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Home of the Brave; London Terror

Aired August 03, 2005 - 13:36   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: New developments out of London. A 23-year-old man now charged with harboring terror suspects. He's the first to be charged in connection with the July 21st botched bombings. Thirty-seven people have been rounded up in Britain in the last two weeks, and another suspect is behind bars in Italy. How did he manage to slip out of England?
CNN's Matthew Chance has been looking into that also.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He was one of Britain's most wanted men, his face on every newspaper. So, how could Hamdi Issac, now charged with involvement in the July 21st bombings, have left Britain undetected, boarding a Paris-bound train from London, apparently slipping past the biggest manhunt in British history?

It seems incredible, but security analysts say not everyone has their passport checked when leaving this country.

(on camera): He got a train out of the country. How could that be possible?

PETER NEUMANN, INSTITUTE OF WAR STUDIES: Well, the top priority for the British authorities in terms of border control for the past two years really has been preventing illegal immigration. Now, if that is your priority, you do care about people coming into the country, but you don't necessarily care about people leaving the country.

CHANCE (voice-over): And the quality of the first photograph may have been a handicap. Only later, after he'd left Britain, was a more identifiable shot released. Even then, police said they didn't know his name.

(on camera): He must have been just a face in the crowd, albeit one that should have been seared on the minds of every police officer and every train passenger here in Britain. But it seems that from Waterloo station, Hamdi Issac boarded his train to Paris, and began his escape across Europe.

(voice-over): Police believe Issac traveled via Paris to Milan in Italy, making calls on his cell phone. It's known the phone went dead on July the 27th, a day into his journey. When it was switched on again, it had changed from a British to an Italian network, but the handset was the same, allowing police to track him to Rome. It is a surveillance technique telecom experts say is simple. Cell phones emit regular electronic messages to locate themselves on the network, providing an easy trace for police.

JAKE SAUNDERS, TELECOM ANALYST, ABI RESEARCH: That message is like a pebble being dropped into a pond. That -- the signal is going out and out and out. It goes to one base station, hits another base station, and they can listen to the time and the distance and the strength of the signal and figure out where you are.

CHANCE: It's not clear when police established their fix on Issac, whether they allowed him to run across Europe making calls in the hope of being led to others, or moved in as soon as they could. British officials say they're reviewing the circumstances by which he came to leave the country. But for many here, it seems a major lapse.

Matthew Chance, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Killed by the Klan at the end of the famous march on Selma. The moving story of the only white woman to die supporting the civil rights movement. Her daughter joins us next.

And later, medical miracles. A sign of the Apocalypse, or just another cute puppy. What do you think about the world's first cloned pooch. My producers love it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Oh, yes. The bonus story you always wait for here on LIVE FROM. Prince William of Britain here. Holding very, very still for photographers in London. Actually, that's the very life-like and kind of creepy newest edition to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London. Wills is sporting the "G.Q." Seville Rose suit, flashing his trademark smile, of course. The museum put on a Cinderella promotion, inviting visitors to try on a slipper and become William's princess. LIVE FROM gets -- waxes poetic right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Bloody Sunday, 1965, Selma, Alabama. It's been four decades, and a lot has changed. But not enough. How can it ever be enough, though? No one will ever forget this moment in history on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It changed America, and it changed human rights, and it inspired the passage of the voting rights act.

40 years ago this week, we remember the struggle and the people who died in the name of equality. People like Viola Liuzzo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her death reveals -- and many white persons of goodwill who are so committed to the cause of justice and human dignity -- that they are willing to pay the supreme price as a result of their standing up. (END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, Viola's daughter Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe joins us now live from Montgomery, Alabama, to talk about her mom, a civil rights activist who paid the ultimate price in the name of human dignity.

Great to see you, Mary.

MARY LIUZZO LILLEBOE, VIOLA LIUZZO'S DAUGHTER: Great to be here, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, of course, what I've always wanted to ask you is what inspired your mother, a white woman in the South, to fight so hard for the rights of African-Americans and so many others that were being discriminated against?

LILLEBOE: Well, it was not something new when my mother was involved in the civil rights movement, because she had always been the kind of person that, if she saw something wrong, she took action. Which I think was something true of every one of those 25,000 people that left their homes and went down and answered Dr. King's call to stand up for -- and demand that our country keep its promises to its citizens.

PHILLIPS: And for our viewers that don't know her name and don't know about her, I want you to take a moment to tell them what happened to her, how she was brutally murdered, and what she was doing that caused her death.

