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Connect the World
Greenpeace, Others Walk Out Of UN Climate Change Talks; London Couple Arrested for Holding Women Captive For Three Decades; Monty Python Reunion At O2 Arena; Newspaper Gunman Suspect Arrested In Paris
Aired November 21, 2013 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MAX FOSTER, HOST: Tonight, a shocking tale of modern-day slavery. I'm live in Scotland Yard with the latest on the story of three women held against their will for three decades.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's Max Foster, I'm Jim Clancy, we're at the CNN Center. Also ahead, new details emerging about the suspect behind the recent spate of shootings in Paris.
And...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People really do want to see the old hits, but we won't -- don't want to do them exactly in a predictable way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: They're back, the Monty Python get together for their first performance since 1983.
FOSTER: We begin tonight here in London with what police describe as the worst case of modern-day slavery they've ever seen. Three women held for more than 30 years have been rescued from a house in South London, the Lambeth area of South London, a suburban area pretty much in the center of the city.
Two people, a man and a woman, in their 60s have been taken to custody today. The three women rescued were a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57- year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman. They were discovered after one of the women contacted a British charity. Police say it appears the 30-year-old woman had been held in captivity for all of her life.
I spoke to Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland who is heading up this case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR KEVIN HYLAND, LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE: Well, at this time we're very early in the investigation. We're not investigating offenses of a sexual nature. There haven't been any arrests of a sexual nature. So that's...
FOSTER: Slave labor you're looking at.
HYLAND: Absolutely.
FOSTER: And in terms of the 30-year-old, is there any sense of the relationship to the other people in the house?
HYLAND: At the moment, we don't know what the relationships are between these people. We're working with professionals who are qualified to work with people in these circumstances, so we're being guided by them and establishing the facts at that place.
FOSTER: The charity says the two people being arrested are the heads of the family, which implies there are other people in the house.
HYLAND: At this time, we've only got three people that are, we believe, are victims. Those people are now in a safe environment. And we've arrested two people for that offense.
FOSTER: You're experienced in this area, but could you put it into context for us in terms of your work?
HYLAND; Well, we have dealt with cases where people have been held in servitude or forced labor for up to 10 years, but we've never seen anything of this magnitude where people have been held for up to 30 years or more.
FOSTER: Could you tell us a bit more about how you managed to gain the trust of these women in the house and got them out of the house?
HYLAND: Well, as I said, it was by careful negotiations using the services of the freedom charity who have been extraordinary in circumstances. And between that, we were able to organize their release where they were able to leave the premises and then we were able to further release the further -- another person. But by working in partnership together, we have had this outcome where we have actually rescued three people.
FOSTER: And can you give us sense of the area of the house?
HYLAND: Other than it's land of South London, that's as far as I can tell you at the moment.
FOSTER: A lot of people will be shocked by the fact that this can happen on an ordinary street. What would you say to those people?
HYLAND: Well, the case is of human trafficking and slavery that we deal with. There's cases where we've dealt with cases involving children. And they do happen in normal streets. They do happen next door to where somebody lives.
So I think that's the reality that these crimes do happen across London, across the UK and as we know globally.
FOSTER: And at the center of an international capital it's hard to believe.
HYLAND: Well, it's something that has been reported on before and there are cases that we are proactively pursuing. And that's why the (inaudible) cases (inaudible) human trafficking.
FOSTER: One last question. They were released in October, the couple, the two people who were arrested today. Can you explain the gap?
HYLAND: Well, we've had to work very carefully with these victims. We've had to have professional advice on that. And it's taken us some time to actually piece together the accounts and the events. It would be wrong of us to move at a pace where wouldn't further compromise any victims.
FOSTER: When might we get another update, do you think?
HYLAND: I don't know when that will be.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, this is the latest in a string of incidents where women are being held captive for many years.
In May this year in Cleveland, Ohio, there three women and a child were rescued from the house of this man Ariel Castro. He kidnapped his first victim, Michelle Knight, in 2002.
In 1998, Natascha Kampusch was held in a windowless basement cell near Vienna, Austria for eight years. She escaped and her abductor committed suicide shortly after she fled.
Jacee Dugard was dragged into a car as she walked to a bus stop in California in 1991. She was held captive in a backyard for 18 years before being discovered along with two children fathered by her captor.
In Sankt Polten in Austria Josef Fritzl enslaved his own daughter Elizabeth for at least 24 years, fathering seven children with her.
I'm joined by a special guest on this story. He's a UK special envoy for human trafficking and modern-day slavery, Anthony Steen. Thank you so much for joining us.
