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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, ANCHOR: Hello everyone and welcome to “Amanpour and Company.” Here’s what’s coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUREM SULJIC, SREBRENICA MASSACRE SURVIVOR (through translator): Then I heard a lot of shooting and bodies fell on top of me. They were the people
standing behind me. I fell to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Remembering Srebrenica, we marked 30 years since the genocide in Bosnia with a report from my archive.
And.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID SCHEFFER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR AT LARGE FOR WAR CRIMES: Now 30 years later actually accountability is the norm, but impunity, there are
huge exceptions to it in — in currency societies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: I speak with David Scheffer former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes.
Then and now, how international law should prevent atrocities today.
Plus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAHMOUD KHALIL, STUDENT ACTIVIST: It felt like kidnapping having plainclothes agents follow me into the lobby of my building.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The activist and Columbia graduate, the first to be jailed under Trump’s crackdown on free speech, immigration, and elite universities. My
conversation with Mahmoud Khalil.
Also ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ERIC TOPOL, AMERICAN CARDIOLOGIST: The real goal is just to get as many fully healthy years as possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: “Super Agers.” Dr. Eric Topol tells Walter Isaacson about his new book, laying out the route to a longer, healthier life.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour in London.
Thirty years since one of the darkest days in the history of modern Europe, in Bosnia on July 11th 1995 General Ratko Mladic and his foot soldiers
stormed the tiny mostly Muslim town of Srebrenica.
His forces separated the women from their male relatives and systematically killed more than 7,000 men and boys, Muslims. Despite being declared a safe
area under U.N. protection, Mladic’s troops weren’t stopped, committing the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.
This genocide marked a violent turning point, forcing America and the world to act to finally end the bloodshed.
I was a young correspondent in Bosnia during that horrific war and I saw for myself the crimes of Mladic and how he finally did face justice.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RATKO MLADIC, THEN-BOSNIAN SERB COMMANDER (through translator): We’d be poured at the Muslims. It’s good to have them around, but in a smaller
concentration.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Chilling words from the man they called The Butcher of Bosnia, General Ratko Mladic. The snide humor masked his killer
instinct. It defined Mladic and it made him an uncomfortable man to confront.
And we’d see this preening smile again and again as the war unfolded.
Indeed the Muslims, the Bosnian government says, I’d been covering the Bosnian war for more than a year by the time I met him living in this
shelled, sniped, and besieged city of Sarajevo. A year of witnessing the ferocious war machine that the Bosnian Serb commander had unleashed and he
did not like my reporting.
MLADIC (through translator): What’s the lady’s name?
AMANPOUR: Christiane.
MLADIC (through translator): I like Kennedy’s Christina.
AMANPOUR: Like Kennedy’s Christina.
MLADIC (through translator): It won’t be difficult for her to understand because when I saw her first report from Sarajevo, I was very angry.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Mladic was commanding the Bosnian Serb military mission to carve out their own ethnically pure republic and join it into a
Greater Serbia.
This was a daily occurrence, dodging bullets as we covered the unfolding tragedy.
For the Bosnian Muslims, the villain was clear.
AMANPOUR: They’re, you know, your own people and your soldiers, to them you’re a great man, you’re a hero. To your enemies, you’re somebody to be
feared and somebody to be hated. How do you feel about that?
MLADIC (through translator): Very interesting question. First things you say are correct.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Prosecutors say what Mladic believed to be his greatness was in fact ethnic cleansing and genocide. It would reach its
climax with the massacre at Srebrenica July 11th, 1995, more than three years into this brutal war.
It was meant to be a U.N. protected zone for Muslims when Mladic’s forces overran U.N. physicians and invaded the tiny enclave, they handed out
candy, and General Mladic promised the townspeople they would be safe.
Of course, they were not. His soldiers slaughtered more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys who tried to flee.
Hurem Suljic was one who miraculously survived the massacre. I tracked him down in the Bosnian held town of Tuzla four months later.
SULJIC (through translator): The Serbs said, don’t look around. Then I heard a lot of shooting and bodies fell on top of me. They were the people
standing behind me. I fell too.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Here, he says, he saw Mladic one last time.
SULJIC (through translator): He stood there and waited until they killed them. When they killed them, he got back in his car and left.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): After that massacre, the U.S. led a bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb military positions and peace negotiations that
eventually ended the fighting.
Mladic became a wanted man and soon went into hiding.
I never knew if I would see him again, the man with whom I’d stood on a Bosnian hilltop at the height of the war.
