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New Day Sunday

Terror Group Calls For Attacks On Malls; ISIS Video Shows Kurdish Soldiers In Cages; Ukraine, Rebel Forces Swap Prisoners; Deaths Toll Climbs To 26 From Winter Weather

Aired February 22, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a new terror threat, a Somali-based terror group known for bombing a mall in Kenya is now threatening to attack western malls including in the U.S.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: And Kurdish-Peshmerga fighters caged like animals and parading through the streets. ISIS releases a new propaganda video where they actually interviewed these alleged Kurdish fighters they claim to have caught.

BLACKWELL: And on NASCAR's biggest day, one of its biggest stars, Kurt Busch loses an appeal to overturn his suspension. So what is next? What is the next stepping here for racing?

PAUL: I want to wish you a good morning. Tell you how grateful we are to have your company. I'm Christi Paul.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you.

A terror group linked to al Qaeda is calling for attacks on malls in the U.S., in Canada and in Britain. The Somalia based group Al- Shabaab has released a video. You can see the man here, his face covered up. In English he urges the attacks.

CNN cannot confirm the video's authenticity, but two of the potential targets, Minnesota's Mall of America, and West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, are beefing up security. We'll have much more on that in a moment.

But first, we want to go to CNN senior international correspondent, Nima Elbagir in London. And I wonder does Al-Shabaab say specifically why they are making these threats and why they are making them now?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they are calling on Muslims in the U.K., the U.S. and around the world. They say to take inspiration from the horrifying west gate mall attack in Kenya that Al-Shabaab was able to successfully carry out.

It seems that they are trying to remind those around the world would be jihadi sympathizers that Al-Shabaab carried off a pretty spectacular terror attack and that they should be seeking to be inspired by it.

The man speaking in the video whose still image has a pronounced British accent. It sounded almost London. He speaks about the reality that Somalia has been a fighting ground previously for many foreign fighters.

But now he is asking these foreign fighters to perpetrate these attacks back home. What he is really saying is you don't have to come out here. It is worrying for authorities, Victor, because Al-Shabaab has had pretty good recruitment tactics in the past within that Somalia-American community.

Some 27 Somalia-Americans travel to Somalia to fight with Al-Shabaab and they have recruitment ground zero as part of many of those, 150 American fighters that have joined ISIS. There is cause for authorities to take this very seriously -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: We have heard from other terror groups, namely ISIS, to attack where you are. You do not need to travel in this case of Al- Shabaab to Somalia to join in any attack. Has Al-Shabaab attacked the U.S. or threatened to attack in the U.S. before?

ELBAGIR: Well, there have been bleak references in the past we are able to reach you. But in the sense of being so overt about, as you said, you don't have to come out here, we want to see more lone wolf attacks.

Of course, this comes off the back of those horrible attacks in Paris and those horrible attacks in Denmark. So this is something already is a huge cause for concern but, at the same time, just to really try and balance this out, Al-Shabaab has spent a year and a half putting this together.

That is a diminished potential for actually being able to reach these people. They spoke a lot in the aftermath of Westgate about more is coming, more is coming. Nothing of that standard really has been pulled off successfully by Al-Shabaab.

So a lot of those that we are speaking to in the intelligence community are tempering their alarm, their preparedness with the reality that Al-Shabaab has not yet been able to really recreate what they did in Westgate.

BLACKWELL: All right, Nima Elbagir, we will talk more throughout the morning, specifically about the Mall of America, and the concern there, because there has been many have seen this pipeline from Minnesota to Al-Shabaab. We will continue the conversation. Nima, thank you so much.

PAUL: Thank you, Nima.

You know, the Mall of America in Minnesota, they are beefing up security after being listed as one of the targets here.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Erin McPike joins us live. Erin, when are we going to hear from Homeland Security? ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, we actually will be seeing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the Sunday morning talk shows in just several hours. Of course, we plan to hear from him there.

