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CNN Live Event/Special

Terror in Paris. Aired 9-10p ET

Aired June 21, 2016 - 21:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:00:14] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That that is for us. "TERROR IN PARIS" starts now.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Terror in Europe. January 2015, the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. 10 months later, Parisians are dining, dancing, as another deadly plan is set in motion. Teams of ISIS terrorists are striking at once.

BLEY MOKONO, COMPANY DIRECTOR: I said my God, not Ryan. Not my son.

CUOMO: At the stadium, the cafes, the concert hall, eight attacks, 20 minutes.

JULIEN PEARCE, JOURNALIST: I heard the terrorists reloading their guns. Click, click.

CUOMO: And then Brussels.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looked like war. It's so terrible.

CUOMO: Why can ISIS attack so easily? Can Europe win the war on terror? The search for answers to these questions begins with a look at a night of terror in Paris.

What is Paris? What happens here that doesn't happen the same way anywhere else?

PASCALE CLARK, JOURNALIST: I would say joy of the view.

CUOMO: Joy of life?

CLARK: Yeah, joy of life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Paris...

CUOMO: Journalist, Pascale Clark has lived in Paris her entire life. To her, the city has a spirit all its own and it's especially vibrant at week's end. What is special about Friday night?

CLARK: Friday night? It's a moment of lightness. You forget everything and you just sit outside.

CUOMO: And everyone makes plans, drinks at the local cafe, tickets to see a favorite band and for many from the smallest child to the most powerful man in the country seats at the soccer match.

What is the significance of football or soccer here? What does it mean?

CLARK: It is a big, big deal. That night, there were 70,000 people in the stadium and the president and you've got about 10 million people watching the game on the TV. So it's a big deal, you know.

B. MOKONO: It was a moment my son had been waiting for. We were finally going together to see the Stade de France.

CUOMO: Bley Mokono and his 13-year-old son Ryan are on their way to attend the first soccer game together, Germany versus France at the French National Stadium. It is November 13th. Bley asked us not to show his son's face.

France, Germany, Stade de France, it's a big deal. Are you excited too?

RYAN MOKONO, BLEY MOKONO'S SON: Yes, it was a big deal. I was supposed to be in boxed seating where there were a lot of important people and we were a bit late.

CUOMO: And very hungry. The game is already under way when Bley and Ryan stop for something to eat.

B. MOKONO: He would have preferred we went straight into in the stadium. Hanging around outside looking for sandwiches did not make him happy.

CUOMO: Looking for dinner in a restaurant near the stadium someone suspicious catches Bley's eye.

You noticed something strange when you went to the bathroom. You noticed a man that didn't seem right to you.

B. MOKONO: What troubled me was his behavior. He didn't move normally. He was not at ease. Looking all around like that, looking around very rapidly.

CUOMO: Bley entered the men's room in a restaurant to find a second man acting strangely.

B. MOKONO: I saw the second person. I automatically thought maybe there was a fight going on between the one outside and the one in the bathroom.

CUOMO: Then what happen?

B. MOKONO: When I came back, I opened the door. My son went in to go to the washroom.

CUOMO: Ryan is now in the restroom, but his father is not.

[21:05:00] R. MOKONO: I washed my hands and that is when it exploded. CUOMO: It's around 9:20 p.m. inside the stadium a loud noise that many brush off as fireworks. But outside there is chaos at gate D just across the street from the restaurant.

B. MOKONO: I was thrown back. I see that behind me people are falling and I'm thrown back, but the survival instinct is telling me that I should go get my son in the washroom.

CUOMO: Bley cannot know that two other terrorists are still lurking nearby or that another team is headed toward a busy cafe where people like Charlotte Brehaut are just sitting down to dinner.

CHARLOTTE BREHAUT, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I was eating in a restaurant with a friend of mine. It was really busy. It was a Friday night in Paris.

CUOMO: At 9:25 p.m. investigators say Abdelhamid Abaaoud is in a black car, as it pulls up to Le Petit Cambodge and Le Carillon and let's out two attackers.

BREHAUT: All of a sudden we heard a huge gun shots and lots of glass coming through the window. So we ducked onto the floor with all of the other diners and we heard numerous more gun shots coming through the window and shards of glass were hitting people lying down on the floor.

CUOMO: In seconds, the gunmen spray the cafes with bullets then drive away leaving 15 people dead, 10 seriously injured.

Back at the stadium, a bodyguard informs President Francois Hollande that France is under attack. Hollande is rushed from the stands and Bley Mokono is still separated from his son.

