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Two Killed, Others Detained in Raids in Saint-Denis; French Police Winding Down Operation in Saint-Denis Community; French President Hollande Addresses Association of Mayors; Behind the Suspected Terror Mastermind. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 18, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Juliette Kayyem, thank you. Always great to get your expertise.

[07:00:03]

We're following a lot of breaking news.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Let's get right to it.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: By any description there has been terror on the streets around Paris over the last few hours. There have been explosions, there's been gunfire. At least two terrorists were killed. Police were injured. All of this in the name of a lead that the planner of Friday's attacks here in Paris may be actually right outside the community that was struck.

It was believed that the mastermind, as they were calling him, was supposed to be in Syria. Then there was a tip he might be in an apartment in a community known as Saint-Denis. That's where the soccer stadium is that was targeted on Friday. Police went there. Why? Because of cell phones that they got and surveillance they had been doing over the last day or so, communications that were found.

They went to the apartment. They found a team at least equal in size of manpower, firepower, and explosive capabilities. Upon entry, a female terrorist, either wearing a suicide vest, trying to move a suicide vest, or some type of explosive detonated. She was killed. Another terrorist has been killed. Police then entered. There was a massive show of force.

A second apartment was entered. All different types of assets hit the streets in and around Saint-Denis. It looked like a war zone, not a Paris suburb. It culminated in a bizarre scene where a group of police officers were outside a church knocking a hole in the door allegedly in the search for a Muslim terrorist.

That's what got us to where we are right now. We have eyes on the ground everywhere that matters. We start with senior investigative correspondent Clarissa Ward. You were in front of that door as they were pounding a hole through it. And this was after we were told the operation was over. What's the situation right now? And what do you see as the context?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Chris. Well, just in the last few moments I counted 40 police vehicles, sirens blazing, all of them moving in that direction. That possibly indicating that this operation is indeed over.

But I just want to try to give you the lay of the land here. Right behind me you see those police vehicles. That is the street, further down there, is the area where that raid was taking place -- those two different apartments. And if you move over here, slightly, you can see this area has been completely blocked off. The police here trying to hold residents back. You can see the residents staring in disbelief, Chris. This is Paris. People here are not used to seeing operations of this magnitude.

And then as we pull right around, you can see behind me, this church. Now, this church just a couple of hours ago, we saw a large group of policemen bang down that door. It took them some time to bang it down. They then all filed in there. I've tried to ask police officers as they were leaving what was inside that church? Why were they looking inside the church? Obviously none of them giving us answers.

It's worth noting, Chris, there are almost as many journalists here as there are police. It's been a very chaotic and fluid situation all morning long. But we know now the police have left that church. It appears that they did not find what they were looking for. And as I mentioned before, I counted about 40 vehicles that just went streaming past us, sirens blaring, appearing to indicate that that operation is indeed over. Chris?

CUOMO: All right. Well, the activity could mean anything. Obviously we have eyes where it ended. That's where Clarissa is. We also have eyes where it began. Atika Shubert is there. You've been reporting on this for hours now since this flurry of activity first started. Where are we?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, it started at 4:30 in the morning. That's when residents tell us they heard automatic gunfire and an explosion. They were quickly evacuated, one of the residents grabbing his 3-year-old daughter as he rushed out.

And then when we arrive, a string of explosions, about six or seven. They sounded like regular explosions, possibly controlled detonations. And then shortly afterwards, we saw more police lining up here, heavily armed. There are still quite a few of them here. We also saw military soldiers securing the perimeter. So it really was a surreal scene, almost like a war zone.

We then heard from the prosecutor's office -- as you can see there, hear there, some of those explosions and gunfire. That's what it was like, very tense earlier this morning. But now we know the upshot of it, two of those suspects killed, one of them a female suicide bomber and seven suspects arrested now in custody. Chris?

CUOMO: Right. And once they start firing at police and blowing things up, they're no longer suspects. They're just identified as terrorists. Two dead, others taken into custody. Police hurt as well.

Why all this was going on?

[07:05:01]

We expect to get context from the president himself, Francois Hollande, any minute. We will take you to that. The French authorities have been unusually forthcoming about what they're doing and why.

Now, let's take a little bit of wider look at how they got to where they needed to be, to stop, as they say, just in the nick of time this most recent potential operation.