But it was with deep satisfaction that I watched Mladic stand in the dock at The Hague to finally face the justice he so brutally denied others.
MLADIC: General Ratko Mladic.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): America has — call — calls him a war criminal, and under any kind of U.N. tribunal, he may have to be prosecuted. What does he
think about that?
And it’s a tough question, but he’s a tough man and he can answer it.
MLADIC (through translator): Yes, I can take it. I’ve taken more rough ones. I can take hers too.
(LAUGHTER)
I defended my people, and only my people can judge me. And there’s no greater honor than defending your people.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Some twisted definition of honor.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Mladic and the other architects of those crimes against Bosnia remain in jail for life.
And 30 years later, the people of Bosnia still remember, thousands of them have been walking this week through the forest of eastern Bosnia near
Srebrenica, the site of the massacres.
Since the war, over 160 individuals have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia at The Hague, including former President
Slobodan Milosevic, who was charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes back in 2001 but died in his cell before the verdict.
Today, war crimes tribunals are still working to prosecute with leaders from Israel, Gaza, and Sudan facing some of the gravest accusations.
So, what will it take to stop these horrors for good?
David Scheffer, former U.S. Ambassador at Large For War Crimes Issues, was instrumental in establishing the tribunal that sought justice for Bosnia.
He joined me to reflect on what we’ve learned and the power of international law today.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Ambassador Scheffer, welcome back to our program. It’s really important to have you on. And I just wonder, that report about Mladic and
Srebrenica 30 years ago still gives me chills. And I wonder how you feel reflecting on what happened at Srebrenica all these years later.
SCHEFFER: Yes. It gives chills to me too. And — and frankly, if one were to sit through the entire video of days and days and days of the trial of
Ratko Mladic at the trial chamber level, you would witness to victims, you know, who would say so many things about Ratko Mladic that reflect exactly
what you showed in that clip.
He had a dichotomous personality of –of graciousness and of politeness, but then suddenly he would switch to kind of horrid, brutal directions that
you either live or you die as he was talking to the UNPROFOR people, the refugees at (INAUDIBLE).
So, he was a dichotomous character, but I think it’s the evil part of him that will be his legacy.
AMANPOUR: Well, for sure. He — he was — you know, I interviewed him many times and he — he was pure evil.
Let me get back to about Bosnia itself and about the Clinton administration that you were serving at the time.
So, in your book, you talk about having been in the room where deliberations were going on for, I mean, it was years, let’s face it,
throughout the entire Clinton administration until decisions were made after the massacre at Srebrenica.
And you reflect quite — quite poignantly on that and with, in my opinion, fingers pointed. All these sophisticated talks that what — what were they
for really. Tell me about that process.
SCHEFFER: Exactly. You know what, what we had in front of us is we were debating endlessly for — for months between two plans. One was to
literally withdraw UNPROFOR, and have a NATO force protected while it was withdrawing and then just letting the Bosnian-Muslims, the Bosniaks, fight
on, you know, without any constraint.
That was an endless debate at the table. And it had — had not been finally resolved prior to Srebrenica, although the rapid reaction force option was
gaining steam, the problem is we couldn’t figure out the funding for it yet.
And, of course, by the time Srebrenica occurred in early July, the — the anticipated NATO soldiers and helicopters, et cetera, had not yet been
deployed in theater that would have been available to just swoop in to Srebrenica and deal with that situation as it should have been.
AMANPOUR: So let’s go all the way forward. We — we mentioned that more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the space of about two days
after Mladic’s forces stormed in there. He run rough shot of over the minimal U.N. presence there.
But all these years later, you know, you had said, for instance, 10 years ago on the 20th anniversary in a — in a column, “My hope is that one day a
vibrant outdoor cafe will sit beside a renovated Muslim-owned building in Srebrenica, where people of diverse heritage speak knowingly of the past
and optimistically of their common future. But before that happens, attempts to deny the genocide that happened there must be buried.”
So, let’s just take that because the Serbian leaders, whether it’s Milorad Dodik and the rump Bosnian Serb Republic or whether it’s Alexander Vucic,
the president of Serbia, they really shy away from that word and they block it at the U.N. and all sorts of things.
And this vision that you had has not come to pass.
SCHEFFER: Exactly. It has not come to pass. And by the way, the president of Croatia is also a — a genocide denialist of what happened at
Srebrenica. So you have the very top leaders in that region that are sowing this untruth. It’s literally an untruth.
And I think the point to make between what I wrote 10 years ago and today is that in the interim, seven convictions through the appeals process have
been rendered against senior Bosnian Serb leaders for the Srebrenica genocide. That means that is fact.