B. MOKONO: So I went quickly and headed to the washroom and at that moment, I see the suicide bomber blown up on the ground in shreds.

CUOMO: Bley quickly realizes this was one of the men he saw acting suspiciously moments earlier. Then he spots a victim of the suicide bombing.

B. MOKONO: She had blood on her face and pieces of flesh. And I held out my hand and I wanted to lift her and that was when I realized I was in pain.

CUOMO: His arm is seriously injured, but he somehow manages to lift her.

B. MOKONO: And when I took this woman, I turned with her. As soon as we started moving, the second explosion occurred.

CUOMO: 9:30 p.m., another gate, another explosion. Bley struggles to get the injured woman to police then returns to the restaurant trying to find his son.

B. MOKONO: After I opened the washroom door, I looked and my son wasn't there. I said Ryan. I said my God, not Ryan. Not my son. CUOMO: Coming up, torn apart by tragedy.

He didn't care that he had just been part of a bomb going off. All he thought about was you.

A father's journey to find his son.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:12:44] CUOMO: A shocking attack. A black car, police and ambulances on the scene. In January 2015, Patrick Pelloux ran into the offices of Charlie Hebdo where he once worked.

PATRICK PELLOUX, FRENCH PHYSICIAN: I came in and all my colleagues were on the floor. There were four seriously wounded and the others were already dead.

CUOMO: Pelloux, a doctor was one of the first to arrive.

PELLOUX: What was unbelievable was that we were walking on the collision, I got bullet casings which were all over the floor. It smelled like candles and gun powder and there was a thick smoke.

CUOMO: 10 months later on November 13th, Pelloux is among those practicing how to respond to future terrorist attacks. Attacks like the one that struck Charlie Hebdo.

PELLOUX: So we trained ourselves with simulation exercises with the police, firefighters and hospitals. We told ourselves there could be an attempt anywhere in Paris with gun fire and explosions.

CUOMO: Just hours later, that exercise becomes a sickening reality. 9:30 p.m., Paris. At the soccer stadium two terrorists have detonated their vest and Bley Mokono still can't find his son Ryan.

What was that fear like not knowing where your son was?

B. MOKONO: I went to save the woman before saving my son. I don't regret it, but I asked myself what would I have done if I didn't have my son. If Ryan was no longer here, what kind of life would I have?

CUOMO: Tell us about looking for your son and what it was like when you finally found out he was OK?

B. MOKONO: When I found him, my heart was filled with joy. All the pressure I'd felt just fell away when I found him.

CUOMO: You know your father loves you, right? He had just been part of a bomb going off. All he thought about was you. What does that mean to you?

[21:15:06] R. MOKONO: Well, there are no words to describe that. I don't know. There are no words.

CUOMO: It is just after 9:30 p.m. when investigators say the black car they believe carries Abdelhamid Abaaoud and other attackers, pulls up to Casa Nostra. This surveillance video from dailymail.com shows the moment a normal Friday turns tragic. Bullets flying and everyone inside Casa Nostra is ducking for cover.

PELLOUX: I got a call from one of my colleagues who informed me that shots and explosions had just taken place in Paris. So I immediately got on my motorcycle and return to the hospital.

CUOMO: Outside Casa Nostra, the terror continues. A gunman approaches and aims at a woman lying on the ground. He pulls the trigger then a miracle. His gun jams and she scrambles to safety.

DIMITRI MOHAMADI, MANAGER, CASA NOSTRA: It was like I was in a film, in an American movie. Everything was broken. There was a girl that took a bullet there that came out the other side and her friend had just a little scratch above the shoulders. We had only blood. We didn't have any deaths.

CUOMO: But across the street at La Bonne Biere, the gunmen kill five people, wound eight. The attacks strike at the heart of the city. The cafes and Bistros of Paris are the French capitals living room.

CLARK: You talk. You drink. You smoke. You laugh. You live. That's it. And nothing can happen.

CUOMO: But this night something is happening, something unthinkable. 10 men are moving through Paris in teams killing anyone they can. Most of the terrorists are young and European born. Their sixth target is a restaurant called La Belle Equipe.

ROMAN RONWILL (PH): I leave right in front which is about I'd say 25 feet from the restaurant which is really up a few steps.

CUOMO: Roman Ronwill (ph) is carrying groceries into his apartment building when the shooting starts.

RONWILL: The shot maybe lasted like I'd say less than two minutes, one and a half minute, something like that.

CUOMO: He rushes across the street.