Jim Sciutto, you've been reporting -- this was about cell phones they found. We just got an urgent reportable piece of information from a local prosecutor there in charge of this investigation that said testimony and cellular surveillance led them to where they are. Translate that for us.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Cellular surveillance, you'll remember that they discovered phones at the scene of the Friday attacks in Paris around the bodies of several of the attackers, including with a message that our Evan Perez reported yesterday, saying the attack is ready to go.

Anyway, cell phones used by the attackers in the moments, hours, before the attack. I'm told by a source that those cell phones helped lead them to this apartment. And you heard from the French prosecutor there saying that that cell phone surveillance made a difference. We know that this apartment was under surveillance just for the last 24 hours. This speaks to the enormous efforts that the French police are making now. And also as they dig deeper on this spiderweb that we've discussed, they turn other things up, or as you just described it, bamboo shoots. Right? I mean, they're kind of finding other bamboo shoots of this network as they reach out.

CUOMO: Fabrice Magnier, former Navy SEAL, understands these types of operations very well. Now the chairman of a security company. You had said that, with these new police powers, this state of emergency, they are able to act on what they suspected has been building over since Charlie Hebdo. What are we seeing now with these raids?

FABRICE MAGNIER, COUNTER TERRORISM EXPERT: What we've seeing through these raids, that we discovered a huge, huge network of those sleeping cells now, which have been spread out for the last years now. So the French government have to take this opportunity with the state agencies, and other, to continue therefore to strike any suspicious location, to raid any suspicious group, and to accelerate the process of using the cell phone identification and so on. To win this war against the crowd (ph), because it's a war against the crowd (ph) actually. Those guys have been spreading out far now, deeper in our society. So we have to do it quickly. And we will do it for sure. CUOMO: Now we're hearing that this wasn't just some support group

they found in that apartment for logistics, that this was a second team. Do you believe that? And do you believe the speculation that there could be other teams and that's why there's so much activity?

MAGNIER: Yes. I think we'll discover in a few weeks, maybe a few months, more teams ready to act. And we have very important information. We have a lady with a suicide vest. It's brand new actually in France. So it's a little bit scary, you know.

CUOMO: Suicide vests were new. This was, on Friday, the first time you'd dealt with that. Now, a woman who may have had one is even more new.

MAGNIER: Yes, and she exploded herself during the assault. So this is something very important. We have to understand. They are ready. They are at war. We are not at war yet. I mean, French citizens. This is the main issue. So we have to communicate about it, surely but slowly, to explain to people -- be ready. Now times have changed.

AMANPOUR: And your president made that very clear from the very beginning, again, deploying over and over again this language of war. They have declared war on us, we are at war -- all your top officials are doing that.

And I think one of the most interesting pieces of confirmation from the interior minister when he came out, and the Prosecutor Molins, was, yes, all this information that they found from the phone, this and that, that led them there actually also led them to believe that the mastermind was a guy called Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Now we don't know and we won't know yet, and maybe he's somewhere --

CUOMO: That'd be also very unusual, wouldn't it?

AMANPOUR: But still it's really significant because this whole idea of blow back is the one that law enforcement and intelligence officials all over the world, from the United States to Britain to here and around Europe, have been terrified about. This is their biggest nightmare, that all these hundreds and cumulatively thousands of citizens from the West -- and elsewhere, but from the West -- have gone over to Syria and are the new expeditionary force waging war against our cities. And this is what this has shown, because this guy was the most important Belgian jihadi gone to Syria and top ISIS fighter.

SCIUTTO: And you're right. That would be remarkable. Imagine if Osama bin Laden was found near the location of one of his attacks, or Anwar al Alaki. I mean, the previous format was that they were over there, kind of hiding at the home base and dispatching attackers.

[07:10:03]

The fact that he -- and we already know this, that he had the ability to move back and forth from Europe to Syria, truly remarkable.

CUOMO: Let's see how their understanding has been advanced. Here's President Francois Hollande. Let's hear what he's going to say.

FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE (via translator): Prime minister, ladies and gentlemen, ministers, President of the Association of Mayors of France, Vice President, Madam Mayor of Paris Marta (INAUDIBLE), a City of Enlightenment, we are alongside you.

Ladies and gentlemen, mayors, through you, it is France that is brought together in a trial, united in the same resolution to be capable of facing the circumstances which are exceptional today. At the time when I'm expressing myself to you, a police operation that was particularly dangerous and heavy has just ended. It was aimed at neutralizing during this night the terrorists who were accommodated in Saint-Denis and who were in connection with the authors of the attack and the odious crimes of Friday night. Two of these terrorists died in the assault. There were detentions.