It’s not something that can be denied anymore. It has been judicially determined with enormous evidence of witnesses, of documents, et cetera.
That the court has been persuaded, the Yugoslav Tribunal, and then its successor to the residual mechanism, have both made these determinations.
So, if you pursue genocide denial today, you truly are revealing either an enormous amount of ignorance or you’re revealing what you’re using it for
as leverage for your own power among your people.
AMANPOUR: Exactly. Here’s what a former mayor of Srebrenica said. “Now it’s 30 years and I don’t see progress. In fact, I see us going backwards. This
government is reversing anything good that was done since the war ended. Facing the past is still our biggest problem.”
Talking about that government, the Bosnian Serb government, which is normally in charge of Srebrenica.
Where do you see the dangers there? I mean, in other words, have lessons been learned?
SCHEFFER: Yes. That is the question. And if you don’t have memory established in your society of the genocide or frankly other atrocity
crimes like crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and massive war crimes, if that memory is not established in society and confirmed and
embraced by the leadership of that society, then you are — you are destined to see a repetition of those kinds of crimes in the future.
You know, what — what we were attempting to do in the 1990s in building many war crimes tribunals during that period, was to establish both a means
of achieving that memory and also deterring future atrocities.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that those lessons are not generally widespread 30 years later. We have achieved accountability, which we didn’t
have back in the 1990s.
In fact, the presumption in the ’90s was, impunity first, accountability as kind of an exception.
Now, 30 years later, actually, accountability is the norm, but impunity, there are huge exceptions to it in — in current society.
And — and so we flipped the — the — the kind of the normative reality in 30 years, but we haven’t — we haven’t achieved enough practically to say
that the lesson has — have been firmly embedded in societies.
AMANPOUR: And you know what, obviously that brings me to Gaza because there are increasing number of Israeli officials and former officials through
politics, the defense and other establishments there who are saying that, you know, their soldiers are being ordered to commit war crimes in Gaza
after the war crimes that Hamas committed in Israel on October 7th.
So, this is Geoffrey Nice. So Geoffrey Nice, who is one of the lead prosecutors at the ICTY Tribunal in The Hague that you helped set up.
This is what I asked him not so long ago about that particular issue of impunity, accountability and war crimes when it comes to the current war
against Gaza. Here we go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFFREY NICE, LEAD PROSECUTOR AT TRIAL OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: It has seemed to me from an early stage, it was clear that war crimes were being
committed or to be fairer. There was plenty of evidence to show that war crimes were being committed.
And the responsibility is not on commentators like me, it’s on governments. And governments should have been saying if the evidence was sufficient far
earlier, these are war crimes. They don’t do it for a whole range of very unhappy and unsatisfactory reasons. But that’s the people who should be
saying it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, do you agree with that? Governments should be standing up and saying that. I mean, look, Bosnia was the first time since World War II
that genocide was committed in Europe. And we reported it as students of the never again generation. And, you know, as you say, impunity continues.
SCHEFFER: You know, recently in — in recent years, we’ve actually achieved at the governmental level what Geoffrey was speaking about, which is
condemning war crimes in the Russia-Ukraine war.
But in the — in the case of Israel and — and the — the Gaza situation, the point that I’ve been making for, you know, a couple of years now is
that every single day, with every single hour of the operations of the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza, there will be a calculation made in history
because it will be done as to whether or not the IDF was operating in accordance with the law of armed conflict, in accordance with international
humanitarian law, in how it waged its war against Hamas.
As well, historians will put that calculus on Hamas. I think — I think the point I would like to make is that so much emphasis has been put on the
allegation of genocide that we’ve — we sometimes lose sight that the real issue to focus on is how has this war — Israel had the right of self-
defense, how has this war been engaged — engaged day after day after day in terms of how military forces operate on the ground where there is a huge
civilian population, but also the enemy.
And we — we don’t have access to the rules of engagement for the IDF, so we don’t know what their rules of engagement are.
But at some point, all of that has to be known. It has to be revealed so that we understand, if Israel wants to defend its actions in Gaza, defend
them. Don’t just say that we act in compliance with international law. It’s a much more granular explanation that we need. And — and so that has to
come forth.
AMANPOUR: And, of course, international law, as — as documented in the Geneva Conventions, and it’s on the wall of the ICRC in Geneva, even war
has rules because you’ve written, “The American Republic is pummeled with foreign policy by tweets and bombastic rhetoric from a president who may
precipitate unnecessary conflict and divisiveness in the world, rather than act to prevent such outcomes.”