Now I did reach out to the White House and the National Security council last night. We haven't gotten any sort of response from them just yet but, obviously, they will respond today.

We did get statements in from a couple of malls. I want to read some of those statements to you. The Mall of America said, "We take any potential threat seriously and respond appropriately. We have implemented extra security precautions. Some may be noticeable to guests and others won't be.

We also heard from the West Edmondton Mall, which said, "It is aware of a video that was recently released, which included a mention of the mall. We will continue to monitor the events with the help of federal and local enforcement agencies.

We will continue to follow the situation along with law enforcement and will remain vigilant as we always do in similar situations."

So as you can hear there, there will be these new security measures in place. We just can't lay out for our viewers what they are just yet, but rest assured, there will be new security in place -- Christi and Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, Erin McPike, thank you so much. We will have a conversation in just a moment about security at the malls themselves. Thanks, Erin.

PAUL: CNN law enforcement analyst, Tom Fuentes, is joining us now. Good to have you this morning, tom. The Mall of America, we understand, they say in a statement it has implemented extra security precautions and that some will be noticeable to guests and others will not be. What do you think that means? What will those unnoticeable security moves be?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Christi, I think that will include plain clothes police officers and discrete surveillance coverage and physically and electronically outside the mall in the parking lots and the roads going to the mall.

One thing different at the Westgate mall attack in Kenya is that Kenya borders Somalia and they have been attacked before and there have been safe houses of Al-Shabaab in Kenya before and it's very easy for them to get the equipment, the guns, the terrorists across the border into Kenya to wage the attack.

Here, it's a different story. There are no safe houses that we know. There are no identified cases of one of the 27 Minneapolis citizens, let's say, that went back to Somalia or to join Al-Shabaab, and it just doesn't seem as credible as it would be the threat that is next door neighbor Kenya or to its nearby neighbor Uganda, who they attacked in 2010. And at that time, Shabaab's purpose was and still is, in fact, that the African Union has supplied troops to go into Somalia and try to stabilize that country and they resent the outside African countries coming in there to help the government.

And Somalia has been a failed state essentially since 1991. So you have a much different and much more dangerous situation for the neighbors near Somalia than you do really here.

PAUL: OK, you know, there are a couple of things, though, in terms of the Mall of America. According to that mall they say 32 Boeing 747s could fit inside of it. This is a massive space. So first of all, how do you keep such a large public place safe? Secondly, this is also possibly a threat to the economy, right, because there might be a lot of people, who say I'm not going to the mall any time soon.

FUENTES: That is true. If people don't go to the mall that will be a win for them economically to hurt the one here and the one in Canada, but again, I think that there will be a lot of security there, and I don't think there is going to have anywhere near the possible success, even if a couple of individuals waged an attack on that mall.

I think the security forces there will be adequate. Something else also is the analysts are trying to look at to determine when were these videos taken. Was that file video that maybe is from years ago?

Because over ten years ago, U.S. forces capturing a safe house, you know, an al Qaeda safe house found pictures of a number of public facilities in the U.S. that you would think were going to be targets, one of them was a sports dome stadium that had already been destroyed five years earlier by the city authorities in that city.

So that is the other factor here. Is this recently taken? Is it surveillance video of somebody stalking the site and preparing for the attack or did they just get this off the internet from advertising or some other source?

I think that will all be examined and all of the chatter. If there was a credible threat against that mall, I think the authorities would have a good clue that is coming and they would interrupt it immediately. They would prevent it from happening.

PAUL: A really good point. Tom Fuentes will be with us throughout the morning here with a lot of answers to a lot of our questions. Thank you so much, Tom.

FUENTES: Thank you, Christi.

BLACKWELL: Well, ISIS releases a new propaganda video and this time, they have captured 21 fighters. You can see them here paraded around -- these men are in cages here.

PAUL: Plus, the death toll is climbing as the freezing temperatures are gripping such a huge chunk of the eastern U.S. we are talking about dangerous road conditions, of course, that are even trapping people in their cars for hours at a time. We will let you know what is going on.

