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Trump on Terror; Mali Terror Attack. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 20, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:48]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. And you're watching CNN's special coverage here of two major stories hitting two capital cities, two separate continents precisely one week from one another, of course, this most recent in Paris seven days ago.

Gunmen have now struck a luxury hotel in Bamako, Mali, in West Africa. And just moments ago, we learned more people have been killed. The numbers, of course, keep changing. A U.N. spokesperson tells CNN 21 people are now dead and the situation is not over.

Security forces in Bamako are entering their 13th hour of this crisis. They believe attackers actually could still be inside this luxury hotel here, this Radisson Blu Hotel. Mali officials say at least one of the gunmen has been killed. All hostages have been rescued.

And that includes six Americans. Video here shows several dozen of these hostages being escorted out of the hotel. It's not totally clear how many escaped, but this hotel chain, the Radisson chain, says there were up to 170 guests and staffers at that hotel when the siege began.

A U.N. official says this whole thing started when several men stormed into this hotel with their AK-47s and the attackers arrived. One witness says they were in a car with diplomatic plates.

Robyn Kriel is live for us right now in Nairobi, Kenya, happening what is happening -- covering what's happening across the continent there in Mali.

Tell me where the situation stands right now. And do we know yet any sort of official claim of responsibility?

ROBYN KRIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're still trying to ascertain the claims of responsibility, Brooke, but it does look to be, at least according to some social media and some sites that CNN is working to verify, that it was an affiliate or, rather, a splinter faction of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

And if it is does indeed turn out to be this group, al-Murabitun, they were responsible for a very similar hotel attack in Central Mali on a luxury hotel, of course, the biggest hotel, where 17 people were killed, including U.N. personnel, and as well as some Westerners and several Malian security service officials.

In terms of the latest information, they are still going through the hotel. They are still clearing the rooms. It is a process that takes awhile, because there are a lot of rooms, likely coming across people who would have been still holed up in their hotel rooms hiding from attackers.

As of now, we don't know if they have located any more attackers dead or alive, other than the initial two that were reported killed earlier today.

BALDWIN: As far as those, Robyn, who were in the hotel, I'm reading members of Air France crew, French, Belgium, American. Tell me more.

KRIEL: Yes, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Algerian. A number of them were sort of released or escaped throughout the day.

But the nationalities of the dead thus far, one Belgian, one French and two Malian, so we will hope to -- as those numbers have risen to 21 and they could indeed rise further, we will try to ascertain their nationalities, but a wide variety of people, Brooke.

This was the luxury hotel, so it could have been frequented by everyone from businessmen looking to do business in that part of the country to aid workers, to U.N. personnel. And according to the U.S. State Department, I believe, more than 10 Americans were somehow involved in the siege, but it looks like they have managed to come out alive.

As I said, we have yet to ascertain the nationalities of most of those who have been declared dead.

BALDWIN: And 11:00 at night there where you are in Nairobi covering what's happening in Mali. Robyn Kriel, thank you so, so much.

I can tell you that the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali says a possible reason for the attack on this particular hotel is the fact that diplomats were meeting there to discuss a peace process in that country, which has been battling Islamist extremists.

[15:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MONGI HAMDI, UNITED NATIONS: I think really this attack has been perpetrated by negative forces, by terrorists who do not want to see peace in Mali, who are trying to make all efforts to derail the peace process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me bring in the author of "National Insecurity," David Rothkopf. He's also the CEO and editor of "Foreign Policy" magazine.

Good to see you, sir. Welcome back to CNN.

DAVID ROTHKOPF, CEO AND EDITOR, "FOREIGN POLICY": Great to be here.

BALDWIN: Let me just begin for people who are not quite as familiar. When we say Mali, West African nation, former French colony, the Islamic militants came in, in the northern part of the country, 2012.

Can you just give me more historic context and also its ties to the French?

