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New Day
Massive Manhunt for Brussels Terror Suspect; Terrorist Brothers. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired March 23, 2016 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: -- the case to the American people.
Now as we said there is breaking information about the investigation in Brussels. For that, let's get right back to Alisyn in the center of it all -- Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Chris, we have a lot of developments out of Brussels. There is word of an arrest happening just in the past hour or so. We will bring you that. Also, police identifying the two airport suicide bombers as brothers. We'll tell you their names.
We will also speak to an eyewitness, a man who was at the airport yesterday and witnessed the carnage. We'll tell you what he saw. We'll be back in a moment.
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CAMEROTA: I'm Alisyn Camerota in Brussels this morning. We do have some breaking news right now into the terror investigation, authorities here making an arrest in connection with yesterday's coordinated attacks.
No word yet on the identity of the person they captured this morning. We will bring it to you as soon as we get it.
Meanwhile, police are identifying two brothers, Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui as --
[06:35:00]
CAMEROTA: -- the two airport suicide bombers. One of them reportedly rented a house under a false identity. That led to a police raid last week. That raid led to the capture of Paris terror suspect Saleh Abdeslam. An intense manhunt is still underway at this hour here in Brussels for a third suspect seen in surveillance images with the brothers at the Brussels airport.
One of the first big breaks in the investigation came from a taxi driver, who drove that trio to the airport. He alerted authorities. And his tip prompted a new raid a few miles from the airport, where they found another bomb and an ISIS flag.
Thousands here in Belgium witnesses the attacks and the aftermath. And they are still, of course, trying to come to grips with everything they saw yesterday. I'm here with Jordy Van Overmeire. He was in the airport. He had landed right before the explosions went off yesterday.
And Jordy joins me now. Jordy, thank you so much for being here.
How are you doing?
JORDY VAN OVERMEIRE, AIRPORT ATTACK WITNESS: I'm OK. Thank you.
CAMEROTA: You had just come back from vacation in Bangkok and had landed at the airport.
What did you hear?
OVERMEIRE: Oh, I just landed. I was in the baggage claim area waiting for my best friend, Roy. He came back from Miami. Was supposed to land like 15 minutes after me and I told him I would wait for him.
All of a sudden I heard this real loud explosion. I didn't know what it was. I didn't realize what it was. At that point actually maybe thought it was something like a suitcase falling down or something.
But then my friend called me from the airplane and said I just landed but we can't get off. They are telling us that something happened inside the airport. At that point I saw policemen running around in the baggage claim area and saying that there was an explosion and that we all had to leave.
CAMEROTA: What did you see?
OVERMEIRE: I just saw a lot of people running around and some panic. But nothing more yet. It was until then we went to the arrival hall. There I saw a lot of dust and smoke. I saw shattered glass, I saw some water coming through the ceiling. And then they took us outside.
CAMEROTA: At that point, did you know what had happened?
OVERMEIRE: I had no idea what happened at that point because someone said there were renovations at the airport going on. So we didn't have a clue there was a terror attack.
CAMEROTA: You weren't thinking terror attack?
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CAMEROTA: So then you made it out somehow to the parking garage? OVERMEIRE: Yes. We went one down floor to the escalators that
were broken that we went down, stepped down. We came to the parking lot outside and then there was some more glass. There was -- I saw some blood on the roads. I saw a lot of people in panic crying. I saw a guy with a head wound and then some people with blood on their clothes and stuff. Then we started realizing something terrible had happened.
CAMEROTA: In fact, the people that you saw with head injuries, you had to help some of them.
OVERMEIRE: Yes. I saw one guy with a head wound. And I gave him a handkerchief and I asked him if he was OK. And he was kind of calm but, yes, it was pretty intense there.
CAMEROTA: And was it chaos?
When you got down to the parking area, where people were bleeding, were there enough emergency crews helping them?
What was the scene?