SCHEFFER: It’s — it’s being continued in that way in the sense that there are decisions that have been made within the early months of — of this
second term. Some of them have legal rationalism. Others of them could be questioned, particularly, you know, the bombing of Iran.
The question there is, does that really meet the requirements of anticipatory self-defense under international law? That’s — that’s a
scrutiny that has to, you know, will be undertaken if — if not by courts, by, you know, historians and — and, you know, legal scholars, et cetera,
as to whether or not that particular criteria was met with respect to Iran.
AMANPOUR: And so many civilians killed there. And none of them were in the nuclear sites. Let’s just say that because none of the —
SCHEFFER: Yes. Yes.
AMANPOUR: — women and children who were killed were in the nuclear sites.
SCHEFFER: I think what we’ve lost sight of in warfare, generally, is there is a new and emerging predominant requirement that civilian populations be
protected, particularly from the fierce force of modern weaponry, which is supposed to be very precise, but in the end is so precise that it actually
kills a lot of civilians, ironically. So, we need that as a priority.
AMANPOUR: Well, on that note, I thank you, Ambassador David Scheffer, for all that you’ve done for justice and accountability and impunity and for
talking to us on this 30th anniversary of Srebrenica. Thank you.
SCHEFFER: Thank you, Christiane. I appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Later in the program, my conversation with Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate and Palestinian activist, detained over Trump’s crackdown
on immigration and free speech. That’s next.
AMANPOUR: As we’ve discussed, the worst crimes under international law are being committed all over the world, right now, focus continues on the war
in Gaza, with the International Criminal Court still seeking the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister and his former Defense Minister.
The Hamas leaders who are indicted by the ICC have now all been killed by Israel. This war has divided communities and raised fury all over the
world, particularly fraught in the United States, where you can even end up behind bars for your views.
One example, Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil. He played an integral role in the anti-war campus protests last year, and it
made him a target in Trump’s battle with universities, free speech, immigration, all in the name of combating anti-Semitism.
In March of this year, ICE officials seized him from his apartment and threatened to revoke his green card. After three months in detention,
without charge, Khalil was finally released on bail.
His story has outraged many. And I spoke to him, asking how it felt to be in the middle of Trump’s crackdown.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to the program.
KHALIL: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: Take me back to that day, which was awful for you and your family and all your friends and relatives and people watching. When they came to
your house, I think it was nighttime and we have some video and seized you.
KHALIL: Yes. Christiane, it– it felt like kidnapping having plain cloth agents follow me into the lobby of my building, a private space,
threatening my wife with arrest if — if she wouldn’t separate from — from me, refusing to answer any — any — any questions they have, refusing to
produce a — a warrant arrest.
And basically like saying all the wrong things, like I have a student visa. They did not believe that I am a green card holder.
So, it literally felt like kidnapping, extrajudicial targeting. And for the next 24 or 30 hours, I was literally moved from one place to another like
an object.
So, they move — they took me to an office in New York, then in New Jersey to Texas, then to Louisiana, which is literally 1,400 miles away from —
from New York.
So it was — it would — it would have been easier to fly from New York to London than actually take me to — to Louisiana. And…
AMANPOUR: And probably more comfortable. Let me just ask you.
KHALIL: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: Were you harmed at all at any time? Were you beaten? Were you rough handed? Were — were you harmed?
KHALIL: I — I was shackled all the time. Shackled like — like this and my — my — my ankles as — ankles as well. Like I -I was criminal. I did not
know what charges they have against me.
And by the time I arrived in Louisiana, my –my leg was — was fully swelled. I couldn’t walk to — to enter the — the detention center. So, it
was a very — very dehumanizing experience for someone who was not accused of any crime whatsoever.
AMANPOUR: You say that because there’s no charges, no formal charges against you. And you mentioned you’re a green card holder. And that is a
lawful permanent resident of the United States.
Have they — have you still got your green card? Have they taken it away? Revoked it?
KHALIL: They — they are in the process of — of revoking my green card. I –I still have it as — as like a lawful residency.
And as you said, like, the charges against me are immigration-related. They are not criminal or I did — or civil, actually. It’s just like that I am a
foreign policy threat to the United States. The irony or they later added retaliatory charges that I misrepresented my green card application.
Given that, I submitted my — my– my green card application a year before my arrest. And it was approved by the same Department of Homeland Security.
AMANPOUR: So, let’s talk about the accusations. You say it was, you know, foreign policy related. Let’s get it absolutely straight. President Trump,
on Truth Social, called you, quote, a radical foreign pro-Hamas student. His spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that you were, quote, siding with
terrorists.