I imagine the anxiety that the inhabitants of Saint-Denis were seized with early in the morning, but I would like to congratulate them, welcome them, congratulate their sangfroid, their cool, and to give -- express all my solidarity to the mayor of Saint-Denis, who had already known the attack near the Stade de France on Friday and who, once again, was there next to the forces of law and order at the time when the assault began.

I would finally like to express all our gratitude, our admiration, with regards to the forces of law and order, the police, who launched the operation and who knew the danger. They perhaps underestimated still the violence that they were going to face up to. And they were there, right to the end of their mission. Several were wounded. And I'm also thinking of these police officers, the same ones and others, who went to the Bataclan theater in terrifying conditions to go and seek out the terrorists and to neutralize them again.

Ladies and gentlemen, mayors, France is proud to have the strength of such quality to protect our fellow citizens.

(APPLAUSE)

HOLLANDE: These actions confirm to us once again that we are at war, a war against terrorism, which itself has decided to bring war to us. It is the jihadist organization Daesh which has an army, financial resources, oil resources, and occupies a territory. It has a compass in Europe and in our own country, together with young radicalized Islamists. It commits barbarous massacres, wants to kill here. It has killed.

During the night of the 13th of November, at least 129 people lost their lives. We're thinking of them, of these women and these men, who were cowardly killed and wounded and traumatized. We're thinking of their families who are in this terrible grief.

[07:15:00]

These attacks which have brought -- have made Paris and Saint-Denis weep and concern all French people wherever they live on the territory, because it is the entire country that was attacked because of what it represents, values that it carries, the fight that it leads, to eradicate terrorism, and quite simply for what we are. What the terrorist wants to aim, it was about ourselves, what France represents through the successive generations of freedom that it proclaims, of universal rights.

That is what was attacked in the night of the 13th of November, because these barbarians with their blind violence attacked the French people in their diversity without considering their origins, of their color, their religion. It's the youth of France who were the targets, because it represented the vitality, generosity, liberty, fight simply life.

The emotion is immense. It's huge. Anger as much. Every woman and every man amongst us experiences an intense feeling of compassion for the victims of the attacks. And at the same time, a need for action in order to put the enemies and the commanders of these attacks out of action. The aim of the terrorist is to bring us into fear and terror and division and, therefore, we must ensure that we must preserve in every community of France unity which makes us strong, which keeps our cool, our sangfroid, which is our dignity.

You are the elected members. You represent the diversity of our territories, but also the multiplicity of the sensitivities of our country and faced with the terrorist threat. There is no difference between territories. There is no longer a partisan divide. There are no longer women and men of the duty or those who elected by universal suffrage and aware of their responsibility. I know that you have in your hearts to make this step and this will prevail.

On Monday in front of the parliament which met as the Congress, I expressed responses to fight against the terrorist group that attacked us. First of all, from a national point of view, international point of view, the operations in Syria which have become intensified. The Charles de Gaulle port has opened, makes it possible in the Eastern Mediterranean to multiply by three our strikes. I've called on the international community to take its part so there can only be one common work in destroying Daesh.

I, on Tuesday, will go to Washington, on Thursday to --

CUOMO: We're listening in on French President Francois Hollande. He's giving a very important message right now, not just celebrating the good police work that led to the disruption of what is believed to be another terrorist cell, a team that was supposedly poised to attack. Authorities saying they got there just in the nick of time.

But also something as well, Jim Bittermanm. The French president making the case for what he is calling war and making the case politically that the French people have to be ready for more of what they saw today.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT: Not just to anybody. He's talking to us, of course. Bu the people he's talking to, the 11,000 mayors, since Napoleonic times, the mayors in France have had a responsibility for providing law and order. These are the people who are also responsible for transmitting the national values. And he said that very clearly. He said we have to remain unified; we have to respect the national values. Those people have attacked those values. And because of that we're at war.

CUOMO: Christiane.

[07:20:00]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Just as he broke away he was explaining to the people that he's going to Washington in the next few days to talk to President Obama and the administration about unifying and resolving, updating and resolving the war on ISIS.

But I thought really interestingly, he basically said the aim, and he called it a very dangerous, very heavy raid last night, the aim was to neutralize the cell that he said was connected and in contact with the terrorists that committed that barbaric act on Friday.

CUOMO: Fabrice Magnier, former Navy SEAL, understands these investigations very well. The concern is there may be more cells and there needs to be more police activity and this extension of the state of emergency. All of that needs to go together, yes?

