You have to wonder how in the world this guy was walking the streets at all.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suspect in French killings had ‘radical beliefs,’ record of violent crimes: reports
OLIVER MOOREGlobe and Mail UpdatePublished Wednesday, Mar. 21, 2012 8:40AM EDTLast updated Wednesday, Mar. 21, 2012 9:35AM EDT
theglobeandmail.com
Mohammed Merah was a petty criminal who grew up in a tough part of Toulouse. His mother and older sister despaired of keeping him on the right track and he served time for purse-snatching. He was to be sentenced next month for driving without a licence.
But on Wednesday, allegations of a far more sinister side began to emerge. The man now suspected in a series of killings that rocked France is being described as a radicalized young Muslim who trained in Pakistan.
According to reports whose timelines conflict, Mr. Merah is alleged to have fought with insurgent groups in Afghanistan and may have been part of a spectacular Taliban-led breakout from Kandahar’s Sarposa prison.
The suspect – a 24-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent – is being depicted as a self-described holy warrior and fundamentalist.
“He claims to be a mujahedeen and to belong to al-Qaeda,” French Interior Minister Claude Guéant said in an interview Wednesday with a French television station.
There could be no immediate verification of the information the suspect was giving police. But the nature of the three fatal shooting incidents added to their emotional impact on the public, and lent credence to the possibility of a political motivation. The person who attacked soldiers at a bank machine apparently took the time to turn one over and shoot him again in the head before driving over a body on his scooter and fleeing. The person behind an attack at a Jewish school is believed to have worn a harness-mounted camera and there is speculation video of the attacks could surface on-line.
Police believe that the same gunman was involved in all the attacks, none of which involved robbery.
In his interview with BFM-TV, Mr. Guéant said the suspected killer had “radical beliefs.” He apparently told police that he wanted to “avenge the death of Palestinian children” and to “get at the French army.”
The unit to which some of the slain soldiers belonged had recently returned from Afghanistan.
A French reporter who got a call overnight from a man claiming to be the killer cited the same motivations, and added that the gunman also was upset at a French law banning the Islamic veil.
“I will go to prison with my head held high or die with a smile. Nothing else,” France24’s Ebba Kalondo reported him telling her.
Details about Mr. Merah, whose name was leaked to media by police, emerged even as the suspect remained holed up in a low-rise apartment block in the southern city of Toulouse.
A lawyer who had represented Mr. Merah said he grew up in a bad part of Toulouse.
Christian Etelin said that his client had been in court recently and was due to be sentenced in April to one month for driving without a licence. The lawyer revealed that, as a young man, Mr. Merah served time for purse-snatching but said he was not involved in drugs. His mother and older sister felt unable to keep him on the straight and narrow.
Mr. Guéant said that the mother had been brought to the standoff but would not intervene. “She was asked to make contact with her son, to reason with him, but she did not want to, saying she had little influence on him,” the minister said.
A neighbour he had helped carry a sofa last year told the wire service Agence France-Presse he was “a normal person, like anyone else in the street.”
His normality is now alleged to have been a facade. Mr. Merah is said to have travelled to central Asia around 2010 or 2011, stopping in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While there, according to French media, he was detained in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. It was unclear how long he was in custody on what is being described as a common-law matter. French authorities were said to have been informed of his arrest.
Le Monde reported that Mr. Merah had visited the ungoverned areas of Pakistan, near the Afghan border. He is alleged to have trained in camps occupied by Pakistani Taliban, foreign jihadis and the Haqqani network, one of the most effective groups battling the Afghan government and its foreign backers.
He is then alleged to have entered Afghanistan with a roving group of Pakistani Taliban, who assisted their Afghan compatriots across the south. A separate report from the BBC had him in Afghanistan several years earlier. According to their interview with a prison director in Kandahar, Mr. Merah was arrested in 2007 and jailed for three years for planting bombs. He reportedly escaped in a mass break-out in 2008.
|