So many people are shocked to hear this story in the UK. It happened in central London, an ordinary street, doesn't involve any sort of sexual exploitation it seems. Is that a surprise to you?
ANTHONY STEEN, UK SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HUMNA TRAFFICKING: Look, this is a dreadful case. And obviously it's a surprise, but I'm afraid slavery in the world is much bigger, more extensive than it ever was when it was a normal way of life in America as it was in Britain 200 years ago.
The difference is you could see it 200 years ago, today it's hidden. And this is an example of a hidden slavery incident.
FOSTER: The police are talking about domestic servitude.
STEEN: Yes.
FOSTER: I mean, what does that mean?
STEEN: It means being a slave as a domestic, probably sleeping on the floor in the kitchen, probably having no days off, probably eating the remains of the food of the household.
FOSTER: Well, this is what is often the case. We don't know what's happened in this particular case, but it's that completely different type of exploitation from the sort of prostitution stories that we hear, the child trafficking stories.
STEEN: Yes. Yes. Look, domestic slavery is rampant, particularly in the Middle East countries and in Africa and in Europe. It depends on its nature, but by and large it is people who have had their passports removed. They have no pay. And they're exploited and used. But they're slaves. It's not trafficking, it's slavery. It's slavery by any other word except that you don't see it.
And the problem with this case is, like so many cases, you never know when it will appear because with millions of houses and millions of people, it's all behind closed doors.
FOSTER: There's an extraordinary story that came out of today, which was simply that one of these women contacted a charity. The charity very smartly recognized that this was a serious case and worked with them, built up trust one-on-one and got them to come out of the house. Just describe how difficult that would have been.
STEEN: It would be appallingly difficult, but it discloses a serious problem in all western countries, it's not the police you should blame, it's the next door neighbor you should blame. And the problem is you don't know what to detect. You don't know what you're looking for. You don't know what the ingredients are for slavery. And so to work with this person, she's going to be damaged for life. And all victims of slavery are damaged for life and will never recover.
FOSTER: They're working very closely with them. They've got the best supporters, we understand it. We thank you very much indeed for joining us.
Back to you, Jim, from an extraordinary day here in London.
CLANCY: thank you, Max. Great interview there. A lot of insight into this case and the wider problem of slavery around the world.
Still to come right here tonight, world powers continue talking over Iran's nuclear program. But is a deal really in sight? An update on the negotiations coming up live.
Plus, climate change talks that appear to stall. Green groups accusing governments of putting polluting industries ahead of human beings.
Also, Afghanistan's president wants a delay in a crucial security agreement with the United States. We're going to tell you why.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: This is CNN. I'm Jim Clancy. And you are with Connect the World.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is calling it the best chance in a decade for reaching a deal on Iran's disputed nuclear program International diplomats holding another round of talks with Iranian negotiators with Geneva again today. They're trying to reach a preliminary agreement that would curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for some sanctions relief.
Let's get an update now from CNN International correspondent Matthew Chance. He is in Geneva -- Matthew.
MATHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jim, thanks very much.
Well, it's been a day of intense substantial and detailed negotiations, those are the words of the spokesperson, a Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief who is heading up the negotiators for the P5+1, the five permanent members of the security council plus Germany. Iranian diplomats have come out as well speaking very positively saying there is no deal yet, but the meetings are going to continue tomorrow. It is a lot riding on this politically.
All of the various parties have gathered here in Geneva. They're going to stay here in this Swiss city to try and hammer out a nuclear deal.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHANCE: For a decade, a deal on Iran's nuclear program has eluded the world powers. But here on the shores of Lake Geneva, that may be about to change. American diplomats, with their European, Russian and Chinese counterparts, say it's the closest They've come for years.
The key negotiators, led by Catherine Ashton by the European Union and Javhad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, have been locked in intensive talks behind closed doors. No one is publicly discussing the detail of the negotiations, but the outline of a possible deal to ensure Iran will not build a nuclear bomb has started to emerge.
Diplomats say it would involve Iran capping its uranium enrichment activities and granting international inspectors intrusive access to its nuclear sites, guarantees it would not develop a nuclear weapon.
In return, Iran would receive some relief on the international sanctions crippling it economy.
(on camera): Well, it's here at the UN's palace of nations near the shores of Lake Geneva that these painstaking negotiations are taking place. If they succeed, the consequences may be far reaching, another war in the Middle East could be avoided. And importantly, trust between Iran and the west rebuilt.
(voice-over): But observers say failure remains a very real possibility. Iran and the west have been close before and unable to strike a deal. This Swiss city may yet be where a decade of negotiations bears fruit or falls apart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHANCE: Well, Jim, there's already a lot of opposition in various quarters to the fact that these negotiations are taking place at all. If they don't yield results, if the negotiations do fall apart, those voices are only going to get louder. Back to you.