Why do you think they said that about you? And as we, you know, as we described when we introduced you, you were one of the student protest
leaders in this very fraught situation of the war between Israel and Gaza on Columbia University campus.
What did you think when they — when they said that — that about you?
KHALIL: It’s — it’s absurd. It’s basically to — to intimidate me. They want to conflate any speech for the right of Palestinians with a speech
that’s supporting terrorism, which is totally wrong.
The protests were — were — were peaceful. We’re asking a simple ask to stop Columbia University and the U.S. complicity and — and the genocide
that’s happening in — in Gaza.
And that — that’s why I — I see these accusations as intimidation. They — and that’s why it did not — they did not succeed in — in — in court.
I mean, as — as — as — as of yet.
And it’s just like to distract from what’s really happening. They want to distract us from the U.S. support, unconditional support, to Israel in its
— in its genocidal war in Gaza.
This is what — what’s happening or what happened to me and — and to others. And it’s a message that they want to make an example out of me,
even if you are a legal resident, even if you are a citizen, actually, that we will find a way to come after you, to punish you, if — if you speak
against what we want.
AMANPOUR: Can I just ask you? Because, you know, you’re right in the middle of it. And you were a student leader. And as you say, the — the — the
events that you were involved in were –were peaceful. You never masked yourself, I don’t think. You never claimed to be, you know, Hamas or pro-
Hamas.
But I want you just to try to understand that in some other universities, there were people in the immediate aftermath, pro-Palestinians, in the
immediate aftermath of October 7th, who essentially blamed Israel and, you know, even exacerbated even support for Hamas.
And I wonder whether you think in retrospect these protests were, the early ones, maybe even some on Columbia campus, were self-defeating and got you
all in the kind of trouble that you’re in now.
KHALIL: What’s — what’s self-defeating and what’s — what’s dangerous is actually continuing the killing in — in — in Palestine. This is what
these students speak or spoke against.
And from — from the moment that these students spoke out against Israel, they were labeled anti-Semite, that they’re creating hostile environment to
Jewish students. Again, this is just like deliberate distortion from reality.
These students did not actually like — or — or the protests themselves did not create a hostile environment for — for — for Jewish students. The
Jewish students were an integral part of this — of this movement because their Jewish values and — and teachings tell them that they should stand
up against injustices, especially when these injustices are being committed by a state or by a state that claiming to represent — top represent them.
So, I –I refuse this sort of connotation that these protests were, in any way, violent, in any way anti-Semite. What’s violent is — is universities
and governments penalizing and criminalizing freedom of speech.
This is what we really should look at right now. We should focus on actually why these students are protesting right now. It is because their
universities and the U.S. government is fully invested in the killing of the Palestinian people. It’s — it’s plain — as plain as — as — as that.
And they take safety and — and anti-Semitism concerns very, very, very seriously. But we have to — to distinguish between — between discomfort
and safety.
AMANPOUR: When you came out, and I’m asking you this because people will ask you, you did actually, you know, walk around with a bunch of people,
protesters who were chanting from the river to the sea, that whole thing that seems to just drive people mad, even though the Israeli government
says it as well.
People just seem to think that that is a connotation for destroying a people for, you know, for — for all the issues of anti-Semitism that —
that those concerned have raised.
Why do you keep using it? What’s the point and the value of that slogan anymore, since both sides use it?
KHALIL: Yes. That’s — that’s a fair question. And protesters keep using it because language matters, history matters. And — and from the river to the
sea is — is a call for justice, for freedom, for all people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Unfortunately, the pro-Israel camp in — in — in this country and around the world, they — they would rather mis — deliberately misrepresent this
— this slogan. Because for them, to cancel speech is easier than actually engaging and reflecting on — on — on — on this speech.
And I –I –I even would go, like, further with a globalized intifada that now the whole — thew whole country is -is — is mad about. A globalized
intifada is — is we have to take it within its context, because a globalized intifada is a call to globalized solidarity in — in — in the
world.
The intifada is simply a word for uprising. And I –I don’t want to give a history lesson now about like what intifada, like, first intifada and
second intifada were, but were largely a mass civil resistance against Israel apartheid and Israeli occupation, whether in the ’90s or early 2000.
So, this is again goes with — with the fact that — what we should be worried about is — is bomb — the — the bombs that are killing people
rather than the — the chants that are making some people uncomfortable.
AMANPOUR: You know, there are — there are people who are going to ask you, do you condemn, and I’m going to ask you, what Hamas did on October 7th?
