France's
Interior Minister Claude Gueant (C Rear) is seen before the assault to
capture gunman Mohamed Merah during a raid on a five-storey building to
arrest a suspect in the killings of three children and a rabbi on Monday
at a Jewish school, in Toulous
Investigators have found no signs the suspected gunman behind a
deadly string of attacks in southern France was under orders from
al-Qaeda or any militant group, a top French official said Friday —
disputing Mohamed Merah's claim of terrorist ties before he died in a
shootout with commandos.
France's prime minister and other
officials have been fending off suggestions that anti-terrorism
authorities failed to adequately monitor the 23-year-old Merah, who had
been known to them for years before he carried out three deadly shooting
attacks this month.
Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent
who claimed links to al-Qaeda, was killed in a dramatic gunfight with
police Thursday after a 32-hour standoff at his Toulouse apartment.
Prosecutors
said he filmed himself carrying out the attacks that began March 11,
killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French
paratroopers with close-range shots to the head. Another Jewish student
and a paratrooper were wounded.
An autopsy of the gunman's
body showed he received two fatal bullet wounds to the left temple and
to the abdomen — but that he was hit by some 20 bullets, mainly in the
arms and legs, judicial and police officials said.
The head
of the elite police unit, Amaury de Hauteclocque — whose mission was to
take Merah alive — insisted his men fired only in self-defence.
Investigators
looking for possible accomplices honed in on Merah's 29-year-old
brother, Abdelkader, and the brother's girlfriend, described by one
official as espousing an ultraconservative form of Islam. Both were
detained early Wednesday, along with Merah's mother.
The
brother and girlfriend were being transferred Saturday to police
anti-terrorist headquarters in Paris for further questioning. Abdelkader
Merah had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters
to Iraq, but was never charged. Merah's mother was to be released.
Meanwhile,
a senior official close to the investigation told The Associated Press
that despite Merah's claims to negotiators of al-Qaeda links, there was
no sign he had "trained or been in contact with organised groups or
jihadists."
The former auto body worker had travelled twice
to Afghanistan in 2010 and to Pakistan in 2011, and said he trained
with al-Qaeda in the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan. He had
been on a US no-fly list since 2010.
The official said Merah
might have made the claim because al-Qaeda is a well-known "brand,"
adding there was "absolutely no evidence allowing us to believe that he
was commissioned by al-Qaeda to carry out these attacks."
Merah
was questioned by French intelligence officers last November after his
second trip to Afghanistan, and was cooperative and provided a USB key
with tourist-like photos of his trip, the official told the AP.
While
he was under surveillance last year, Merah was never seen contacting
any radicals and went to nightclubs, not mosques, the official said.
People who knew him confirmed that he was at a nightclub in recent
weeks.
Merah told negotiators during the police standoff that he
was able to buy a large arsenal of weapons thanks to years of petty
theft, the official said.
French President Nicolas
Sarkozy's spy chief, meanwhile, said that Merah told negotiators he
attacked the Jewish school only after missing his original target — a
French soldier.
"It wasn't the school that he wanted to
attack," Ange Mancini told France-24 TV, calling the school shooting
"opportunistic," because it happened to be nearby.
That
account appears to contradict Merah's claim that his attacks were to
avenge the deaths of Palestinian children as well as to protest the
French army's involvement in Afghanistan and a French law banning
Islamic face veils.
The widow of the slain rabbi and mother
of two of the slain children issued an emotional plea online Friday,
urging Jewish parents to honour her dead family members by loving their
children and teaching them to love "their fellow man."
In a letter
released on an Orthodox Jewish website, Eva Sandler wrote that the
"spirit of the Jewish people can never be extinguished."
"May no
one ever have to endure such pain and suffering," she wrote. "I thank
the Almighty for the privilege, short though it was, of raising my
children together with my husband. Now the Almighty wants them back with
Him."
Sandler's husband, Jonathan, and the couple's sons,
5-year-old Arieh and 3-year-old Gabriel, were buried Wednesday in
Jerusalem, along with 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego.
Officials
painted a picture of a self-radicalised young man — the type of
lone-wolf terrorist intelligence services have long most worried about,
who radicalize alone and operate below the radar.
Merah told
police during the standoff that he was trained "by a single person" when
he was in Waziristan, not in a training centre, so as not to be singled
out because he spoke French," the director of the DCRI intelligence
service, Bernard Squarcini, told the Le Monde newspaper.
Some
politicians, French media and Toulouse residents questioned why
authorities didn't stop Merah before he started his killing spree.
Socialist
presidential candidate Francois Hollande said questions needed to be
asked about a "failure" in counterterrorist monitoring. Other candidates
posed similar questions, and even French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe
said "clarity" was needed on why Merah wasn't arrested earlier.
Prime
Minister Francois Fillon told RTL radio Friday that authorities "at no
moment" suspected Merah would be dangerous despite his long record of
crime and his time in prison.
"We must not mix religious
fundamentalism and terrorism, even if naturally we well know the links
that unite the two," Fillon said.
In response to the slayings,
Fillon said France's conservative government is working on new
anti-terrorism legislation that would be drafted within two weeks.
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