CLANCY: some people argue that Iran is already achieving much of what it wants. It's got -- it's engaged with major powers. It is raising its status. And it may already have shown that it has the technical, the scientific capability of building a bomb. That's all that it really wants.
How much solid evidence is there about Iran's intentions and its accomplishments?
CHANCE: Well, I think you're absolutely right on all of those points. But there are the issue of sanctions, which are doing real damage to the Iranian economy. Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, was elected on the basis that he was going to alleviate that economic suffering being felt by Iranians across the country now. The banking sector, in particular, is having a big impact. The freeze on those accounts -- people with money in Iran can't even buy things because you can't transfer the money.
Now those sanctions are going to be maintained until the permanent deal is hammered out here.
But it puts the pressure politically on the Iranians to at least come to some interim arrangement holding out the possibility that these sanctions, which are causing a great deal of damage, can eventually be lifted.
And so I think there really is a general positive sense here that all the sides are coming here for various reasons to try and hammer out a deal.
CLANCY: Matthew Chance live in Geneva. As always, Matthew, thank you.
At least four people have died, dozens of others have been injured after a shopping center roof collapsed in Latvia. It happened in the capital city of Riga late Thursday. Emergency crews are at the scene right now. There are fears around 50 people may be trapped beneath all that rubble.
Police in Paris have arrested a man they identified as Abdelhakim Dekhar. He has been arrested in connection, of course, with the recent attacks on two media offices in Paris. Let's get more now from Jim Bittermann.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now that the gunman in the grainy security videos has an identity and is in custody, French authorities have a far clearer picture of who they've been dealing with.
Abdelhakim Dekhar was already known to police not as a suspected gunman, but as an accomplice who was convicted of supplying the shotgun that was used in a 1994 shooting spree by two radical activists which left five people dead, three of them police officers.
One of the activists was killed, the other sentenced to 20 years in prison. And Dakhar was sentenced to, and served, four years in jail. At the time, a psychiatrist said he was sane, but given to delusionary behavior.
After his release from jail, he disappeared from public notice until last Friday. Prosecutors say CNA linked Dekhar to a Friday incident at a Paris TV network where a gunman attempted to Open fire. And a pair of attacks Monday at a newspaper office and a bank. He's also accused of a carjacking that same day.
The manhunt for Dekhar ended Wednesday night in an underground parking garage where he was tracked down by an alert citizen who saw the police photos of him. At a news conference, the Paris prosecutor said DNA tests confirmed he was behind the shootings.
FRANCOIS MOLINS, PARIS PROSECUTOR: Verifications were carried out by a laboratory who made it possible to determine and to be aware of the DNA on the traces, which were being discovered, both in the premises of Liberation as well as on the cartridges as well as on the door of the vehicle which had been left by (inaudible)
BITTERMANN: The French interior minister, Manuel Valls said Dekhar was found in a semi-comatose state after taking an overdose of medications apparently trying to commit suicide. Valls said he had left a rambling and somewhat incoherent note referring to fascist plots and media lies.
Police say Dekhar has now recovered from the overdoes and is being questioned at the central police headquarters.
The French prosecutors says the alleged gunman is being held on three counts of attempted murder and one count of kidnapping because of the carjacking. And with a preponderance of DNA and video evidence against him, it seems likely that Dekhar will again be behind bars for some time to come.
Jim Bittermann, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: Well, to Russia now where the first four of 30 arrested Greenpeace activists have been freed on bail. The group were detained in September while protesting against drilling in the Arctic Circle. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging Russia to be lenient to the environmentalists.
Well, Greenpeace just one a group of environmental organizations who have walked out of climate change talks in Warsaw now. The move comes just a day after a mass exodus of representatives from the world's poorest countries. One the leading groups behind Thursday's walkout said governments were not taking these talks seriously.
Paula Newton joins us now from the Polish capital.
Rather stormy climate change conference.
PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You said it.
The talks are going on behind me, Jim, at the national stadium at this moment. I just go off the phone with Connie Hedegaard. She is the EU commissioner for climate action and action is the problem, Jim. There doesn't seem to be much of it going on at those talks.
Now, in getting off those phone with her, she said, look, it's not uncommon that 24 hours before these talks are supposed to wrap that they are, and these are her words, Jim, a mess.
What is the key sticking point? Well, it's again that whole dichotomy between the rich nations and the poor nations.