KHALIL: I — I — I condemn targeting and violence against all civilians. And international law is — is clear about that. I also condemn the
selective outrage on — on — on such circumstances because I also condemn the 75-year of dispossession, of ethnic cleansing, of killing of
Palestinians. And — and this is not just justification. It’s — it’s really dealing with the root causes of — of — of the — the war against
Palestinians.
AMANPOUR: Mahmoud Khalil, you have come out as determined as ever to speak up for your cause and for the justice of your people. They didn’t beat that
out of you in jail or — or, you know, push you to take a different track.
Tell me again what it was like in jail in terms of, I don’t know, the food, the sleeping, the — the — the people who you were in there with. What
was it like? And did you ever risk your spirit being broken?
KHALIL: From — from the moment that I was detained, I knew that I would eventually prevail, that I — what I simply did is protesting a genocide.
In terms of conditions, and this is what I keep saying, the moment you enter such facilities, such ICE facilities, your — your rights literally
stay outside. On the inside, as — as — as you would expect, the food was as close as could be to inedible.
I had to switch to vegetarian because the meat was — I — I — I threw up like after — after I ate — I ate the meat there. It was so cold. We had
to ask for more blankets, but no one would answer our — our — our requests.
And a lot of people inside, like, they — they don’t know their rights. They — they — they are not allowed to — to — to question, like, ICE
about like why you brought me here. Because a lot of them were brought from the court.
Literally, someone was in his court defending his case, asylum case, and was taken into custody from — from — from court. So, it’s — it’s —
there’s a lot of dehumanization.
The Trump administration is trying to paint all these, like, undocumented people as criminals. However, it’s — it’s the opposite. It’s totally the
opposite. A lot of them have been in the United States for a long number for — for — for a large number of years.
They have U.S. citizen, like, family — family members. Yet — yet, they feel that they are defeated.
AMANPOUR: You’ve missed the birth of your first child, a boy. Everybody was very concerned about your wife, who is an American citizen there without
you.
What was that like? And then what was it like when you were first able to hold your child for the first time?
KHALIL: Missing the birth of my child, I think that was the most difficult moment in — in — in my life, especially because, like, this could have
been avoided. We — we put so many requests to be able to attend that — that moment. And I — I will not — I don’t think I would be able to
forgive them for taking that moment away from — from me.
The first time I saw my child was literally through thick glass. He was literally in front of me, like five centimeters away from me. Yet, I
couldn’t hold him.
And when the moment came to hold him, it was by court order to have one hour with — with him. So, to be honest, my — it’s — I –I just can’t
describe that — that moment. And it’s — it’s a combination of — of anger and happiness.
I was happy that I’m — I’m — I’m finally — I was finally holding him in — in my hands, but at the same time, angry at the system that deprives
people from — from such — such important moments in — in –in — in their lives.
AMANPOUR: Mahmoud Khalil, thank you so much for being with us.
KHALIL: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up after the break, “Super Agers,” a new book sharing insights on how to live a long, healthy, and vibrant life.
AMANPOUR: Now, often we’re warned about the risks of an aging population, the so-called demographic gray zone, the drain on the economy, medical
services and so much more.
But author and doctor, Eric Topol, suggests that’s no longer the case. He argues that in fact new technology and medicine will provide us with
vibrant, healthy lives much later on. He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss what he calls a breakthrough moment in the history of human healthcare.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, AMERICAN JOURNALIST: Thank you. And, Dr. Eric Topol, welcome back to the show.
TOPOL: Great to be with you again, Walter.
ISAACSON: You know this book “Super Agers” is a lot different than the books about how to age well and so, because it’s so evidence-based.
Were you showing this sort of as a counterpart to all these best sellers that have all sorts of new theories but on evidence-based?
TOPOL: That certainly was part of it. I think you know the idea that we’d already been active trying to hunt down the source of healthy aging of
super-agers, wellderly, whatever you want to call these remarkable folks. It was very different what’s — than what’s out there.
And so, you know, trying to set the record straight, putting in some around 1,800 citations but really as you said, Walter, getting over — going over
the real exciting advances in the science too.
ISAACSON: We always talk about lifespan. We want to increase lifespan and you talk about health span.
TOPOL: Yes.
ISAACSON: Why do you focus that way?
TOPOL: Yes. I don’t see the reason to promote longevity if you’re not also getting as much health span out of it as possible. Because if you have
someone of advanced age and they’re so frail or — or demented or something that’s really compromised terribly their quality of life, that isn’t what
we’re aspiring to do.
