Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Senate to Vote on Gun Control Measures; Pickpockets Target Olympic Tourists; Reformed Islamic Extremist on Orlando Shooting. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 20, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:33:14] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: My betting right now is it will not get passed -

REP. STEVE ISRAEL (D), NEW YORK: Yes.

CUOMO: Because Paul Ryan has said we - we're not even going to have a vote on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Democratic Congressman Steve Israel telling us that he's discouraged by the gun control debate on Capitol Hill. Still, the Senate is scheduled to vote today on four new gun control measures. Our next guest is proposing his own bill, that he believes could have prevented the massacre in Orlando. Florida Senator Bill Nelson joins us now.

Good morning, senator.

SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: What's in your bill?

NELSON: Mine is incorporated in both Dianne Feinstein's, as well as Susan Collins. And it would have caught Mateen. Dianne says you're - if you're on the terrorist watch list, you can't buy a gun. That sounds pretty common sense.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NELSON: But Mateen was not on the watch list. Mine says, if you were on the watch list, when you buy the gun, the FBI is going to be pinged, it's going to notified so that then they can make their determination if they want to go and talk to the individual.

CAMEROTA: Well, that sure sounds logical. So why isn't your measure being voted on today?

NELSON: Well, it is, in one version or another. It is already incorporated in Dianne Feinstein's and it's, unfortunately, something as common sense as that, it doesn't look like we're going to get 60 votes. But at the end of the day, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins are defining a much narrower list. They basically say the no fly list, which in the country is about 800 people that are U.S. persons.

[08:35:00] CAMEROTA: Eight hundred or 800,000?

NELSON: Eight hundred.

CAMEROTA: Oh, OK, because we had heard that 800,000 were on some terror watch list of some kind. So, you're right, 800 is extremely narrow.

NELSON: Well, that - extremely narrow. The terrorist watch list among U.S. persons is about 5,000. U.S. person is a U.S. citizen or a person legally in the U.S.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NELSON: The figure that you're hearing, 800,000, a million, that's the worldwide terrorist watch list.

CAMEROTA: I see. Yes. OK, so, senator, who's fighting yours? I mean yours sounds like, yes, the FBI should be alerted when somebody they've investigated tries to buy a gun. Who's fighting that on Capitol Hill?

NELSON: The NRA. And they're trying to clamp down and say they don't want any kind of impediment to buying a gun. And that, to me, just defies common sense.

CAMEROTA: Why does the NRA have so much power in Congress?

NELSON: Because in a Republican primary, a low turnout Republican primary, they activate their members. And just like the Tea Party, they can skew the results in a low turnout Republican primary.

CAMEROTA: But here's what's crazy, senator, even NRA members, gun owners, 90 percent of Americans say in poll after poll that they are comfortable with expanded background checks that would include online gun sales, as well as gun show gun sales and yet -

NELSON: Of course.

CAMEROTA: That can't pass Congress. Explain that.

NELSON: Well, it's the same explanation. And that's another bill that we will vote on. Do you have to get a criminal background check when you buy a gun? Now, in most states you go into a gun store, it's an instantaneous check. It doesn't hold up the purchase. But then there's what's known was the gun show loophole.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NELSON: You don't have to get that. We're going to vote on that one today as well.

CAMEROTA: But it - and is that going to pass?

NELSON: Sadly, the expectations are that you're not going to get enough Republican senators with 46 of us Democratic senators to get to 60. All you need is 14 Republican senators.

CAMEROTA: Senator, how can Congress not take steps to try to solve this problem of gun violence and mass shootings in our country?

NELSON: Well, that's exactly the reason we had the 15-hour - the 15- hour last Wednesday filibuster, to try to draw attention to this. I started early, by the way, and my part in the filibuster. I held up a picture of the two rifles, the AR-15 and the Sig Sauer that the killer used, and then I put up a picture of the trauma surgeon's blood stained shoes which he wrote so eloquently about on his FaceBook page. He said, here I am, 40 some are coming into the trauma center. We don't know if there black or white or gay or straight. All we know is that they are screaming. They're crying. And we're doing everything that we can to save lives. And he said he has not stopped wearing those shoes to work until the last victim leaves that hospital.