OVERMEIRE: There was -- I don't think there was any emergency yet crew. But there were a lot of policeman and soldiers running down and shouting. And then people with their luggage, running and crying. It was total chaos actually.
CAMEROTA: You are a Belgium native. You work here in Brussels.
Were you shocked that there was a terror attack?
We keep hearing about the tension that has been here in Brussels clearly since Paris.
What is your take on your city here?
OVERMEIRE: Well, I think we just got away in November with the whole lockdown. I think we just got away from an attack then. And now that Saleh Abdeslam had been caught a couple days ago, we all felt relieved. We didn't think another attack was possible.
But then this happened. So I didn't see this coming, no.
CAMEROTA: We keep hearing about how Brussels is home to many extremists, people who've been radicalized.
Do you get the sense on the streets here as you work here every day of tension?
Do you walk around living in fear that something might have happened?
OVERMEIRE: No. Not at all, actually. I didn't get the sense that the people are radicalized. I work in Molenbeek actually.
CAMEROTA: So you work in the neighborhood? OVERMEIRE: Yes.
CAMEROTA: That is considered one of the most radicalized neighborhoods.
What is that like?
OVERMEIRE: Well, to be honest, it feels like a neighborhood where never, ever something happens. It's kind of boring and all peace and quiet. And I think the stuff that happens behind the curtains, inside the buildings, inside the houses, that's where thing happen.
CAMEROTA: Because we keep hearing how insular that neighborhood is, that the authorities don't even feel comfortable going there, they can't infiltrate there. They believe there are radicals there but they can't get into it.
Do you ever come across any of that radical thinking there?
OVERMEIRE: I have never come across that, no. For me, it seems like a neighborhood, like just another one, yes, like any other one.
CAMEROTA: Were you able to connect with your friend at the airport that you were trying to meet?
OVERMEIRE: Yes, I was actually with him on the phone when I was going down and when I was witnessing --
[06:40:00]
OVERMEIRE: -- all the things that I was telling him I was seeing. And then we got -- he got stuck on the airplane. They wouldn't let him off another two or three hours. But then eventually he got to the parking lot, too, and then we reconnected there.
CAMEROTA: And Jordy, how are you going to get past what you saw yesterday?
OVERMEIRE: I'm actually still not fully aware yet of what happened. It feels pretty unreal when I see the footage on TV yet. But I don't want to let this take me down. I want to stay positive and not start to live in fear.
CAMEROTA: Jordy, thank you. Thanks so much. We're glad you're OK. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
It's a familiar trend we continue to see in terror attacks, brothers radicalized and carrying out deadly violence.
What is it about that relationship that could contribute to the growing terror threat?
We'll examine that when NEW DAY comes right back.
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CUOMO: There are breaking developments in the Brussels terror investigation, authorities arresting a man this morning in connection with the attacks --
[06:45:00]
CUOMO: -- during a raid. No identity given yet. No even definite connection whether it's about what happened in Brussels or maybe in Paris. Police have identified the two men on your screen as brothers, the two suicide airport attackers. That's who they are. One of them reportedly renting a house under a false identity, leading to a police raid last week. That raid led to the capture of the Paris terror suspect Saleh Abdeslam. So authorities were close but not close enough -- Mic.
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: President Obama arriving in Argentina overnight after that historic three-day visit to Cuba. He will meet with Argentina's president this morning to reset diplomatic relations, strength trade ties before he attends a state dinner tonight.
While in Cuba, Obama declared an end to the, quote, "last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas."
CUOMO: A person arrested after jumping over a White House bike rack. The Secret Service says it detained the suspect Tuesday outside the South Fence. They did not specify the person's name or gender. The first family, of course, out of the country. So no immediate threat at the time of the incident.
PEREIRA: The White House and the FDA taking action against opioids, immediate release drugs like oxycodone and fentanyl will now have to carry that black box warning about the risk of abuse, addiction, overdose and death. White House drug control officials also sending letters to governors of all 50 states, detailing ways they can take steps to curb prescription drug abuse.
