Labs Ready To Test Olympic Athletes For Doping; Iraqi Forces Prepare For Next Major Battle
GORANI: A little more than a month before the start of the Rio games and the International Olympic Committee has focused on keeping them free from doping. The IOC met in Switzerland at a summit where it announced its anti-doping plans. In one measure, athletes from Russia and Kenya will need to be individually evaluated in order to be declared eligible to compete. The reason is because of the unsatisfactory state of the two countries national anti-doping bodies. The IOC also said it supports the ban on Russian track and field athletes by the International Association of Athletics Federation. But it said some Russians could still take part if they're cleared by the IAAF. Olympic organizers say they intend to make sure that no other athletes cheat their way to Olympic gold. Our Nick Paton Walsh visited a lab in Rio de Janeiro that is ready to put Olympic competitors to the test.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the race to Rio to be ready, few final tweaks matter more than in this one room, Brazil's 24-hour anti-doping laboratory for the Olympics. Testing 6,000 tiny samples from athletes in the games each able to crush a sportsman's dreams. Where nations will be desperate for a clean slate after allegations of doping on a state sponsored industrial scale. Russian track and field stars banned for now. Russia has categorically denied all allegations, but says it needs to regain trust. Here they're hoping to stay clear of controversy.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we are not in the good times, maybe we're really cleaning the system now.</s>WALSH (on camera): Doping risks overwhelming the Olympics introducing geo political rivalry, corruption, and essentially cheating at the heart of sports. (voice-over): Here urine is stripped down to the core molecules, these spectrograms then identified, but it's before this stage that samples were allegedly tampered with in the 2014 Sochi games. Russia accused staggering abusing its security services, its new KGB, to tamper with supposedly tamper proof bottles allegedly using this hole in the laboratory wall to switch samples. With each bottle having a special random number on its seal, how do you do that?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Millions of different caps. Different tubes, open a bottle and close it with another.</s>WALSH (on camera): So you basically have to be the people making the bottle to be able to --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost, yes, or have a factory of that to be able to fabricate it.</s>WALSH: But it's almost possible to be sure if countries are willing to do that kind of thing, that level of planning.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's really hard to reach that point. You need to involve, well, high ranking officials from the country from the country anti-doping agency, from the direction of the laboratory from the technicians, so it's to do that is kind of hard, I think.</s>WALSH (voice-over): This where the cold gray wearing of science collides with that underworld of alleged breathtaking deception.</s>GORANI: All right, senior international correspondent, Nick Payton Walsh joins me now from Rio de Janeiro with more. How will it work for these athletes that need to clear their names and take additional steps in order to compete like the Russians or the Kenyans? Would they do this also in Rio? How would it work?</s>WALSH: Not particularly easy to understand scheme that the IOC chief told us back later earlier on today. The Russian and Kenyan athletes from all different disciplines are being told that they can't rely on their own national anti-doping mechanism to give them a clean slate of health. That their presumption of innocence has been taking away. And they are effectively now have to use independent anti-doping testing to prove their innocence again. Now through the different international federations for the different disciplines they wish to compete in. It appears, though, the track and field athlete, Russians will not be permitted to compete in these games no matter what extra level of proof is put through. That seems pretty clear at this stage. So a lot I think that the Kenyans will have to do in a short period of time ahead. A lot of potential (inaudible). These tests will not take place in Rio, but other independent areas too. All eyes on that laboratory you're seeing who have an enormously politicized and intense scrutinize job ahead of them for 6,000 samples during the games themselves -- Hala.</s>GORANI: So they have the doping issue. They also have the security issue. We saw in your piece yesterday, pickpockets are taking advantage of the big crowds. How much of a concern is it when really the crowds descend on Rio and other parts of Brazil?</s>WALSH: They're not even here yet and there are supposed to be half a million and still it's a drip, drip of athletes here rehearsing, training, being attacked. An Australian paralympian (inaudible) on Sunday attacked at a beach not far from where I'm standing at gunpoint robbed of her bike. She's gone home now, back to Australia. But the Australian Olympic officials said we're thinking about bringing private security for protection for our athletes here. The supposed hundred thousand Brazilian security personnel on the streets here haven't materialized. They would like to see them there earlier. This isn't the first time we have seen athletes here rehearsing rob or mugged at some stage. Street crime is a serious issue. Increasing because of the recession here. The police, struggling with their budgets declaring state of emergency as a state here on Friday citing the potential for failing funding security personnel too. And Hala, just one other staggering thing that's occurred in the last 48 hours. On Sunday morning, a hospital, one of five designated to treat Olympic visitors here came under a gun attack. Inside was an alleged drug kingpin known as "Fat Family," 20 masked men arrived there, tried to free him. They succeeded. The shootout killed one, injured many others, gunfire, explosions in the hospital corridors here. Absolutely staggering. The closest hospital to the stadium where the Olympic opening ceremony will occur. A lot here building up in terms of worries. So little time ahead before the games begin -- Hala.</s>GORANI: All right. Thanks very much. Nick Paton Walsh is in Rio. Now a 15-year-old boy is dead and the Israeli military is saying it was a mistake. The country's military says soldiers shot and killed a 15-year- old Palestinian boy today mistakenly believing he was involved this a stone throwing incident. A Palestinian official says Mahmud Rafat Badhran (ph) was in fact on his way home from a swimming pool in the west bank when the car he was traveling in came under fire. Several other Palestinians were wounded in the shooting. The Israeli military says it was responding to an attack on cars nearby. It says Palestinian threw rocks and Molotov cocktails as Israeli vehicles injuring three civilians. The Israeli military says troops, quote, "fired towards suspects," but then later identified those hit were, in fact, bystanders. Well, it's been a down and out fight but the Iraqi Army is slowly retaking Falluja from ISIS. It's now regained control of the city's main hospital. Success in Falluja has the Iraqi military looking toward its next major challenge and that's a bigger prize, Mosul. Ben Wedeman shows us the battle ahead.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the road north of Baghdad, Iraqi Armed Forces assemble for the next battle in the war against</s>ISIS. (on camera): This massive military column, I counted more than 250 vehicles is headed north. It's headed to the province where Mosul is located. Even though the battle of Falluja is still raging, what's clear is the Iraqi Army is preparing for the next phase, the last phase of this war in Iraq, the liberation of Mosul. (voice-over): Two years ago, this army was in full retreat. Driven out of Mosul by ISIS. It lost one city after another. It was on the verge of total collapse. Today the tide appears to have turned. The government is taken back to Ramadi and fighting to drive the extremists out of Falluja. With this army says defense minister, (inaudible), we'll wipe ISIS out. God willing, this is the beginning of the Iraq in Iraq. The convoy passed through Tikrit until just over a year ago the city was under ISIS control. The brutal former masters of the city now despised. There are rats and dogs. It took well over an hour for all the vehicles to rumble through Tikrit. The battle for Mosul won't be easy and it won't be brief. Perhaps, the cheering is premature. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Tikrit, Iraq.</s>GORANI: Still ahead, more from the emotional interview with Jo Cox's widower, Brendan Cox. What he says his wife thought about the tone of the E.U. referendum debate where she was murdered last week in broad daylight. We'll bring you that next.