CAMEROTA: Senator, we hear your emotion. We know Orlando is in your state. And we wish you luck in Congress of solving gun violence however that can happen. We'll be following what happens today. Thank you for being here on NEW DAY.

NELSON: Thanks, Alisyn. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Great conversation, Alisyn.

Pick pockets are going for the gold at the upcoming summer games in Rio. What you need to know to protect your smartphone. That's right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:42:55] SCIUTTO: New security concerns in Rio less than two months before the Brazilian city hosts the Summer Olympics. Pick pockets setting their sights on the phones of Olympic tourists. CNN's senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, he is live today in Rio with more.

NIC PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jim, behind me here are the beaches where there will be so many tourists here and street crime always an issue here, accentuated by the poor state of the economy here now in recession. Even athletes being targeted behind me. We spoke to one of the men at the heart of that dark trade.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): The 5:00 p.m. rush, sundown empties the beaches, fills rum glasses in streets. Coco Cabana (ph), where Olympic tourists will be lured by volleyball and hot sand, their phones, jewelry sparkle, a sea of opportunity for this man, one of Rio's army of street robbers. "PEDRO" (through translator): More or less five phones stolen, now

that's a good day's work.

WALSH: We'll call him Pedro. His crimes aren't sins, he says, just a way to make a living. And the Olympics will be boom time.

"PEDRO": Very, very busy time. It's going to be good, but at the same time you'll have a lot of tourists, you'll have a lot of thieves as well, with jewelry, watches, people might go to the police station, but when it's just a phone, many don't even go to the police. They get on a ship, on a plane, and they leave.

WALSH: He prefers to work in a pair, approach from behind, and shows me his move while the other partner bump into my front. He shows us where he immediately takes a stolen phone. He snaps and throws the sim card, not touching the phone's buttons. This market of mostly legal resellers, brings with traders hawking very cheap phones on the corner. And some, he says, can wipe and reset a phone for him for about $10. In fact one told me they didn't need passwords to reset a phone at all. Pedro then sells the clean phone on.

[08:45:06] "PEDRO": If you can get the new launch, a 6s, all the iPhones are guaranteed money. You don't have it at home for even a day, you can steal it in an hour, two hours later, you'll already have the money in your pocket and it's far away.

WALSH: It's a brazen industry, caught on amateur camera here in the center. Opportunism and thuggery combined. A broken phone, no use here, and returned. Rio police have set up a high-tech CCTV center they hope will encourage people to report crimes and maybe let them see culprits in action. A grainy view of a beautiful city's heartened trade.

WALSH (on camera): You do realize you're potentially ruining somebody's holiday, right?

"PEDRO": I don't really think about that, because if I did, no one would do it. When it's time to go and steal, you always think these are the people with more money than those in the favela (ph) here.

WALSH (voice-over): And Pedro's advice to not get robbed by him? Put your phone in your front pocket, pay attention when you use it, check it if someone bumps into you. Now it's up to you to decide if he's left something out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH: Now the real concerns are Rio's declared here a state of emergency in its finances and pointing how that may impact public security, i.e. police on the streets. There's a real question about how much money the country has to get the cops they need out here to keep people safe and you saw there the kind of anticipation these thieves feel ahead of the games.

Jim. CAMEROTA: Nick, I'll take it. Wow! Thank you for all of your reporting from down there. It just does not seem as though the situation is getting any better there.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump says profiling Muslims is the answer to fighting terrorism. Up next, a former radical Islamist responds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:30] CAMEROTA: Authorities today will release partial transcripts of calls between the killer and hostage negotiators during the Orlando attack. And we could learn more about what motivated him.

Joining us now is someone who has a unique take on all of this, Sohail Ahmed. He's a self-described former Islamic radical who is also a gay Muslim man.

Sohail, thank you so much for being on NEW DAY with us.

SOHAIL AHMED, SELF-DESCRIBED FORMER ISLAMIST JIHADIST: You're very welcome. It's an absolute pleasure to be on here.

CAMEROTA: You do have a very unique take. Can you explain, in your personal experience, how being a gay Muslim man was actually connected to your radicalization?

AHMED: Well, as I was growing up, I basically started searching all of the - the fatwas, the verdicts that had been written by the Islamic scholars on what you should do if you have same-sex attractions. And one thing would come up over and over again, and that was become more religious, become more devout. And considering that I was brought up in - in a selafi (ph) Wahhabi kind of background, for me it was a lot easier to become radical in - whilst I was trying to become more religious. So, in a sense, paradoxically, I basically became more radical in an attempt to cure myself of my sexuality.