The real goal is just to get as many fully healthy years as possible and we’re not doing that now. Most of the American population are the elderly,
not the wellderly or the superagers. But I think we have the capacity now to flip this.
And over the years ahead, we’d have a lot more wellderly and superagers than people with chronic age-related diseases.
ISAACSON: You both begin the book and you end the book with a couple of patients. I think it’s Mrs. LR and Mr. RP. Tell me why you use them.
TOPOL: Yes. So, Lee Rushall who’s happy to be identified but was referred in the book, as you said, Walter, to Mrs. LR. She was a patient recently in
my clinic, 98, and incredibly intact
And also with a great sense of humor and, you know, just having a very rich life. And she made me think about our wellderly study of the 1,400 people
like her. The average age was in their late 80s, never been sick, no medications.
These are rarefied group of people that took a seven years, Walter, to find 1,400 of these folks.
Well, because she’s so emblematic of healthy aging and the striking features were her — her relatives, her parents and her two brothers died
30 or 40 years of age younger than her. She’s the last one standing.
ISAACSON: So it wasn’t just purely genetic?
TOPOL: Not at all. And in fact, that’s what we found in our wellderly study is that when we not only was the familial pattern a lot like Lee Rushall
but there — we did whole genome sequencing and we found very little that could account for this remarkable super aging status.
ISAACSON: So, let’s start looking at the factors for superagers and start with lifestyle if you would, what you call a lifestyle plus.
TOPOL: Yes. Because while we’ve concentrated largely on diet and exercise, sleep is equally important. And then there’s these other factors like
social engagement, avoiding isolation, being out in nature. These have really strong support as do the environmental toxins of air pollution, of
forever chemicals, and the microplastics, nanoplastics story.
So, they all fits into a simple model that the things that promote inflammation like a poor diet, ultra processed food, overdose of proteins,
lack of deep sleep, the lack of exercise and physical activity, the — the toxins from our environment.
They often in the model that if you promote inflammaging, aging with — inflammation that occurs more as we age, or immunosenescence, the
deterioration of our immune system as we age, which are intertwined, that’s where you get age-related diseases.
ISAACSON: You talk about sleep though, can we go back to that?
TOPOL: Yes.
ISAACSON: Because one of the surprising things in your book was you said, you should get about seven to eight hours of sleep. If you get less, it’s a
problem. But you also said if you get more, it’s a problem.
TOPOL: That’s right. And the question is, even start to see over seven hours, you see this adverse linkage. The question there is, is it because
people have depression? Or is it really something about too much sleep that is not helpful? We don’t really know.
But the population studies where, of course, everyone’s different if we emphasize that. If you look at it from a big population level, seven hours,
not often what’s referred to as eight plus, is the — is the optimal level. But obviously, that’ll vary from one individual to another.
ISAACSON: What does sleep do for us?
TOPOL: Yes. That’s the big thing that we’ve learned in recent years. So the one component of sleep known as deep sleep, the slow wave of sleep
typically occurs in the early hours of sleep. That is the critical time when we use our glymphatics, not lymphatics, but glymphatics in our brain.
These are the channels that get the waste products, these toxins that we accumulate through our brain metabolism each day.
And at night or whenever you sleep, that’s when these glymphatics go to work and get these toxins out of our brain, which are very grow
inflammatory.
If you don’t get enough deep sleep, which as we get older, we lose our propensity for deep sleep. If you don’t get enough, you don’t get these
waste products out.
And not only that, but if you take medications like Ambien, everything points to that you get basically a backup of these toxins. You may get some
more sleep, but you’re not doing anything regarding deep sleep and clearance of these waste products.
ISAACSON: One of the biggest differences between having a long lifespan and a healthy long lifespan or a health span is dementia and specifically
Alzheimer’s. What causes Alzheimer’s?
TOPOL: Well, you know, there’s been the amyloid hypothesis and the tau hypothesis. Basically, the story is there’s misfolded proteins in the —
they get in the brain, develop in the brain. And we develop a very severe inflammation response. If we do that, we’re going to more likely go on to
Alzheimer’s disease.
Now, turns out, a lot of healthy people may have these misfolded proteins, but they don’t have the inflammatory response to them. So, you don’t have
to worry about the amyloid hypothesis or the tau hypothesis.
Basically, what you want is to not have this misfolded protein and its inflammatory reaction occur in your brain.
We have a way to do that now. We have a marker called P-TAU217 that a lot of people and doctors don’t know about. And it can tell us more than 20
years in advance that you are a high vulnerability.