CUOMO: The medicine cabinet is the new drug dealer.
It is time for "Your Money, Your Vote." Chief business correspondent Christine Romans with a look at all that matters.
What do you got, my friend?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, in nearly every primary state, voters tell us the economy and jobs is are the most important issues. Three factors right now critical to voters' wallets for you guys.
First, stocks are hot again. The Dow Jones industrial average up 10 percent from that big drop they had at the beginning of the year. Good for your 401(k) but watch out for rising oil prices. Good for stocks, bad for drivers. The national average for a gallon of regular, almost $2 again. It is still cheaper to fill up today than it was a year ago.
Existing home sales tumbled in February. Big surprise there. Mortgage rates are rock bottom. But home buyers say they are having is trouble finding the right house at the right price. And realtors note buyers aren't willing to push their budget because they are concerned about wages, they're concerned about jobs, reflecting something we have seen in the exit polls. People are doing OK now financially but they are worried about the future -- Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right, Christine, thank you so much.
Brothers willing to die in the name of terror. It's not the first time. We'll examine why siblings could be pushing each other to commit acts of evil.
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[06:50:00]
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CUOMO: Looking at the latest chapter and just a terrible trend we're seeing all over the world but specifically in Europe. Now we have brothers going the radicalization route together. Sometimes we also see couples. But you saw it in Boston, you saw it in Paris now here in Brussels airport.
So is there something to this?
Is there something to family making this easier for recruiters?
Let's discuss what we know and how we understand it and the latest in the investigation. CNN contributor Michael Weiss is also senior editor for "The Daily Beast" and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror."
Coincidence or is there some type of correlation to trying to get people to do these types of terrible acts and family?
MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's common. The Abdeslam brothers were both part of the Paris massacre. Saleh obviously didn't go through with it and didn't become a suicide bomber but his brother, Brahim Abdeslam did. Actually, that guy was even more of a zealous jihadi, judging by the propaganda that ISIS put out post-mortem.
The Tsarnaev brothers in Boston obviously is a famous case. Look, when you see these little congeries of jihadis, people who have known each other for years, usually it is childhood friendships or teenage friendships. The mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was friends with the Abdeslam brothers back when they were in their late teens, early 20s. They got into scrapes together. They were -- resorted to a life of gangsterism and petty criminality. They went to jail for trying to break into a garage in a town southeast of Brussels.
When you look about it, who do you know, who can be radicalized along with you better than your own family? Big brother-little brother dynamic: little brother looks up to his big brother, wants to follow in his footsteps and it is very easy to be brainwashed.
In fact, Abaaoud actually kidnapped his own brother from school and tried to bring him in to Syria. I think he actually succeeded. So this is a very common phenomenon. People within families, in the Middle East, for instance, cousins, extended relations often wind up in the same insurgency together.
CUOMO: Let's bring in Maajid Nawaz. He's the co-founder and chairman of the Killian Foundation.
It's good to have you this morning.
What do you make of this?
Do you believe that family is relevant in the persuasion of terrorism?
MAAJID NAWAZ, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, KILLIAN FOUNDATION: I think siblings and cousins are definitely relevant. It is often the case they rebel against their parents and their parents' understanding of Islam. The first generation immigrants to Europe didn't subscribe to Islamism the way in which the second and third generations adopted it.
And that -- Michael is correct, largely came through the roots of brothers, older brothers, older cousins.
When I joined an Islamist extremist group at the age of 16, four of us joined together, that was me, my brother and my two cousins. We all grew up very close to each other.
And that's the pattern throughout the Middle East as well as Michael has said. There is a reason for that and that is especially in Europe, the state of disintegration and on the continent in particular of European Muslim communities and their disenfranchisement from mainstream society means their bonds to each other are more important to them than their loyalty or sense of loyalty to mainstream society and that's something have to fix.