CAMEROTA: And, in fact, at some point, were you considering a terror attack akin to the type that we've seen in Orlando?

AHMED: I'm extremely ashamed to say - and it - all is really hard every time I do answer this question, but, yes, at one point I was considering carrying out an atrocity. And the atrocity I was considering carrying out was basically using an improvised explosive device.

CAMEROTA: And why? What would the point of that have been?

AHMED: The point of that would have been basically I was brought up within the Islamist ideology. I was in (INAUDIBLE). And what it teaches is that the non-Muslims are at war with Muslims. That there's this never ending war that's going on. And that basically non-Muslims want to destroy Muslims. And specifically at this particular moment in time, it's the west, led by the United States and the United Kingdom. So I believed - and this was something that I was basically brought up with - that I was - that my country was at war with Islam, therefore it was my religious duty to fight against my own country. CAMEROTA: Sohail, how did you become deprogrammed to become the reasonable, rational person that we're speaking to today?

AHMED: Well, that - it was a number of things. But initially it was doubts regarding literal (ph) sharia law that I was brought up with. The idea of stoning people to death and killing the (INAUDIBLE) just simply didn't make sense to me. It just didn't seem right. One a very - on a visceral level. But what happened after that is that I kind of started looking into the theory of evolution. And that might seem strange, but when I kind of accepted the theory of evolution, I basically opened my mind to changing my religious beliefs as they pertained to sharia, as they pertained to violent jihad. That is because the fear of evolution basically dealt a blow to my literalist, puritanical version of Islam that I was brought up with. And basically it was the work that was being done by the Quilliam Foundation, which is the world's first counterterrorism think tank in the United Kingdom that basically led me out of extremism.

CAMEROTA: Sohail, you are obviously a very thoughtful, bright person and you worked your way around through your own readings to be getting deprogrammed from that. But given the global spread of Wahhabism that we have seen, what is the answer to fighting radicals?

AHMED: See, the thing is, I think it's important to kind of fight the ideology. Now, by all means, the overwhelming majority of Islamists even don't believe in terrorism. However, a certain proportion of them would believe in terrorism. It's basically you're primed into kind of becoming a - in a potential terrorist. Basically you don't wake up one day thinking, oh, I'm going to carry out a terror attack. You have to have bought into the entire narrative of us and them, of this never- ending war, in order for you to even get to the stage where you're considering carrying out terror attacks.

And the way to counter this ideology is kind of twofold. Firstly, we need to counter the ideology. We need to point out to Muslims and to vulnerable individuals who are considering terror attacks, it's important to point out to them that these questions regarding violent jihad and regarding human rights, these issues were being discussed by the scholars of old openly and it's time to kind of look back at the Islamic tradition and to revive it and to basically continue on the evolution in Islamic thought that had been going on, but which now, unfortunately, has stopped.

[08:55:27] CAMEROTA: Donald Trump, here in the U.S., has suggested that because of some of what you're talking about, the spread of this radical Wahhabism, that the U.S. should ban Muslims from coming here and it should begin profiling. What do you think of that?

AHMED: Well, firstly, I think it's a very contentious issue, but I do think it is reasonable for countries to control immigration from countries where the populous holds particular kind of views that are contrary to ours. However, I do not think a blanket ban on Muslims is the answer. Not least because I think we should be opening our arms to liberal Muslims, to secular Muslims, to progressive Muslims, to reformist Muslims simply because these kinds of Muslims - and there are many, many Muslims like that in the Muslim world, they simply just do not have a voice because whenever they talk out, they are persecuted both by the law, by the state and by their communities. So I think we need to open our arms to those kinds of individuals. And for that reason, I do not think a blanket ban on Muslims is the answer.

CAMEROTA: Sohail Ahmed, we appreciate you speaking out. It is fascinating to hear your personal story. And we will speak again. Thank you so much for being on NEW DAY.

AHMED: OK. You're welcome.

CAMEROTA: NEWSROOM with Carol Costello will pick up right after this very quick break. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks so much for being here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:00:06] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, the Orlando shooter in his own words.