You know, Jim, we've been watching for a few weeks now what's happened in the Philippines. It's one the country's saying, look, we can't do this on our own. We want the rich countries to step up. And yet those rich developed countries saying, look, after 2020 we have to take these definitions and put them aside. Everyone needs to work on climate action together. And the rich countries only have a certain amount of money and a certain amount of carbon targets, emissions targets that they can meet. And that is the key sticking point on the table right now in that meeting behind me, Jim.
CLANCY: So it comes down to rich versus poor, or does it come down just to the attitudes that people have towards their own industries, protecting their own jobs?
NEWTON: Well, you know, you hear so much more in this meeting than you did a few years ago, Jim, about being able for a country to make their own decisions.
And, look, we're sitting in Poland now, Poland that is obviously gravitating so much towards the EU. And even here in this country, they're saying, look, we're going to continue to have a coal industry here. That's just one example.
Then you take countries like Japan, Canada, China, all those countries that came to this meeting with a completely different posture, saying, look we're looking out for our countries right now. We will determine our climate strategy. We don't want hard and fast rules on the table set by the UN.
Key sticking blocks here.
And, Jim, you know, we've seen the warnings. We saw what's happening with the weather around the world. It does not look like, at this meeting at least that we are going to have any kind of breakthrough. It is -- if it's going to happen, it's going to happen in 2015. And Jim, they're already saying that they don't have a lot of time to come up with those solutions by 2015.
So, the talks will end tomorrow, hopefully they will do what many delegates are saying is the least they can hope for, which is pave the way to that breakthrough agreement.
CLANCY: All right, Paula Newton is there.
She's going to be back with us a little bit later right here on Connect the World. Thanks, Paula.
And still to come here on Connect the World, we're going to be live in London with the very latest on the rescue of those three women. Max Foster will join us to tell us the story of how they were held captive for some 30 years. He's at police headquarters right now.
Plus, yeah, the famous parrot may have cease to be, but its creators are alive and kicking as you can see. All the details on the Monty Python reunion coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: You're watching Connect the World. I'm Jim Clancy.
July is still several months away, but we already known what the hottest ticket might be in London come summer. That's right, Monty Python is back together for at least one show at the O2 Arena.
And they promise to be as, well as funny as ever. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(CROSSTALK)
WARWICK DAVIS, ACTOR: Just chaos. Sit down. Sit down. This a press conference?
Sorry about that, ladies and gentleman, sorry.
And the city that will host the Monty Python live reunion show is, London.
(CHEERS)
MICHAEL PAIN, ACTOR: Why now? I can't quite work out why, just everything seemed to be right. I think people, you know, didn't have as many other commitments as we normally have in our busy lives overlapping. I think, you know, the money wasn't -- you know, well part of the deal, because we've had a court case recently. And Monty Python money has been frozen up during that.
But I think actually it was just that we -- no one could see any valid reason not to do it. We like performing together. I haven't done sketches with John and Terry and Eric on stage for a long, long time. And for me, someone said O2, one night, OK. That's not going to be a lifetime. Let's give it a go.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What on earth does that mean?
GRAHAM CHAPMAN, ACTOR: I don't know. Mr. Wainwiscott (ph) told me to come in here and say and say there's a little trouble with the mailman (ph). I didn't expect a kind of Spanish inquisition.
PALIN: Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.
And I can't complain about people coming up and asking me to do the Spanish inquisition.
ERIC IDLE, ACTOR: Some things we've done and you have to do. And some things we've never done on stage and we'll be doing for the first time live.
PALIN: What's wrong with it?
JOHN CLEESE, ACTOR; I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.
IDLE: I mean, just sitting in the middle of Cleese and watching them do, you know, the parrot together it was just -- it's the delight. I could watch that every day. It's not like, is it old material, no it's funny material.
PALIN: No, no it's not dead, it's resting.
CLEESE: Resting?
PALIN: Yeah. Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue. Beautiful plumage, isn't it?
CLEESE: The plumage don't enter into it. It's still dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we're separate, we don't really like each other. So it's very hard to get together. But then we do, it's rather surprising. We may not like each other, but somehow we're very funny together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We laugh at each other.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: All right, just in case you didn't know, the parrot is dead. I tell you that now because in a moment I'll give you headlines and it's not in there.
Plus, we're going to tell you why the fate of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is now in the hands of Kabul's tribal elders.
And we're going to hear from a British politician on the shadowy world of human trafficking and how to stop it. Max Foster rejoins us live from London in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: This is CONNECT THE WORLD. These are your top stories right now. London police arresting a couple suspected of holding three women captive for more than 30 years. According to police, the women do not appear to be related. They say the youngest seems to have spent her entire life in captivity. Investigators say the women are highly traumatized but are now in a safe place.