ROTHKOPF: I mean, it used to be a French colony. And so there's a natural tie there.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ROTHKOPF: But in 2012, 2013, this al Qaeda group went in there and actually took over more land than any terrorist group had ever controlled up until that point.

Since then, ISIS, which has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria, has gone then to quantum levels beyond that. But, for awhile, Mali was a real focus of anti-terrorist attention because of this concentration there.

But throughout Africa, whether it's in Mali or Boko Haram in Nigeria or in the Horn of Africa, you see extremist groups. They are active all the time. And I think that's an important point with regard to this. Just because it has happened near Paris doesn't mean -- in terms of planning -- doesn't mean it's happened because of Paris.

BALDWIN: Such an important point, because it was right around this time seven days ago when you have these coordinated attacks going off in Paris. Now you have what's happening in Mali.

She mentioned -- I want to get more into this splinter group of al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which obviously was affiliated with al Qaeda, but I read as recently as May they pledged allegiance to ISIS. Can you tell me more about this?

ROTHKOPF: Well, first of all, it's a local group with a local agenda for the most part.

BALDWIN: OK.

ROTHKOPF: And it's probable -- and we don't want to speculate, but it's probable that this attack had to do with this U.N. conference and local issues. Right?

But ISIS is the brand name in terrorism right now.

BALDWIN: Right.

ROTHKOPF: And so you're seeing al Qaeda being kind of yesterday's news and a lot of these group sort of rebranding themselves.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: They to one-up one another. ROTHKOPF: Well, but it also -- look, if your job is terror and you look like you're a part of a big global conspiracy, then you're going to strike more terror than if you're a fragmentary group in Mali.

And so this is kind of the genius of ISIS, because it's kind of the first open source terror group, where anybody can join. Just change your name, say you're a part of ISIS. They will have you in. And it's not hierarchic like al Qaeda or sort of last generation groups were.

And that makes them look bigger and bigger and bigger, faster and faster and faster. And that gets our attention. In the course of the past four weeks, you have had the Russian airliner. You have had an attack in Beirut. You have had an attack in Paris. You have had this attack.

BALDWIN: Soccer stadiums evacuated in Germany, raid overnight in Paris for something else imminent.

(CROSSTALK)

ROTHKOPF: And it's extremely unlikely there are a bunch of guys in a map room some place planning all this out.

Instead, you have got fragmentary groups that all have a certain kind of association with a bigger group and all of a sudden it looks like a pattern that is part of a war that is being waged.

BALDWIN: You're saying don't give them that much credit?

ROTHKOPF: I wouldn't give them that much credit. I think you have got to sort of take a step back.

Remember that what terrorists are trying to do is wind us up and terrorize us. And we have to keep them in perspective, recognize they are not 12 feet tall, recognize their limitations, and respond proportionately, or we end up where we were in Iraq, where we over- responded to 9/11, went into the wrong place, did the wrong thing, stirred up the world even more, and gave them a big victory.

BALDWIN: What did you mean -- final question, when you tweeted this? "Defeating terror requires the courage not to let our natural emotions following an attack drive us into actions and choices we will regret."

ROTHKOPF: Well, look, you guys are covering the stories. You get Republican governors saying, oh, my God, we can't let in Syrian refugees. You have got the right wing in France saying, we have got to close our borders.

You have other people saying, we must now go and wage a broader war against these people. It's natural to respond to a terror attack with anger and with grief. It's appropriate. It's also appropriate to respond to it by staying, well, let's find out who did this and go after them.

But if you go beyond that, they win. If you go beyond that, you create terror, you create unease, and you start amplifying them. It makes them look bigger. And they start dictating the terms of our lives.

BALDWIN: We can't be doing that.

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ROTHKOPF: No, we can't. We can't.

BALDWIN: David Rothkopf, thank you so much.

ROTHKOPF: My pleasure.

BALDWIN: "Foreign Policy." Come back.

ROTHKOPF: Will do.

BALDWIN: Coming up: major developments here out of Paris. Police discover a third body inside of that terrorist hideout from that overnight raid a couple of days ago.