CUOMO: So let's take a look at one of these images that we're using right now in terms of identifying these three men --
[06:55:00]
CUOMO: -- who were at the Brussels airport together. And what's obviously especially curious is that two of them are making no effort to disguise themselves. Those are the two brothers. And the other one is doing everything he can to disguise himself and obviously that suggests to investigators that he was looking to continue on.
What do you understand, Michael, of who this guy could be and why he was camouflaged?
WEISS: He looks to be a handler of some sort. Somebody who, as you say, wasn't about to blow himself up and will have to carry on coordinating or overseeing these operations.
He is dressed like a spy frankly. He wants to evade being detected, facial recognition software, that kind of thing. We just don't know though. This is the problem. The network, it doesn't really do to speak of a Belgian network or a French network. People who are studying this in Europe are telling me it is more like a Francophone network because of the fluidity of these borders.
So the network is far more extensive than we had previously assumed. In the Paris attack, for instance, in the months after the fact, it was thought that maybe this was a ring of actually 20-25 guys. Now they are thinking more like 30 to 40.
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CUOMO: As we learned in Paris, we had too much occasion to be there recently. When we started these raids -- you know this as well from following the coverage and hearing from people there -- the more they went out, the more they found. The numbers were overwhelming to the French authorities how many people they could have arrested, the weapons they found, the lattice work as Nima Elbagir calls it of these terror things.
So the more they look, the more they're learning. That's why it was so important to change the protocols in France, according to their authorities. But the French are very quick. Not right now because they're all -- everybody is in mourning. But Maajid, they are quick, the French, to say, look, Belgium is different. It's different geographically. It's different by population density. And it's different in that it is farther behind than even we are here in France in dealing with this homegrown terror threat.
Fair criticism?
And if so, is that why we saw what we just saw?
NAWAZ: Well, it's a fair point inasmuch as it's fair to say the British can say that they are slightly further ahead than the French. But nobody has any room to take anything for granted at this stage.
Even if the Brits were to say that vis-a-vis France, up to -- between 800 to 2,000 British born and raised fighters have gone to join ISIS. If we look at Brussels and zoom in on it, 100 fighters have gone from Brussels. Belgium, the French are correct to say, has a higher percentage per population who have gone to join ISIS than any other European country. But not a higher percentage per Muslim population.
So that's peculiar on -- it goes to other countries. And France is high up there as well. The security services are absolutely inundated. There's too much to do. If you just look at Brussels with those 100 fighters who've gone to join, imagine all of their siblings, all of their cousins, all of their neighbors and friends.
And imagine how many people that is just in the city of Brussels to monitor. The global jihadist insurgency has hit home in Europe. But this was the eighth of seven other attacks in the month of March alone across the world. That's two in Pakistan, two in Turkey, one in Mali, one in Nigeria and one in the Ivory Coast. This is something which is on a scale that has been unprecedented.
WEISS: It is sort of like a demimonde or a shadow society in these European cities. What I find interesting is it's not just a generational thing. It is true that people who go off to join ISIS tend to be younger because ISIS is seen as the going concern, the cool jihadi movement to join.
But when they are sent to Syria and trained up there and they come back -- or even before they go, frankly, they have established connections, friendship, acquaintanceships with all manner of veteran jihadis. In the case of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, he was radicalized it seems by a cleric who was a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet conflict.
He was actually disbursing cash money to people who wanted to go to Syria, enabling their travel abroad. So again -- and these people have been living in Europe for decades. And now they have these third- and fourth-generation knock-on jihadis rising to the fore.
CUOMO: Now the question is that is haunting all of us is what to do about it.
Maajid, Michael, as always, thank you very much.
We will continue our coverage of the Brussels terror attacks ahead. We are also following the election results in the U.S., including a live interview with Senator Ted Cruz. Let's get right to it.