At least four people have died, dozens more injured after a shopping center roof collapsed in Latvia. This happened in the capital city of Riga late on Thursday. Emergency crews now at the scene. There are fears as many as 50 people may be trapped beneath the rubble.
In the United States, the Senate changing its voting rules. It's a move prompted by the Republican minority blocking a number of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees. Under the old rules, 60 votes were needed to stop the Republicans from blocking a nomination. But now, just a simple majority of 51 is needed, meaning the Democrats could beat every proposed Republican blocking efforts.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai urging an assembly of tribal elders to support a security agreement with the United States. The Loya Jirga is now debating that very deal. It would allow some US troops to stay in Afghanistan after NATO's combat mission comes to an end next year.
President Karzai made a frank admission to the Loya Jirga today saying he does not trust the United States, and it doesn't trust him. To underscore that point, perhaps, he says the security deal would be formally signed only after Afghanistan's presidential elections next April. That seems a bargaining tactic to make sure the US will not interfere in the elections.
It's not going over well with US officials, though. They want the deal in place as soon as possible. Elise Labott joins us now with reaction from Washington. This deal has been discussed now, not just for months, but for years. So close. What's the reaction?
ELISE LABOTT, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS REPORTER: That's right, Jim. And President Karzai said he would sign it if this Loya Jirga, this group of tribal elders that's meeting in Afghanistan right now, signed off on it. So now, this puts the United States in a very difficult position. It wanted it signed by the end of the year and didn't want this to interfere with the Afghan election. Take a listen to a White House spokesman speaking at the briefing earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: It is important for this security agreement to be signed -- approved and signed by the end of this year so that preparations can start being made to plan for the post- 2014 presence that the United States may have in Afghanistan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LABOTT: And the US says it needs about a year, Jim, to make sure that if it's withdrawing all its troops it will have time to do so. Also other countries that are talking about keeping a presence in Afghanistan were waiting for this agreement to go through before they negotiate their own agreements with the Afghan government.
So right now, there's a lot of talk, a lot of uncertainty here in Washington about whether there will be a US presence in Afghanistan at all if this deal doesn't go through.
CLANCY: We saw in the earlier vote, the contemplation of a vote on a Syria strike how unwilling, if we can go that far, the American public is to be engaged in a war, and it's only reasonable to think if 70 percent of them don't want to be involved in a new conflict, they would just as soon be completely out of an old one. What is the thinking at the State Department for why the United States needs to remain in Afghanistan?
LABOTT: Well, certainly, this is a very war-weary public here in the United States. But the US says, listen, we've made a lot of gains in Afghanistan over the last 12 years, made great dents in the ability of al Qaeda, of the Taliban, to plan attacks against the United States.
And the Afghan troops just simply are not ready to go it alone. They need some more time to help assist, to train, to make sure those Afghan forces are completely able to be on their own. And so, withdrawing precipitously would undo all the good work that's done and really make all the blood and treasure that the US did lose in vain.
So I think they'd like to keep a small US presence there for a small amount of time. This agreement does go through 2024. I don't think anybody's talking about keeping troops in Afghanistan for another 10 years, but everybody does agree.
And Afghan President Karzai, let's admit, does want that presence in his country. So this is seen as a little bit of a bargaining tactic. We'll see if it backfires on him.
CLANCY: All right, Elise Labott, joining us there from Washington. Thanks Elise.
I want to get right back, cross over to London and Max Foster. He's at Scotland Yard for the latest on the disturbing story of slavery that emerged today in London. Max?
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, they're saying it's the worst case of modern-day slavery the police have ever dealt with here. The details are still coming in.
But this is what we know, Jim. Three women held captive for more than 30 years. They've been rescued from a house in the Lambeth area of South London, still pretty central though. Two people, a man and a woman in their 60s, were taken into custody today.
The three women rescued were a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year- old Irish woman, and a 30-year-old British woman. Police say it appears the 30-year-old woman had been held in captivity for all her life.
The women were discovered after getting in touch with a charity. Let's take a look at how the story unfolded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNETA PREM, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, FREEDOM CHARITY: Well, they basically told us that they were being held and they needed support to come out of a very difficult situation. At the charity, we take every call very seriously. We have a 24/7 help line, which they contacted, and from that moment onward, it was very sensitive negotiations in order to assist them in escaping.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: I'd have to say lots of people here are asking how does something like this happen in a city with millions of people. This one road will have had hundreds of people in it, and these people living there undiscovered for something like 30 years, more than 30 years possibly.
Let's bring in the Conservative politician Andrew Boff. He's the author of a book called "Shadow City: Exposing Human Trafficking in Everyday London." He just completed the book.