Also ahead, investigators now say the woman found dead in the apartment actually did not detonate a suicide bomb, as first reported. We have more on that from terrorists.

Also ahead, they operate in the shadows. CNN goes one-on-one with a hacking group that's effectively declared war on ISIS, even helping prevent attacks abroad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we were to stop now, lives would be at risk. It's not a choice. It's more of a way of life for us now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Exactly one week ago today, just the unthinkable happened in Paris, this massacre, these coordinated attacks that changed the city forever.

[15:15:00]

Today, we just learned more people have succumb to their injuries, 130 people killed mercilessly. That's how the French prime minister put it just a short time ago, this as police reveal some surprising news here, another body found in the carnage of that deadly police raid, a hail of bullets and explosions that killed the architect of these coordinated Paris attacks, but also his female relative, a woman who now we believe died not by activating a suicide vest, but by someone else's.

I want to bring in Nic Robertson, our CNN international diplomatic editor. And, Nic, the confusion obviously speaking to the chaos inside of that overnight raid in that French apartment, the discovery here of the third body. Who else was there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: You know, the police aren't saying. They are still working on that.

The prosecutor told us within hours of that raid in that apartment in Saint-Denis 5,000 rounds fired, all that explosive ammunition, blowing open doors to get in, suicide vests. He explained that there was -- that it was a very, very heavily damaged building with essentially body parts that they had to piece together.

They have pieced them together now that there were three people. The third person is a man. Who is that man? People are asking the question, could it be Salah Abdeslam, the man who is believed to have driven off to Belgium later that night? The question is, could he have come back to Paris? There's, of course, international search, arrest warrant out for him in France and in Belgium.

It seems unlikely, but at the moment, finding out who it is, is going to be a vital piece of the puzzle for the police. One other important detail we have learned today is Abaaoud himself, the ringleader, as you say, he was spotted, picked up on closed-circuit television in a Paris metro subway station just after those attacks finished.

One of the cars used in the attack, the car that was used to shoot up -- by the gunmen to shoot the restaurants as it was driving through there, that car was found very close to the metro station where he was spotted jumping the turnstile and not paying for a ticket and getting on the subway system.

It times out that it's possible -- and this is something investigators will look at -- that he could have been in that car coming back. He could have been involved in that shooting, then driven the car close to metro station, dumps the car, gets on the train, crosses town perhaps directly or by another route to the apartment in Saint-Denis where he is killed on the Wednesday morning.

That's something investigators are going to look at it. But it shows just how painstaking it is piecing together all the different items of information that come up and how they fit together, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Extraordinary, all the items of information and the tasks for these investigators.

Let me also ask you, Nic, about the suicide bomber who detonated his vest belt outside of that French soccer stadium. We now know who that was.

ROBERTSON: The police are getting closer. So, we know that there were three people who detonated explosives there.

The last one to do it is from Belgium. His family had been arrested there, we know, Bilal Hadfi, and he's been recognized and identified. There were two others there. One had a fake Syrian passport. That was Ahmed Almuhamed. We now know -- the police investigators have now discovered that Ahmed Almuhamed got on a Greek ferry from the island of Lesbos to another -- to the mainland, rather, on the 5th of October.

But traveling with him was somebody that on the documentation to get the ticket appears to be his brother, Mohammed Almuhamed. So it appears as if he was traveling with his brother, but the supposition at the moment is that because the Ahmed person was traveling on a fake Syrian passport, presumably, the person who is traveling as Mohammed is on fake documentation as well. So, slowly, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together here, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nic Robertson, our CNN international diplomatic editor, thank you, sir, so much from Paris.

Next, we have more on terror in Mali, the latest on this deadly siege and how special forces managed to take this hotel back from these armed killers. Moments ago, our Erin Burnett talked to someone who works inside that hotel. His firsthand account of what happened -- coming up next.