ISAACSON: So, what happens if I learn 20 years in advance?
TOPOL: Yes —
ISAACSON: What else would we do?
TOPOL: That’s what — what’s great, it’s — it’s kind of like if you’ve been following, I suspect you have, because you follow a lot of stuff, the
LDL in the cholesterol story. You lower the LDL and you have less heart disease.
The same thing. If you have a high P-TAU217, and the only reason to get it is because you have a familiar pattern of Alzheimer’s, you have an APOE4 or
a polygenic risk that’s increased.
Anyway, you’re at higher risk, you get the P-TAU217. And if you’re relatively young, you’re in the 40s or 50s, you’ve got a 20-year lead time.
Now, when you start to lose weight, exercise, have a better diet that’s, you know, not pro-inflammatory, sleep better with high quality, deep sleep,
those markers come down. It’s remarkable. It’s notifiable.
And so we should be able to prevent Alzheimer’s because we have brain clocks, we have these markers, we have even health span clocks from these
proteins in our blood now.
So, you cannot just use these clocks to tell about risk and markers, but then you can use them to see if the interventions are working.
And one of the exciting things, I know you’re aware of this, but these GLP11 drugs, like Ozempic and Mounjaro, Zepbound, they are being tested for
Alzheimer’s and people who are not overweight in large trials, which we’ll have in the beginning of next year.
That may work because these agents, these drugs, markedly reduce inflammation in the brain and in the body. And we haven’t had any drugs
like that previously.
So, if we can control the inflammation process and these drugs, as well as other gut hormones, are going to do that for us, we’re going to have a way,
not just lifestyle factors, but in the high-risk people to bring down the markers, the metrics of the aging brain, the sick brain that’s emerging
towards Alzheimer’s years before people ever get mild cognitive impairment.
ISAACSON: Well, you talk about Ozempic and the similar GLPs. How much of a miracle drug is that?
TOPOL: Well, we’ve never had a — a family of drugs like this. And I want to just submit to you that we’re still in the early phase of this.
What we’ve learned, now there’s like 15 different gut hormones. We’re — we only are into two or three of these that talk to the brain and talk to the
immune system. This gut-brain axis is one of the most important discoveries for our health in history. And this drug class reflects that.
As you know, these GLP-1 drugs are not just influencing diabetes, favorable effects, improving people’s obesity status, but they’re also improving the
heart, the kidney, the liver, I mean, virtually every organ. And the last one to be tested of major organs, which is in progress in large trials, now
is the brain.
But even if these — even if Ozempic, which is the lead one in the — as far as these trials, if even if that doesn’t hit, there’s many other of
these gut hormones that are going to be in pill form, various combinations, some of which get in the brain far better. They don’t rely just on the gut
to brain a signal.
That’s what’s going to take us to ability and these other anti- inflammatories to prevent these three diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative, and cardiovascular, because they all have common threads and they all take
20 years to take hold in our body.
ISAACSON: The things you’ve talked about, the immunotherapies, the GLP and the Ozempics, all were part of basic science research that led to
discoveries that may not have even been expected. And we move it from the lab bench to the bedside, but now, we’re cutting basic science funding in
the National Institutes of Health.
How harmful is that going to be to the breakthroughs we’re just beginning to see?
TOPOL: Well, you’ve nailed it there because this is the most extraordinary time in my four decades in medicine where these discoveries and, of course,
the multimodal AI to analyze all of the person data is here and now.
So, we are at the extraordinary moment of a series of breakthroughs, some of which we reviewed in our conversation.
And at the same time, we’re taking down the chance for building on this by seeing near $20 billion gutted out of the NIH and then all the other public
health and science agencies of our government are similarly being dismantled.
So, our ability to follow through and build on this progress is going to be profoundly compromised. It will go forward but at a different pace.
ISAACSON: Tell me about health inequities in the United States and whether that’s a problem for overall health.
TOPOL: It’s a big issue and it’s one of the biggest concerns is the things that we’ve been talking about, the prevention of age-related disease. The
people who are — are the most indigent, the lowest socioeconomic status have the most to gain, the most need and they may be the least to be able
to be advantaged here.
So, you have to go after this. You can’t just assume when you have some new thing, that the people who need it the most are going to get it. And we
could make inequities worse. And they’re — they’re already at a serious level in this country.
So, it’s certainly one of the concerns that I have.
ISAACSON: Dr. Eric Topol, thank you so much for joining us.
TOPOL: Thanks, Walter. I really enjoyed the conversation with you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: That’s it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can
always catch us online, on our website, and all over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.