ANDREW BOFF, AUTHOR, "SHADOW CITY: EXPOSING HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN EVERYDAY LONDON": Yes.
FOSTER: How does this play into what you've found?
BOFF: Well, it exactly reflects the concerns that I was having about that report, Shadow City, said there is another level of existence going on in London of people who are virtually enslaved -- are enslaved -- either in domestic servitude or in other sort of labor and that we are missing a trick here. We are missing -- we are missing them.
FOSTER: We don't know much about this particular case --
BOFF: Yes.
FOSTER: -- but it must be extraordinary, as well, for the people living in a street like this where it's going on and they found out later. Probably feel a bit guilty. But how do these people tend to hide the fact that they've got these people hidden away?
BOFF: Well, I think the problem is is that people have assumed trafficking is some other community's problem. They've been caricatured as being some ethnic -- a manifestation of some ethnicity or culture, when actually, trafficking affects all communities.
FOSTER: One of these women was British, one was Irish.
BOFF: Absolutely. Affects all communities, and what we've got to also realize is that there a lot of people that thought that trafficking has got something to do with organized crime.
Well, in this case, and I think in many cases, you'll find much as organized crime does involve itself in some trafficking, the majority of cases are actually quite informal arrangements and therefore very difficult to pick up if the police are geared towards addressing organized crime.
FOSTER: It was interesting that the police here were heaping praise on the charity --
BOFF: Yes.
FOSTER: -- that first found out about this.
BOFF: Well, yes.
FOSTER: And actually, the police didn't get -- they worked with them and allowed the charity to take the lead.
BOFF: Yes.
FOSTER: So that was a great example of the volunteer and police sector working together.
BOFF: Well, that's exactly what we've been calling for in our report, and we want more of that. Because the fact of the matter is is that the majority of cases of trafficking are identified by small, non-governmental organizations working with the police.
Unfortunately, all too often, when people go to those organizations or go to the police and say they've been trafficked, quite often, they're not believed. So, I'm very, very grateful that in this case, those people have actually been believed and we've rescued some people. But I suspect there are plenty more in London and in other capital cities around the world
FOSTER: Josef Fritzl held his daughter for something like 23 years. This is 30 years. We can't think of another case that's been longer. It's extraordinary, isn't it? It's an unbelievable case.
BOFF: This is unbelievable because of the duration. But as I say, I believe this to be repeated throughout London because we know that we're looking in the right places for trafficking. And when we start to look, I think we'll unearth more cases of this kind of modern-day slavery.
FOSTER: We heard someone earlier being quite critical about neighbors in these situations saying it's the neighbors' fault.
BOFF: Yes.
FOSTER: Is it?
BOFF: No, I don't think it's the neighbors' fault. I think the neighbors have not been alerted to what trafficking actually means. And in fact when -- in the survey that we did in my report, we surveyed social workers, police officers and teachers, and what was astonishing was the level of ignorance of what trafficking actually is in a modern context.
So we need to spread the message for first of all amongst professionals, but also the general public have got to be aware that trafficking is not somebody else's problem. You're never very far from a victim of trafficking in London.
FOSTER: Is there always something suspicious about a house where there's people being kept in secret? Because these people would have been kept in the house, the neighbors wouldn't necessarily been able to be aware that they were there. But are there telltale signs that people can start looking out for in similar cases?
BOFF: Well, I think what's very important is that people shouldn't feel frightened about asking questions, about going to the authorities and saying that they have suspicions.
If, for example, they're witnessing a child who is not going to school and is very rarely allowed out in the open, if you see, for example, a domestic servant of someone who is again very unforthcoming, very wary about their surrounding, it's OK to make an inquiry with the police. It's fine. It's only in that way that we'll identify these people.
It was lucky that one of these victims, as we understand, saw a TV program. But in so many cases, it requires neighbors to be alert.
FOSTER: Andrew Boff, we really appreciate your time. Thank you very much --
BOFF: Thank you very much.
FOSTER: -- indeed for joining us. We at CNN, of course, have been looking at child slavery and all forms of slavery in recent months. It's been an ongoing campaign for us. We've been working, actually, with the Metropolitan Police quite closely.
You can get all the facts about the global scale of the problem by heading to cnn.com, where you'll find full details about our Freedom Project. Hear from the victims, read about the traffickers, and see what countries across the world are doing to free those held in captivity. Just do head to cnn.com/freedom to find out more.
Jim, we're not expecting any more briefings from here tonight. Those two suspects are being questioned.
CLANCY: All right. Many thanks, Max. Very informative. We got a good, round view of this. I'm sure we're going to hear much more in the days to come. Again, thank you.