RONWILL: It was a scene of chaos and everybody was so badly hurt like I saw a woman half of her head was missing at the back and there was a fireman who rushed in and try to grab her to see if someone under her because three people were piled up, you know, so to see if the people under were still alive.

CUOMO: This is the deadliest attack so far leaving more than two dozen dead or injured.

RONWILL: There was half a beer that stayed all night long, you know, on the table and with us somebody dead beside. So it was like, you know, a tragic painting of something like frozen in time.

CUOMO: For Pelloux and doctors across the city it's far worse than anything they could have imagined. He's helping set up 60 surgery rooms across the city to treat what he calls ghastly war wounds. PELLOUX: Why do we use the word war? Because they are using weapons of war and they kill everybody.

CUOMO: And the killing is far from over. The team of cafe killers soon arrives at the Comptoir Voltaire. This time, there are no gun shots. Instead 31-year-old Ibrahim Abdeslam enters the cafe, wearing a suicide vest and detonates. In this video obtained by roisters, two men are trying to help the wounded. One of them is believed to be a nurse, David (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw this man and I laid him on the floor. There was nothing special about him, he was just unconscious. But I noticed on the side of his body there was an enormous hole, a large hole on his side.

CUOMO: But David says this man is no innocent victim.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I ripped his t-shirt I saw wires. I saw blood and bolts on the ground.

CUOMO: David is performing CPR on the suicide bomber.

[21:20:01] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At that exact moment when I realized what he was, the emergency services arrived. I realized then that by performing CPR I could have been killed too. I still think about it.

CUOMO: A coordinated attacked by a team of terrorists driving unhindered through the streets of Paris, six cafes, 15 minutes, dozens dead or wounded. At the same time others in the terror cell have struck the national stadium and there is one more target, another quint essential part of life in Paris. Next.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody was dancing. Everyone was smiling. When the gunman came in, it all changed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Eagles of death metal is actually not a heavy metal band.

PEARCE: It's a very rock and roll band but like an old one like in the 60s.

[21:24:58] CUOMO: Julien Pearce has waited six months to see the American rock band.

PEARCE: I love this band. It's good music to dance to, to have a good time with friends and drink a beer and that's all.

CUOMO: On November 13th, Pearce and his friends are in the front row.

PEARCE: We were on the right side of the concert row and very close from the stage actually. And a lot of people came in after us.

CUOMO: Frank is in the rear of the hall that night.

FRANK, BATACLAN ATTACK SURVIVOR: Here you have a feeling that you are connected with the band because they are not and so far from you. It was a good night, good ambiance that people was there, they were very excited.

CUOMO: We are now 20 minutes into the siege here in Paris, there have been explosions of the Soccer Stadium, gun fire at multiple cafes, dozens have been killed but now comes the deadliest attack at a concert hall called the Bataclan.

It's about 9:40 p.m. when three men are dropped off in front of the Bataclan.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TOURISM ANALYST: They stand around for a bit and they send a message to by SMS to Belgium. They then throw that Samsung phone in a trash bin.

CUOMO: They approach the entrance and open fire.

PEARCE: When we heard gun shots, explosions, at first I thought it was part of the show, it was a fireworks or something dropped. And immediately I turned my head on the left and I've seen three men wearing black clothes and holding assault rifles.

CUOMO: The men move through the venue shouting alllah'akbar, Arabic for "god is great". The terrified crowd squatters, some people try to escape and others hit the ground and play dead. The terrorists keep shooting.

CRUICKSHANK: While one was firing, the other was reloading, many so they could fire continuously. There's a lot of bloodshed very quickly.

FRANK: I was there was a friend on the moment, who was just next to me and he said someone is firing on us and stay low and everything and said you were hit and I look at my leg and over (inaudible) by pants it would (inaudible) of it because the bullet it would went straight through.

PEARCE: And I was on the floor with a dead body on me and all the crowds tried to move toward the stage. So I had a lot of people trying to walk on me, walk on us.

ISOBEL BOWDERY, BATACLAN ATTACK SURVIVOR: You can smell the gun powder, you could hear the terror of people screaming. I looked around once and I saw a dead man who had been shot. His face was facing towards me and after that I said, no, I cannot look.

CUOMO: Concert goers pour out of the venue, some injured and limping, others trying to help the badly wounded. One pregnant woman prepares to jump from a third story window, but is helped back inside. She later escapes through the ground floor. Inside a rock concert gone quiet.