LILLEBOE: She came down to Selma. She spent the majority of the time that she was here helping in the homes with the children, at some of the first aid stations. And the march was successful. There was a celebration. And then the people who had marched from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, needed to be shuttled back to Selma. And so, that's what my mother was doing. She had her car with her.

She had a young 19-year-old African-American boy in the car with her when she was spotted by a carload of armed Klansmen, who followed her down Highway 80. And if anyone who's been to Alabama, Highway 80 even today is a long, lonely stretch of road. And they chased her, a highspeed chase., overtook her, and shot her twice and killed her.

PHILLIPS: Had you seen her that day before she died?

LILLEBOE: We -- she had been in Selma for a few days. We talked to her every night. She called about dinnertime every night to tell us what was going on and give us a report. And she called the night that she was murdered, and told us that she would be coming home. And a couple hours later, we got the call that she was dead.

PHILLIPS: Mary, what did she tell you about how you should treat others?

LILLEBOE: We were raised in a way that we -- it didn't come up in the sense of, you should be nice to other people, it was just part of our lives. My mother's best friend was an African-American woman who she had met before I was born. And my sister and I, our best friends were her two grandsons, who were our age. And we used to sit and -- we got our first kisses when we were seven or eight years old from each other.

So it wasn't until we became teenagers, and social, that we began to realize that there was an issue bigger than just the kind of issue that you read or hear about, but a real living issue.

PHILLIPS: Well, now, Court TV has put together this amazing documentary about your mother, about her life. And there's a moment in this documentary, "Home of the Brave," that's going to air August 6th, I understand, where you...

LILLEBOE: August 8th. I'm sorry, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Oh, it's August 8th? No, that's OK. Is it August 8th?

LILLEBOE: Yes.

PHILLIPS: Good, I'm glad you corrected me. We had the wrong information. Very, very good.

LILLEBOE: Right.

PHILLIPS: And, there's a moment in here, and you really reconnect with your mother through the eyes of a woman, Alice West, who knew her well. Let's take a moment to listen to this, and then I just want to talk to you about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALICE WEST, FRIEND OF VIOLA LIUZZO: She was just doing everything to help, just like she was just as black as I was. She didn't have to come down here and lose her life. She loved everybody. She'd done a lot. Don't let nobody say your mother didn't do anything. And she's my dead hero. I love her, and I tell my children about her, just like I talk to my grandchildren about Rosa Parks and Dr. King, and you know, stuff like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Oh, Mary. Just to hear her say she was as black as I am, or I was, and to compare her to Rosa Parks. I mean, that just must have been an amazing moment for you.

LILLEBOE: It truly was. And you know, in a way, when I was listening to that, again, she answered your question. Because that was who she was, and how we were raised. But after my mom died, she became replaced with this whole tragedy and the FBI, and the murder, and the Klan. And speaking with Ms. West, hearing her tell of the events of those days, was the most moving experience I -- one of the most moving experiences of my life.

She brought that time back to life for me, and she brought my mother back to life for me. It was extraordinary. And I'm here today with several people like Alice West who were there And bring to life that time.

PHILLIPS: And, you know, and it's that moment. It's what your mom did that, in that moment of history, that led to the voting rights act. Now here you are in front of the courthouse. Tell me what's going to happen today, the people you'll be mingling with. You know, folks, of course, like Alice are there, showing support. But what do you hope to achieve today within the activities?

LILLEBOE: Well, today we are here with Court TV and NPR to do "In Pursuit of Justice," a TV special where these living -- living history that isn't going to be with us forever, are sharing their experiences and bringing to life the struggle and the sacrifices that were made by so, so many Americans, so that we don't forget, that we -- there was a cost to the value of our voting. And so that all of us are reminded that the people who stand up and demand that our country be true, have the power. They are the true Americans, and we can change things. So we want everyone to remember that that vote counts, and that it had a cost. And I'm just so grateful that Court TV has allowed this now to be going to millions of people just by turning on their TVs.

Well, we're going to remember that moment. We will always remember your mother from this point on, I can promise you that.

Mary Luzzo Lilleboe, thank you so much for your time.

LILLEBOE: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: We're going to take a quick break. More LIVE FROM right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Making it out alive. A survivor of the Toronto plane crash joins me live to share her amazing story.

A bittersweet birth. Live this hour, the family of a brain-dead woman holds a news conference about her new baby girl. And will it make you more secure, or just invade your privacy? What a national I.D. card could mean for you. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips, this hour of CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.

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