French Interior Minister: Police in Armed Stand-Off with Toulouse Shooting Suspect
March 21st, 2012Update: Mohamed Merah Entered Israel, Was Investigated by Shin Bet and Released
Via: Haaretz:
An investigation by Israeli intelligence revealed on Monday that Mohamed Merah, the gunmen responsible for last week’s Toulouse shootings, spent time in Israel and Palestinian territories over a year and a half ago.
According to the Shin Bet, Merah entered Israel after crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan in September 2010. He was investigated by the Shin Bet. The investigation did not bring up any suspicious information, and he was allowed to enter the country.
Furthermore, The Shin Bet investigation could not confirm a claim by the French intelligence that Merah was arrested in Israel with a knife.
Merah stayed in Israel for a total of three days, during which it is unknown whether he was involved in any terror-related activity.
Security sources told Haaretz that Merah visited Israel before his stay in Afghanistan or Pakistan, thus there was no information that could indicate whether or not he constituted a security threat.
—End Update—
Kandahar Governor’s Office: “Security Forces in Kandahar Have Never Detained a French Citizen Named Mohammad Merah”
Via: Reuters:
An Afghan provincial governor on Wednesday denied statements by a senior prison official that French school shooting suspect Mohamed Merah was jailed for bombings in Afghanistan in 2007 and escaped months later.
Citing prison documents, Kandahar prison chief Ghulam Faruq had told Reuters that Afghan security forces detained Merah on December 19, 2007, and that he was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace.
A senior Kandahar intelligence source confirmed Faruq’s account and said he had a file on a French Algerian of the same name, who was arrested in 2007 and broke out of prison in 2008.
But the Kandahar governor’s office said that account was “baseless”, citing judicial records. “Security forces in Kandahar have never detained a French citizen named Mohammad Merah,” the governor’s spokesman, Ahmad Jawed Faisal, said.
Merah’s lawyer in France, Christian Etelin, said his client was in prison in France from December 2007 until September 2009, serving an 18-month sentence for robbery with violence, and therefore could not have been in Afghanistan at the time of the Kandahar jailbreak.
—End Update—
Update: Mohamed Merah on French Security Service “Watch List” Since 2008
Via: Independent:
Mohamed Merah, the man suspected of the Toulouse killings, had been on a French security service “watch list” since 2008. He and his older brother, Abdelkader, have been on a list of possible suspects since the first in a series of three attacks and seven killings in eight days.
…
Although French authorities were congratulating themselves yesterday on locating Merah before he killed again, they also face awkward questions on why they failed to identify him as a serious threat earlier.
—End Update—
Update: Mohamed Merah Shot Dead in Gunbattle with French Authorities
The sounds of the gunbattle were captured on this video posted by Russia Today.
Via: BBC:
A police siege in the French city of Toulouse has ended with a man suspected of killing seven people now dead, the French interior minister has said.
Police stormed the flat where Mohammed Merah was holed up at 09:30 GMT, after a siege that had lasted 32 hours.
Merah fired at officers and was found dead after jumping from a window.
—End Update—
Update: “Merah Had Been Tracked for Years by France’s DCRI Domestic Intelligence Service”
Via: AFP:
Suspected jihadi serial killer Mohamed Merah is a 23-year-old French petty criminal of Algerian origin who spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan and claims to be an Al-Qaeda militant.
Born in the southwestern French city of Toulouse on October 10, 1988, Merah had been tracked for years by France’s DCRI domestic intelligence service, but nothing suggested that he was preparing a major crime.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said he was part of a group of around 15 followers of Islamic fundamentalist Salafist ideology in Toulouse, where he lived in the northern Izards neighbourhood.
He has made two trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan, although Gueant said he did not think Merah had visited any militant training camps while there.
—End Update—
Update: U.S. Sent Suspect Back to France from Afghanistan
Via: AFP:
The U.S. army sent a Frenchman currently besieged by police in Toulouse after the killings of seven people, back to France after he was arrested in Afghanistan, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Afghan police detained the man at a road checkpoint and handed him over to the U.S. army “who put him on the first plane headed to France,” prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.
—End Update—
Via: Telegraph:
Police officers have exchanged gunfire and are negotiating with a man who claims connections to al Qaeda and is suspected of killing of four people at a Jewish school and three soldiers in southwest France, the French Interior Minister has told reporters.
Mr Claude Gueant said that the 24-year-old man had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan and said that he was acting out of revenge for France’s military involvement overseas.
“He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al Qaeda,” Mr Gueant told journalists at the scene of the siege.
“He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions,” Mr Gueant said.
Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the residential area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometres from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school which was the scene of Monday’s shootings.
Mr Gueant said that police were also talking to the brother of the gunman, who is a French citizen from Toulouse.