PEARCE: And it was silence at a point, complete silence in the concert hall. We heard -- I heard the terrorists reloading their guns, that particular sound, metallic sound. Click, click.

CUOMO: He looks between bodies to see what's happening.

PEARCE: When I saw one man very young and he was walking on the bodies and kicking bodies to see if they were still alive and if the bodies responded, if the people responded, he immediately was shooting them in the head.

BOWDERY: It was important not to move, not to flinch so during the whole duration I had to stay calm so I thought about my family. I thought about my friends. I didn't say their names, I just pictured their face and I said I love you and in that way it felt, I said OK to die.

CUOMO: Julien Pearce decides to make a run for it, dashing across the stage to a small room where he joins others trying to hide.

[21:29:59] PEARCE: Then I immediately spoke to a girl and she was a member of the Bataclan staff and she said to us quietly that the only escape was on the other of the stage on the left side we were on the right side so we were trapped in this room. We were trapped like rats.

CUOMO: Coming up, hours of fear and uncertainty.

FRANK: Every time you heard something, you thought that maybe I'm the next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: As the world mourns of the siege on Paris.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, Paris terror feared multiple people are reported killed at a shooting, there is word of possible explosions outside the national stadium.

CUOMO: Inside the Bataclan Theater, victims lie helpless.

CRUICKSHANK: The attack is according to the eye witnesses it seemed to be enjoying themselves. They toyed with some of these hostages. They say to some of them you should get up, it's OK, you can go and as soon as they get up they fire on them and they kill them.

CUOMO: Before elite police troops can get there two of local officers rush inside.

CRUICKSHANK: 20 minutes after they first arrived at the Bataclan at concert hall, there are two local police who got a call that something was going on, that there was violence inside that they needed to go there as quickly as possible.

[21:35:09] CUOMO: Armed only with hand guns, the two police officers enter the venue.

CRUICKSHANK: And when they see police first come in, they engage in a fire fight with one of the hostage takers Samy Amimou, they managed to kill him. As he falls to the ground and rolls on the floor, he blows himself up with his suicide vest. FRANK: I remember the terrorist was blowing himself up, the sound of the explosion, you know, is the ringing in your ears and what we're seeing.

CUOMO: You heard the guy explode his belt.

FRANK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CUOMO: The officers are forced to retreat and wait for help. The attackers move to a more secure position deep inside the building.

CRUICKSHANK: At that point the attackers, the two surviving hostage takers, take a dozen or so hostages into a corridor, an isle shaped corridor as described by eye witnesses where they barricade themselves.

CUOMO: Why were they taking hostages?

JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD, CNN TERRORISM EXPERT: They took hostages to make sure that the police and the elite forces would come to them. They decided to remain with the hostages in order to kill police officers at the time.

CUOMO: The standoff at the Bataclan has lasted for almost three hours.

BLITZER: There is the situation unfolding in that Bataclan Theater right now where an American rock band had been performing but dozens of hostages are still inside.

CUOMO: Just after midnight, Special Forces launch their final strike.

CRUICKSHANK: The two remaining hostage takers blew themselves up as they were being shot to death of by the commandos.

CUOMO: It was about 9:40 when the attackers went inside the Bataclan. The police didn't enter until 12:20. Why so long a period?

BRISARD: Because the intervention forces didn't know the place, they didn't know the number of attackers. It took a long time to get in mind all the perimeters of the scene.

CUOMO: All remaining hostages in the Bataclan are rescued. Julien Pearce had already escaped through a side exit, and others like Frank are forced to lie still and wait for help.

FRANK: I told myself to crawl but then I couldn't to -- I was too shocked I guess or to -- but it was too painful. I couldn't to crawl in, I had also loss a lot of blood up to that, I really so. It was very difficult so, I could not move.

CUOMO: Frank is carried to safety by a Special Forces officer. I met him two months later in the hospital where he was still recovering.

What is the hardest part for you? FRANK: There are some wounds that the life are destroyed, you know, that's the hardest part to think about it, you know, and I'm trying not to think about it too much about. People lost their lives there and people who will never recover.

CUOMO: 130 people die across the city, including 90 inside the Bataclan. Nearly 700 more injured. It is the most violent night in France since World War II but Parisians are determined not to lose the city that they and the world love.

BOWDERY: In changes (ph) that we take this horrific story and learn from it to appreciate life.

FRANK: I want to beat them.

CUOMO: You want to beat them?

FRANK: Yeah.

CUOMO: And how do you beat them?

