Rare Access to Syrian Prison Holding ISIS Militants
HOLMES: Welcome back, everyone. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes. Let's update you on the top stories this hour. The impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump now shifting to a public phase, after the U.S. House on Thursday passed a resolution detailing how the investigation will go forward. The vote of 232 to 196 largely along party lines. Two Democrats did join Republicans in opposition. The White House condemning the resolution as unconstitutional. Weeks of violent protests against Iraq may soon cost the prime minister his job. Iraq's president says the prime minister has agreed to step down if political leaders can agree on a replacement. At least 200 people have died since protests over unemployment and corruption, among other things, broke out last month. ISIS says it has a new leader, just days after a U.S. military raid killed the terror group's founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Almost nothing is known about his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al- Qurashi. ISIS also claims it's expanding and that it's already on Europe's doorstep and in Central Africa. And CNN has gained exclusive access inside a prison in Syria where foreign ISIS fighters don't know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. Or really, anything that it's going on in the outside world. One of them, a dual American citizen, describes the sense of betrayal he feels and how he yearns to return to the U.S. to face justice. Here's Nick Paton Walsh's exclusive report.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This wasn't the ending they were promised, even if it begins to feel eternal. ISIS foreign fighters, so long as these bars in Syria hold, no longer a threat to the outside world and no longer aware of what's happening outside in it.</s>LIRIM SULEJMANI, PRISONER: We don't get much information of outside, what's happening.</s>WALSH: This man says his name is Lirim Sulejmani and is a dual American citizen. He has no idea that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi has been killed, just 17 hours earlier, when our cameraman visits. The guards explicitly forbid visitors from breaking the news, so we can only ask what if.</s>SULEJMANI: If he's killed, he's killed. For a lot of people, he's already been killed; he's already dead. He -- you don't hear from him, you know. I don't know. For me, personally, I kind of -- I feel like I was betrayed, you know. So there is no Islamic State anymore. It doesn't exist.</s>WALSH: His a common story in the sea of orange. He was just an engineer who was worried about his wife and three children in camps nearby. Their fate is so uncertain, he says, facing U.S. justice would be preferable to another day here.</s>SULEJMANI: I feel very unsafe, and I, you know -- I want to go back to States. I -- one thing for sure, I don't want to be here.</s>WALSH: Nobody here has faced a trial or been found guilty, and now many yearn for the due process ISIS denied others in their barbaric rush for blood, pleading to the nations ISIS pledged to destroy.</s>SULEJMANI: We messaged the American people to France. There is American citizens. They shouldn't be abandoned. They should be brought to States, face -- face the law, and if they committed any crime, or you know, they can be punished, not be left in some -- some place like -- like slow death concentration camp.</s>WALSH: Emaciated, withering, leaderless, ISIS here has not suddenly stopped being a threat. Imagine the rage incubating in these cells, so great the guards fear what may happen if they learn the news of their leader's death. An anger their home countries do not, for the most part, want to import back, but that lives on, after Baghdadi's death, in these cells. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Irbil, northern Iraq.</s>WALSH: And when we come back, many Democrats say the next step in the impeachment inquiry is vital to democracy. But Trump supporters aren't sold. Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, we'll ask voters how it could affect the 2020 presidential race. We'll be right back.