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BLACKWELL: It's 13 minutes after the hour and there is a new threat from ISIS this morning, this time against at least 21 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

In a new propaganda video, the terror group claims it captured these men. You see the men here. Then they were paraded in cages atop pickup trucks through a crowded city street. The prisoners here are clearly under duress and called on their fellow soldiers to stand down in the fight against ISIS.

Let's go to CNN senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman. He is joining us live this morning from Erbil, Iraq. Tell us, Ben, what are we learning from this video and the message that ISIS is attempting to send here?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The message they are trying to send, Victor, in this video is, basically, they are interviewing several of these 21 captives, who we believe were taken prisoner at the end of January during an attack by ISIS on the city of Kirkuk although some of them clearly were simply just kidnapped as they were going from the frontlines to their homes for regular leave.

They are interviewed by a man holding a microphone with an ISIS logo and several of them call upon their comrades to stop fighting on behalf of the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force, who they say are serving, in their words, the Jews and the crusaders and by putting down their arms they will avoid a similar fate.

Now during this 9-minute video, however, there are flashes which are still photos of some of those 21 Egyptian Christians, who were executed last week in Libya.

And of course, the implication is that could be the eventual fate of these 21 Kurds, although in this video it is clear that they are not executed there.

But in the past we have seen similar videos, which foreshadowed later videos that were their execution. It is intended to weaken the morale of the Kurdish fighters but our understanding, the last 24 hours. There have been two major battles outside Erbil, the Kurdish capital.

One south of here 50 ISIS fighters were killed by Kurdish fighters, as well as coalition air strikes. We saw some of their bodies on Kurdish TV.

In a similar incident overnight around 30 ISIS fighters, when they were killed when they tried to approach Kurdish lines in another city that is to the west of here near the Syrian border. Propaganda is one thing and reality on the ground, Victor, is seems to be take ago whipping by Kurdish forces -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: As we go across the border into Syria, I want to turn the page to another element of this ISIS story line. We have learned this morning that one Turkish soldier was killed during an evacuation there at the tomb of Shah in Syria. What can you tell us about that?

WEDEMAN: These are Kurdish soldiers who have -- the Turkish soldiers have had a presence around this tomb for the founder of the Ottoman Empire, but clearly this situation was getting so dodgy in that part of Syria, which is near the city of Aleppo that they decided to pull their forces out and in the course of that operation according to the Turkish prime minister, one Turkish soldier was killed.

BLACKWELL: All right, Ben Wedeman reporting live for us this morning from Erbil. Ben, thank you so much.

PAUL: Let's talk about the crisis in Ukraine because earlier today the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian rebels swapped prisoners. Nearly 140 Ukrainian prisoners were exchanged for more than 50 rebel fighters.

All of this, of course, is happening just one year after the former president of Ukraine was ousted from office. CNN's senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh is live in Donetsk for us. This seems to be one of the first possible positive signs of the Minsk agreement.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and even though those stages in the Minsk agreement, prisoner swaps and also the withdrawal of heavy weapons are occurring and not held in by cessation in the violence.

This Donetsk hit by shelling last night, we don't know about the casualties, but it's such a stark contrast playing out now in Kiev this morning in remembrance of those dozens who died in the violence before the ex-president fled the country.

I remember being there. That sense of real unease and uncertainty quite what on earth could unfold in Ukraine next given how peaceful political presence had been up until that stage, but nobody I think would imagine we still be standing here now a year later in the midst of what remains a raging civil war.

Yes, they are talking about the ceasefire being implemented, but the key point of a ceasefire is that fire does in fact cease. But instead in the past week, since it began, while the guns have fallen slightly quieter and noisy last night.

But quieter around this stronghold of Donetsk where the separatists have most of their base around the key strategic town, the violence really rage, the separatist swooped in there and routed the Ukrainian military and inflicting on this what Kiev admits is probably its worst military period in this entire conflict.