FRANK: I beat them by living -- by still living the same way of life you used to. That's still living a good life. That's how you beat them.

CUOMO: Next, who are the attackers? How did they plan? And will they strike again?

CRUICKSHANK: Abdelhamid abaaoud and another man were planning a second wave of attacks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:43:15] CUOMO: So many attacks, so many dead, so many questions. Why Paris? How did the plotting terrorists go unnoticed? And who were they?

Some of the answers come the day after in an ISIS statement claiming responsibility calling, "Paris a capital of abominations and perversion." Then days later, this video.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (In Translation): We are saying to European countries we are coming with car bombs and explosives. Don't think you are safe. I swear to God, you will drink from the cups of death.

CUOMO: Investigators quickly identify several of the attackers, and some of them are no surprise to (inaudible). He's a Belgian newspaper reporters and blogger who has followed more than a thousand social media accounts of radicalized Belgians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the one, which I was Facebook friends, yes.

CUOMO: Under a false name, Vandler (ph) then became Facebook friends with one of the start to France suicide bombers, Bilal Al-Mouhaji. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was the page on which in July 2015, he called upon us, friends, ancestors, followers at home to commit attacks in the west.

I got a few pictures of him on which he posts with weapons clearly taken in Syria.

CUOMO: Mouhaji was part of what investigators believed was a international ISIS cell, hell-bent on terrorizing western Europe.

BRISARD: Most of the cell was composed of French citizens who are traveled to Syria and fought together in Syria.

[21:45:00] CUOMO: Several of the terrorists were known to European and U.S. Intelligence Agencies, yet they were able to move easily between Syria and Europe.

How easy was it for these men to move back and forth from Syria to France to Belgium?

BRISARD: Obviously it was easy for many reasons, but most importantly because of the weak boarders that we have currently in Europe.

CUOMO: One of the Paris attackers Abdelhamid Abaaoud made no secret of being in Syria, appearing in several videos.

ABDELHAMID ABAAOUD, ISLAMIC TERRORIST: (In Translation) Admittedly, there is no joy in spilling blood although from time to time it's nice to see the blood of infidels.

CRUICKSHANK: That last trace of him had been in January of 2015 where they located him in Athens, Greece thanks to a cell phone he was using to communicate with plotters in Belgium.

CUOMO: A U.S. Department of Homeland Security assessment called Abaaoud the purported leader of a Belgian group that had amassed a large cache of illegal weapons including Kalashnikov rifles, hand guns, ammunition and materials to make explosives.

Abaaoud was plotting a major attack that was thwarted when police raided terrorist safe houses in Verviers, Belgium. In that raid a fire fight left two alleged plotters dead, a third was arrested. But Abdelhamid Abaaoud slipped out of Greece undetected.

CRUICKSHANK: He escaped the international dragnet and appears to have returned to Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He bragged about it in (inaudible) that appeared in Islamic State, in magazine Dabiq.

CUOMO: In that interview Abaaoud said my name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them and leave safely when doing so became necessary.

Just nine months later Abaaoud plays a leading role in terrorizing Paris, seen on a subway security camera during attacks.

CRUICKSHANK: He was the guy on the ground orchestrating the plot in touch with several of the plotters of that night notably with Bilal Hadfi, one of the stadium attackers.

CUOMO: Later that night Abaaoud is seen near the deadliest attack.

CRUICKSHANK: He was then spotted by a witness outside the Bataclan Theater before the end of that siege speaking in to his cell phone using a hands free set appearing to give orders, perhaps to the plotters inside while that attack was still ongoing.

CUOMO: In the aftermath of the attacks as he did in Greece, Abaaoud avoids capture.

Next, the desperate search for Abaaoud and two more deadly attacks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:52:03] CUOMO: Nightfall, in Paris just days after the attacks. The search is on for those responsible when police received a tip that one of the attackers Abdelhamid Abaaoud is still in Paris.

Authorities are desperate to find Abaaoud, not only do they know he was at the center of these attacks but they fear he may have more planned.

The tip places Abaaoud in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis. Authorities head there and zero in on a building. It's an apartment building where (inaudible) lives with his partner and their baby.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was 3:00 in the morning and we were in bed and it was my partner who woke me up to tell me she heard gunfire.

CUOMO: Just then a bullet burst through the window.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So my first reflex was to take the baby from his crib and get as far away from the windows and even lie down in the ground. So we'll land the ground and try to comfort the baby who had been woken up suddenly and had started to cry.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Breaking news tonight. French police confirm to CNN that there is an ongoing police raid in Saint Denise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were at least three hours of continuous exchanges. During three hours, all we heard was gunfire, explosions, gunfire, explosions, that was the most traumatizing and worry some part.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was quite a wide explosion in that direction.