MAGNIER: Exactly. And I think the president takes it very seriously and explained a few minutes ago what we will do. He explained to the French citizens and to the world, France will now be at war against terrorism. And we will take this advantage to strike a little bit more and more and more, inside and outside France, for sure.

CUOMO: Friday's attacks not just one day but perhaps a new chapter and a new normal for the people here and of all of France.

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we have new information about this flurry of activities -- explosions, gunfire, dead terrorists, terrorists detained, just outside of Paris. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:10]

CUOMO: We are live in Paris and, to put it literally, there have been terror on the streets in and around this city for the past several hours. In a place known as Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris, there have been explosions, gunfire, dead terrorists, arrested terrorists, injured police officers. A massive show of force that culminated in officers bashing a hole through the door of a church.

Why? Well, there was suspicion and intelligence that led French authorities to believe that the assumed planner of Friday's attacks might not be in Syria but here just outside Paris. It led them to a street in Saint-Denis, a community that is known for having a big Muslim and radicalized population, to two apartments. When they entered, a female terrorist, according to authorities, detonated something -- maybe it was a suicide vest like those used on Friday. They were still looking for one. Certainly it was an explosive. It went off, it led to heavy gunfire.

What authorities say they discovered was a second team, equal in manpower, firepower, and explosive capabilities to the group that, of course, did what brought us here on Friday.

And, again, that is the situation in Paris right now. We just heard from the French president who said we are at war. That means two things. One, it is political resolve. It is also political power in forcing, Alisyn, the state of emergency that's in effect right now that gives an increase in police powers. That increase in police power goes hand in hand with the number of raids and the amount of intelligence that led police to a situation a few hours ago where they say, just in the nick of time, Alisyn, they got to this cell before it could launch more attacks.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, thanks for all of that. Let's talk more about that suspected mastermind that you've been mentioning of the Paris terror attacks.

We bring in Bobby Ghosh; he's our CNN global affairs analyst and managing editor of Quartz. Bobby, let's go through it. I mean, you just saw what happened on our air, what Chris is reporting for the past several hours. They were apparently looking for this so-called mastermind. What do we know about this 27-year-old?

BOBBY GHOSH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, we know that he's a Belgian national, a Belgian citizen of Moroccan ancestry. We know that he used to be essentially a petty criminal. Grew up in a middle class, actually slightly upper middle class family, just off some of the sort of nicer neighborhoods in Brussels. Got involved in street gangs when he was young, was not religious, and then turns up in Syria a couple -- about a year and a half ago, and very quickly becomes close to the leader of ISIS, al Baghdadi. He seems to have become a kind of middleman between the ISIS leadership and the cells all over Europe.

CAMEROTA: But the profile that you've just described is already fascinating. So not poor, not desperate, middle class or upper middle class. Part of the street gang began before the ideology. So the --

GHOSH: That's right.

CAMEROTA: -- this hoodlum-like behavior began first.

GHOSH: and this is not atypical. A lot of the young people, particularly those who are going from various parts of the West, from Europe and also from the U.S., were going to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS, are not necessarily -- their profiles don't suggest deep religiosity. They're much more likely to have been part of some sort of small time criminal enterprise, and they're looking for a chance to shoot guns, to kill people, that sense of adventure in their minds rather than, although they may say these words, rather than the service of some religious cause.

CAMEROTA: Bobby, I want to show you and our viewers this sickening bit of video we got involving this so-called mastermind. Here he is behind the wheel of a pickup truck. At first blush, he looks like he's happy, he's smiling, he's joking around with the cameraman. What you don't see, and what we can't show you, is the gruesome scene behind this pickup truck where he has tied a half dozen corpses of his victims and he is taking them to a mass grave.

Who is this psychopath? How does somebody become that psychopath from what you've just described?

GHOSH: The interesting thing is -- and I think it's this video and another video where he talks about when he was a young man, his family went on vacation to Morocco where they were dragging behind them on their family truck jet skis, quad bikes, which talks to a completely different kind of life. And he says now I'm dragging the bodies of unbelievers.

This is not -- He may have had a normal childhood, but he's plainly not a normal person in any way, shape, or form.

CAMEROTA: Let's look at the things that authorities believe he's been responsible for. These are the attempted attacks that they think he was the mastermind of. Paris, as we just saw, obviously, tragically, on Friday. Brussels, that was the train attack thwarted by the three brave Americans, plus others.

[07:30:02]

GHOSH: Yes, there was a planned attack on a church also in Paris. He's been -- his name has popped up in various different investigations.