You've been watching CONNECT THE WORLD, but there's more to come. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or maybe you should. A young inventor reinvents the wheel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Welcome back to CONNECT THE WORLD, I'm Jim Clancy at the CNN Center, in for Max Foster who, as you know, is at Scotland Yard tonight following the story of those three women who had bee held as slaves for some 30 years, according to police.
Anyone who uses a wheelchair understands just how difficult it is to store that while you're traveling in cars or on airplanes. Well, for today's installment of Blueprint, we meet a graduate from design school in London who, in addressing that problem, seems to have reinvented the wheel.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DUNCAN FITZSIMONS, GRADUATE, THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART IN LONDON: My name is Duncan Fitzsimons, and I originally studied at the Royal College of Art in London. Design is creating new things and looking at new things that people think up and combining that with what people need in everyday life.
The Morph Wheel is a wheelchair wheel that can fold up. People travel with wheelchairs, and they also will have multiple wheelchairs. Some are not being used at home. So there are storage issues around getting the wheelchair into a car, a train, an airplane.
This project started out by looking at the problems caused by large wheels. With the Morph Wheel, you can get two full-sized wheelchair wheels folded up into a small space that can go into a bag. And that's suddenly something that is much easier to store in an overhead locker on a plane, in the trunk of a small car, or storage at home.
So, this is the Morph folding wheel fitted to a folding wheelchair. Pull the chair up, remove the wheel, and then as soon as that's removed, you can actually fold the wheel up by removing this catch, and it's folding. And that's it. It's folded up, ready to use.
At the start, one of the key changes here as just to experiment with different types of mechanisms that fold a big circle into a small circle. The best one of these is to take the tires, if it's a round circle, and pull it so that it becomes an elongated, long, thin shape. Once we had that tire folding shape down, we could just design a mechanism that folded the wheel into that shape.
A couple of years after graduating from the RCA were really busy. It was great to get support from Innovation RCA to help develop the wheel and take it forward to where it is now. And in parallel, I set up Vitamins with two of my co-graduates who are now co-directors of our design consultancy based here in London.
I can't think of anyone who's got more experience as a combination of both someone who uses a wheelchair, travels with a wheelchair, and also is an incredibly talented designer than David Constantine. So, it would be great to get his input and feedback on the design.
This is the Morph folding wheel. So, this is a folding wheelchair wheel --
DAVID CONSTANTINE, DESIGNER: Interesting.
FITZSIMONS: -- that's now on sale.
CONSTANTINE: Can I see it fold?
FITZSIMONS: Yes, so once it's unlocked, you just squeeze it and it folds up.
CONSTANTINE: I can see all kinds of uses for this. Certainly in the context of Europe, US, and more developed countries, I think car boots, airplane lockers, any sort of small space you might want to pack a chair into.
In the context I work in in developing countries, if it was low-cost enough, people often live in one room with their whole family. So they often want a folding wheelchair just to keep the thing out of the way when they're either in bed or they're sitting on the floor cooking --
FITZSIMONS: Right, right.
CONSTANTINE: And so again, something that compacts down as small as this would be extremely useful.
Duncan's obviously come on a great deal since being a student and then taking that big leap from being on a student project within a student context, taking it into the real world, and making it something is a whole other step, and it's not an easy one. I really take my hat off to him.
FITZSIMONS: Some people say this is reinventing the wheel, but actually it's just a new design of a wheel that's better.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: And coming up right after a very short break right here on CONNECT THE WORLD, from the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto, we visit the museum dedicated to Jewish history in Poland. And the story of one giant plane that came down in the wrong place. It's quite a story.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: All this week, CNN's On the Road has been bringing you greater insight into the customs and the culture of Poland. Paula Newton has been visiting a museum that was once at the heart of Jewish Warsaw and where the Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Well today, Paula finds out what makes that museum unique. She joins us now live from the Polish capital. Paula?
PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. I have to tell you the truth. When you come to this country, of course when you know the history of World War II, and of course you think of Auschwitz, certainly you come here with great reverence in terms of all the trauma, all the horror.
And yet, Jim, this made me look at history, the Jewish history of this country, in a completely different way. It was incredibly eye-opening. And a lot of that is owing to the architecture. I want you to take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NEWTON (voice-over): It's what architecture aspires to: seamlessly molding form and function into profound meaning. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a bold statement in the middle of Warsaw. Its lines are broad and transparent. Inside, it's all about the rupture, the divide that lets light in. Zygmunt Stepinski is the museum's deputy director.
