than 100 children. He's the co-founder not just of Telegram used by hundreds of millions worldwide, but also a Russian platform similar to Facebook called VKontakte.

Durov rejects any regulation and moderation on his platforms, as he told CNN in an interview in 2015.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And are you aware that ISIS extremists, terrorists also used Telegram?

PAVEL DUROV, TELEGRAM CEO: I heard of that. Yes. We are not happy about that. But I guess this kind of people use lots of encrypted technology.

PLEITGEN: While there have been questions about possible links between Durov and the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin's spokesman denied the two recently met when both were in Azerbaijan. Still, pro-Kremlin propagandists are voicing their support for Durov like this rapper who goes by the name Shaman.

SHAMAN, RUSSIAN SINGER (through translator): My dear, it is only in Russia that you can breathe freely and easily. Come back home. Here you are always remembered, waited for and loved.

PLEITGEN: Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: In a moment here on CNN, seven years ago, the world watched and did nothing as Myanmar's military waged a genocide campaign against the Rohingya minority. There are fears now history is about to repeat itself. More on that in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [00:31:30]

VAUSE: The U.N. secretary-general again, warning the world is facing a catastrophe entirely of humanity's making: rising sea levels.

Antonio Guterres says the ocean is overflowing, and islands in the Pacific are facing extraordinary risk. Speaking at the Pacific Island Forum in Tonga, the U.N. chief referenced two new reports of how the climate crisis is accelerating the threat.

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ANTONIO GUTERRES, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: Today's reports confirm that the relative sea levels in the Southwestern Pacific have risen even more than the global average in some locations by more than double the global increase in the past 30 years.

Ocean temperatures are increasing at up to three times the rate worldwide. And Pacific islands are uniquely exposed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Ninety percent of Pacific islanders live within five kilometers of a coast. One of those U.N. reports points out sea levels will continue to rise another 15 centimeters by 2050 if the world changes nothing to avert further disaster.

It's been seven years since the attempted genocide of Myanmar's Rohingya minority by the military. Hundreds of thousands fled to neighboring Bangladesh in 2017, escaping a brutal crackdown.

But now, thousands who remain behind facing renewed fears of ethnic cleansing. New reports warn that a rebel group is subjecting the minority community to another violent crackdown, women and children among those being killed.

CNN's Anna Coren has more now, reporting in from Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, where nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees are living in atrocious conditions.

A warning: her story contains graphic images.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From a hut made of bamboo and tarpaulins sits a woman's insufferable pain. Across her lap lays her 4-year-old daughter.

As she pulls at her mother's headscarf, 22-year-old Hamida (ph) recounts the trauma she says she endured only weeks ago.

"I have no idea how many soldiers entered my home, but they beat me, held me down, and raped me. I kept screaming, and my husband ran in. They tied him up and made him watch as more soldiers raped me. Then one of them slit his throat with a big sharp knife."

But the horror was just beginning, as hundreds of her fellow Rohingya in Rakhine state, Western Myanmar, were massacred.

"Oh, my father; oh, my brother. Why are there so many dead bodies?" cries the man filming.

Myanmar's military junta and the rebel Arakan Army have been waging a bloody battle in Rakhine state as part of the country's ongoing civil war.

And while the Rohingya, a Muslim minority denied citizenship in a Buddhist majority country, have been caught in the crossfire, what's been unfolding bears all the hallmarks of an even darker turn. Back in 2017, the Rohingya were targeted in what U.N. experts labeled genocide. More than 10,000 were killed, while over 700,000 fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

[00:35:06]

The military carried out those atrocities, but this time survivors say the ethnic Arakan Army is to blame for the targeted attacks against civilians, a claim its leadership denies.

MUJIBUR RAHMAN, ROHINGYA MASSACRE SURVIVOR (through translator): The Arakan Army were killing everyone they could find. They startled my wife, children, and my elderly mother. I heard their screams before they were beheaded. I have no one left.

COREN (voice-over): As thousands of Rohingya fled the township of Maungdaw (ph) to the Naf River, the border to Bangladesh, eyewitnesses say the 5th of August was one of the deadliest attacks.

ABDUL BASHAR, ROHINGYA MASSACRE SURVIVOR (through translator): When we reached the border fence, we saw a large bomb fall on a group of people, killing many, including my son, sister, and her baby. There were so many bombs falling, so many dead bodies. It felt like the end of the world.

COREN (voice-over): Witnesses say more than 200 people were killed on the riverbank that day. This woman, in total shock, sits among the dead.

The U.N. human rights chief has condemned the attacks, claiming that, despite the world saying, "never again," he fears we are witnessing a repeat of the atrocities seven years ago.

The only way for these people to get to Bangladesh is to beg or pay a broker hundreds of dollars for safe passage. But crossing the three- kilometer stretch of water on a fishing boat isn't without risk.

Multiple drownings have occurred in recent weeks, while Bangladesh's border security tries to prevent more Rohingya from coming in.

With reports a boat is arriving, we head to the shore, a full moon lighting up the water.

The Coast Guard appears. The location is scrapped. But the sounds of what the Rohingya are continuing to flee can be heard in those predawn hours.

COREN: For the past few weeks, boat after boat filled with Rohingya have made the dangerous journey across the Naf River. It's a risk they're willing to take to escape the atrocities in Myanmar.

But here in Bangladesh, if they're caught, they'll be sent back to where they fled from, confirming their status as the world's most unwanted people.

COREN (voice-over): If successful in evading authorities, this is where they end up: Cox's Bazar, the site of the world's largest refugee camp, home to around 1 million Rohingya.

It has become a sanctuary for a persecuted people, but these huts in the mud are not permanent homes.

Bangladesh's new interim chief, Muhammad Yunus, has promised to continue supporting the Rohingya in his country, but has appealed for the fighting to end so they can return to their homeland with safety and dignity.

For these four children, there is no going back. Their parents were killed in front of them, and if it wasn't for their grandmother, who grabbed the 6-month-old baby from his dead mother's arms, guiding them to safety, she says they all would have died.

"Thank God," she cries. "Sadness will not go from our lives."

Anna Coren, CNN, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:40:57]

VAUSE: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg says he caved to pressure from the White House during the pandemic to census some content related to COVID-19.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg says, quote, "In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our team when we didn't agree."

The White House responded saying, at the time, the administration was merely urging the company to try and be responsible, issuing their own statement, which read in part, "We believe tech companies should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present."

A U.S. federal judge has ordered infamous "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli to turn over all copies of what was meant to be a one-of-a-kind Wu- Tang Clan rap album through his attorneys.

The order also bars Shkreli from selling or distributing data, files, or any other contents of the double C.D.

The new ruling is part of an ongoing lawsuit that a group of NFT collectors filed against Shkreli. They bought the unique album from Shkreli for almost $5 million, but they claim he kept copies and intends to release them to the public.

Wu-Tang Clan created only one copy of "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," a piece of art. Shkreli reported -- reportedly paid $2 million for it in 2015. He sold it recently to help pay some of the fines and penalties tied to his conviction for securities fraud. I'm John Vause, back at the top of the hour with more CNN NEWSROOM. But first WORLD SPORT, after a short break. See you back here in 18 minutes.

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