Nearly 180 or maybe more of their soldiers died in a month the fighting for that particular town, and that of course, is happening while the ceasefire allegedly is in place.

World leaders still not calling it out yet and saying the violence has continued. I think perhaps the hope is if these other stages like prisoner swaps, heavy weapons withdrawals fall into place maybe the guns will silence themselves.

Well, here in Central Donetsk, it's comparatively quiet and you're hearing a noisy children's celebration behind me, a bit of normalcy but still the shells keep falling -- Victor, Christie.

PAUL: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, appreciate the report. Thank you.

BLACKWELL: A big day for NASCAR, but one of the sport's biggest stars will not be racing. Kurt Busch lost his final appeal to overturn a suspension. What is his next step for racing again?

PAUL: Also as temperatures drop, the death toll seems to be on the rise. This morning, a lot of drivers are urged just stay off the roads if you can. We will tell you what is happening.

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BLACKWELL: All this cold arctic weather is pounding cities across the country and causing death toll to climb. At least 26 people now have died as a result of this winter weather. Road conditions, you see them here, slushy and icy places, just unbearable.

PAUL: Snow, sleet, freezing rain, you could record me saying that the last week and I'm still saying the same thing and I feel badly because I'm just saying it, but so many people are living in it. Let's get to Ivan Cabrera and see really how much longer do they have?

IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, you don't feel like you have all been saying it and it's incredible through January. This all got started then and it continues. This is a setup for early this week. What a surprise, cold across the central U.S. and into the east coast.

My concern will be down to the south and west and into the mid-south where we will be talking about some icing. Here is the storm we tracked yesterday now beginning to move off. If you're waking up early and you'll see some rain on the back side of here.

Washington, Baltimore, Philly and Boston, some cold air with light snow and not amount to much and is going to push out. It's snowing in Denver and Colorado getting clobbered with significant snow and they are loving that certainly with the ski resorts there, snowing in Kansas right now.

Here is the setup, Sunday, this evening, rain in Dallas. But as the cold air begins to move in, you see some of the pink beginning to show up. This is going to be a nightmare I think for the morning commute as we head through the day Monday morning.

A significant ice event occurring across North Texas so we will watch that and then it's going to be snow on the northern side of it here so very cold stuff here and icy conditions. Winter storm warnings are posted all the way down into Dallas heading in through the early part of Monday. That is what we have going on.

Guess what, more arctic air. Look at these temperatures. These are current windchills. I know it gets cold in the north central U.S. but this is ridiculous, minus 42 in international falls. Minus 41 at Fargo and all of that coming east so the northeast will get a piece of more arctic temperatures.

PAUL: Ouch.

CABRERA: Yes, but no snow so that is good.

BLACKWELL: All right, we will take something. Thank you, Ivan.

PAUL: Ivan, thank you.

OK, we want to tell you about a terror threat this morning. A bit of a different one than what we have been talking about as of late. Al Qaeda-linked terror group now urging attacks against one of the most popular malls in the world and it's right here in the heart of the Midwest.

BLACKWELL: Also another terror group is looking for vulnerable men, women in America's heartland to go to terror battle grounds. What happens if and when they come back to the U.S.? We will dig into that next.

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BLACKWELL: New this morning, the al Qaeda-linked Somali-based terror group, Al-Shabaab released a new video calling to action this morning. The taped message, the group calls for attacks on shopping malls in the United States, in Canada and across the U.K.

PAUL: The Mall of America is one of the name targets there. The mall released a statement saying it has implemented extra security measures in 2013. Al-Shabaab launched a day's long seige on an upscale shopping mall in Kenya and that killed more than 50 people.

We also know Secretary of State John Kerry is in Geneva, Switzerland today for another round of Iranian nuclear talks. He meets with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

They are going to join other world powers who have been in talks since Friday, actually, as next month's deadline moves for an agreement there. But a deal could bring an end to tough sanctions against Tehran and possibly a warming of relations with the west.