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[15:24:04]

BALDWIN: Today's deadly hostage siege at a luxury hotel in the Western African nation of Mali remains an active crime scene. Officials say all the surviving captives have been set free, but there are still multiple bodies inside.

Some roads around the hotel, however, have reopened. CNN has learned that at least two of the attackers were killed. More armed terrorists are holed up inside.

Gunfire rang out early, early this morning at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, where several diplomats were meeting about a peace resolution. The United States is working to confirm reports that an al Qaeda splinter group is claiming responsibility. The United Nations says at least 21 people are dead. Six were injured. They are in the hospital. About a dozen Americans were actually among the hostages, but they were rescued unharmed.

Joining me now fresh off a plane from Paris, Erin Burnett, host of "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT."

So, from Paris pivoting to Mali here with you, you just got off the phone with someone who works in the restaurant in that hotel in Bamako.

[15:25:03]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. So, I just spoke with him.

His name is Tomba (ph). He was in the hotel this morning. And he said it was very early in the morning. He's maitre d'. All of a sudden, the attackers, he thought they came on foot, they came on foot into -- through the lobby and started shooting.

Now, he says one of them chased him and he was able to get far enough away that they gave up chase, but he said they were yelling Allahu akbar, they were carrying Kalashnikovs. he said that, in his view -- now, he's a civilian, but, in his view, they were very professional in terms of how they were shooting and they were aiming.

And he said it multiple times, Brooke. They were shooting anything that moved. He described the scene in the lobby as they walked in and started shooting indiscriminately. People started sprinting for the elevators to try to get away. But, of course, then that created a backlog of people by the elevators, and that they just let loose firing into those people.

BALDWIN: So that's part of the scene that lasted for hours and hours. This is still going on.

You traveled to Mali. Most recently, you were there two years ago.

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: Three years ago, we were up along the northern border, where these groups have been operating in the north of Mali. And there was a big -- a giant refugee camp where some of these fighters were going, where people were going. And we were there to report on this -- rise of these jihadist groups.

BALDWIN: So, with regard to these groups and these splinter groups of al Qaeda, tell me more, because nobody has officially claimed responsibility, although we're hearing maybe reports it's one of these splinter groups, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Tell me more about who these people are.

BURNETT: So, there have been these groups operating in Mali, the lawless region of Northern Mali.

You have a -- it was ripe in many ways for this. You had a group of people who wanted to break Mali apart anyway. They wanted to have their own region. And then some of them joined into these jihadist groups. And that created this situation.

You combine that with what was happening in Libya, where weapons were so easy to get. In the Maghreb, they could just get right them down into Mali. And that's the situation you see now. The French have intervened and have been involved there, but we have seen a rise in suicide attacks directed against peacekeepers, directed against civilians even just this year, Brooke.

And the situation is obviously far from under control. And as you point out now, it's not just al Qaeda-affiliated groups, but groups which are affiliated ISIS. And in terms of who was there this morning, again, this employee telling me that they were dressed casually.

So he said jeans, checkered shirts, baseball caps.

BALDWIN: No kidding.

BURNETT: Now, again, he saw two of the shooters. We know there were more.

But the two shooters that he saw, that is how he described what they were doing. And he said say -- I actually have one more thing. I'm sorry. He did say they had an accent from the north.

BALDWIN: From the north of Mali?

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: From the north of Mali, which would support that they were part of one of these groups.

Now, again, exactly which one, because they are fighting right now for ascendance, because the main leader was allegedly killed in a drone strike this summer by the United States. So they are fighting for allegiance. It's a question about which group it was. But we believe it's Northern Mali.

BALDWIN: You are all over Mali. We will see you at 7:00 tonight.

BURNETT: All right, thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Erin Burnett, thank you so much.

Coming up, would -- politics -- would Donald Trump support a national database for Muslims in America? His answer at an event last night in Iowa definitely raising eyebrows on the trail. Hear what he's saying about it today. Michael Smerconish joins me next after the break.

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