CUOMO: It is a fierce battle with grenades and thousands of rounds being fired. Then ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was one explosion. Bigger than the grenades we heard.

CUOMO: A suicide vest detonates.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At around 8:45 we heard a knock at the door and they said police open up, then they started to help us leave, and while we were leaving they protected us with their bodies because the shooting was still going on.

CUOMO: When the shooting finally stops, all police find is devastation.

CRUICKSHANK: There was complete carnage. Body parts everywhere. That made a very difficult to identify who is actually been inside or how many have been inside or how many even have been inside.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have major breaking news. The mastermind so- called is really just a planner, but he was important here in Paris, the man who planned the attacks last Friday confirmed as dead. His body found after this intense raid in Saint Denise Wednesday morning.

CUOMO: It is the news investigators hoped to hear. Abaaoud is dead so are the three bombers from the stadium. Three more at the Bataclan and one, Ibraham Abdeslam inside comes to Comptoir Voltaire, but other suspects are still on the run, including Salah Abdeslam, Ibrahim's brother, who flees the night of the attacks.

[21:55:11] Though the car he is in is stopped three times at police checkpoints. He is never detained and crosses the boarder into Belgium.

They didn't know who he was yet?

BRISARD: Exactly, exactly. He was not suspected at the time.

CUOMO: This is Salah Abdeslam at a gas station near the Belgian border the morning after the attacks.

The investigation keeps looking back to Belgium. Why Belgium?

BRISARD: Belgium has been used in this specific case as a hub.

CUOMO: A hub where investigators believe that the attacks were directed by men in Belgium on the phone with the attackers in Paris.

BRISARD: All the logistics we know, most of it at least was conceived and planned and organized from Belgium and by Belgians.

The explosive belts, we know they were belt in Belgium. The cars used by the terrorists where an incident in Belgium.

CUOMO: Investigators begin to unravel the terrorist network. Four months later, police raid an apartment in Brussels and kill Mohammed Al-Qaed, who would helped the Paris attackers.

Two men escaped and Salah Abdeslam's fingerprints are found inside. Within days, Abdeslam is located and captured alive, but it is too late to stop the next attacks. Terrorists detonate two bombs at the Brussels Airport.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw doors, flying glass, ceiling coming down and smoke and everything.

CUOMO: An hour later, another explosion, this time at a packed subway station in the heart of Brussels.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It felt an explosion and the train stopped in its tracks, the lights went out, the power went out, everyone dropped to the ground. They were screaming, but I knew immediately and I think others around me recognized this was a terrorist attack.

CUOMO: It is the same terror cell that struck Paris and the same sickening story. Another country in shock mourning their dead, praying for the wounded and searching for one bomber who managed to skipped, Mohamed Abrini.

CRUICKSHANK: He was friends with the Abdeslam brothers when they were all growing up. He's believed to have spent some time in Syria and to have returned to Belgium in the summer of 2015.

CUOMO: Abrini returned a fully radicalized ISIS operative. Seen at a gas station with Salah Abdeslam just two days before he allegedly drove one of the cars in the Paris attacks, and seen strolling through the Brussels airport with a bomb.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: A five-month terrorist manhunt is over. Belgian officials say they have arrested at least two terror suspects connected to the Paris and the Brussels attacks.

CUOMO: Police locate and capture Mohamed Abrini, but the questions remain. How many more ISIS operatives are out there and how does Europe ever return to normal?

CLARK: I'm enraged in fact.

CUOMO: You're enraged?

CLARK: Yes.

CUOMO: Because?

CLARK: Because they took us that moment which is very important.

CUOMO: The terrorists don't want to just take lives. They want to take a way of life.

CLARK: Exactly.

CUOMO: Yet, Parisians are determined to return to the stadium, the concert hall and the cafes, determined to take back the city they love. Soon after the attacks using social media, they share photos of themselves out at the cafes with the #TousAuBistro, everyone to the bar.

CLARK: They were like this. That was resistance, you know.

CUOMO: Sure.

CLARK: The new resistance is to how to drink alcohol or whatever on the terrace outside.

CUOMO: In the aftermath of the attacks, French authorities promised to get better on every level, more forces, better training, better information-sharing.

But nothing will ever erase the pain and loss in Paris, in Brussels or erase the fear of what might come next.