ZYGMUNT STEPINSKI, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF POLISH JEWS: I think this empty place between two curving walls, this is a very special effect, because it opens to the main hall of the museum, so people coming here and standing in the middle of the hall, first is the wow effect, because they are totally shocked.
NEWTON: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is the director of the exhibits here, and when she speaks, you realize she, too, is a treasure for this place. Listen to her passion as she draws us into the prized exhibit here.
NEWTON (on camera): So, it looks like we're entering a bit of a construction site here still.
BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, CORE EXHIBITS: It is. This is the exhibition under construction.
NEWTON: Painstaking work, I'm sure.
KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: It is indeed. And this is it.
NEWTON: Wow.
KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: This is our wonderful painted ceiling of our timber-framed wooden synagogue that once stood in Gwozkziec, which is today in the Ukraine. During the 17th century, there were terrible wars, pogroms, massacres, the Minsk Uprising, and the country was devastated.
And in the period that followed after 1648, there was a sense that somehow one looked for some kind of explanation, wider meaning. And so we see that in this beautiful painted ceiling. We see messianic symbols, we see the leviathan, we see the red bull that when the Messiah arrives, the righteous will feast at a banquet and they'll eat the flesh of the leviathan and the flesh of the red bull.
NEWTON: Wow.
NEWTON (voice-over): This splendid cupola represents a sort of high- water mark for Jewish art and architecture, and reproducing it here exactly as they would have centuries ago, no modern techniques, is like a Jewish historical restoration. It's just beginning now in Poland.
KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: First of all, this for me is an exquisite example of what I would call distinctly Jewish -- if you will, categorically Jewish and uniquely Polish. And that is it's a symbiosis. It brings together the Jewishness and the Polishness of Polish Jews in one place.
This is about hope. This is about yearning. This is about, if you will, spiritual imagination. This is a celestial canopy. Some have even said it's our Jewish Sistine Chapel.
NEWTON: Just outside the museum stands the monument to he Warsaw Ghetto uprising. More than 3 million Jews lived in Poland before World War II. Today, just a few thousand. Resurrecting what the Nazis incinerated, embodied now in a place of Jewish history, not only Jewish trauma, may help Poland recover just a small bit of that Jewish history.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NEWTON: And it was such a privilege to be here in that museum, such a history lesson. I really wish I could take them home to teach my children's history class, that's how important it was and how passionate they were about reviving that Jewish history here.
Now, tomorrow, Jim, you know I like a good pirogi. I've been known to consume many when I'm here. Tomorrow's food story not about that at all. We're talking about the first Michelin-starred chef here in Poland. You will not believe this food. I couldn't believe it. And he is also a man, it won't surprise you, very passionate about coming home to his country and earning that star. More on that tomorrow.
CLANCY: I'm so jealous, because I know you're going to have a great dinner tonight, and I'm not going to be there. I'm going to miss it. I'm jealous.
(LAUGHTER)
CLANCY: Paula Newton, live from Warsaw all week. She is On the Road.
NEWTON: We miss you, Jim.
(LAUGHTER)
CLANCY: All right. You're watching CONNECT THE WORLD, and coming up next, how this massive cargo plane, one of the world's biggest, had a parking nightmare in Kansas. Well, what do you think after what the pilot did?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: All right, welcome back. And in tonight's Parting Shots, a story that could happen to anyone. Well, almost anyone. You'll be glad it wasn't you.
We've all probably been guilty of parking in the wrong spot. It happens. But most of us weren't piloting a massive cargo jet at the time, unlike the gentleman in charge of the plane that you're about to see.
The 747 Dreamlifter, one of the world's largest cargo planes, after all, was bound for the McConnell Air Force Base, that's in Wichita, Kansas, right in the heart of America, on Wednesday night. But it didn't get there, no. It landed instead at a small commercial airport just 12 miles away. Well, he wasn't too far off, 12 miles.
The pilot seemed confused about where he was. Listen to this. This is the controller and the tower.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOWER: Giant 2424180 and sir, you know which airport you're at?
PILOT: Well, we think we have a pretty good pulse.
TOWER: Giant 4241 roger, it appears that you're at Jabara.
PILOT: Say again?
TOWER: Giant 4241, we saw the plane on the radar, and it appears that you are at Jabara Airport.
PILOT: Say the name of it again.
TOWER: Jabara.
PILOT: Jabaro?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: He didn't know the name, he couldn't pronounce it, and you know what? They didn't think he was going to be able to take off because the airport has such a short runway, but it managed to do just that. There you see, it's taking off.
I'm Jim Clancy, that's CONNECT THE WORLD, thanks for being with us. "Quest Means Business" is straight ahead.
END
