Gunman boasted he brought France to its knees
A besieged gunman suspected of
shooting dead seven people in the name of al Qaeda boasted to police on
Wednesday he had brought France to its knees. He said
his only regret was not having been able to carry out his plans for more killings.
In an unfolding drama that has riveted France, about 300 police,
cordoned off a five-storey building in a suburb of Toulouse where the 24-year-old
Muslim shooter is holed up. The shooter is identified as Mohamed
Merah.Authorities said the gunman, a French citizen of Algerian origin, had
been to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he claimed to have received training
from al Qaeda.
Merah told police negotiators he had killed three French soldiers
last week and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday to avenge
the deaths of Palestinian children.” He has no regrets, except not having more
time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees," Paris Prosecutor Francois
Molins, part of the anti-terrorist unit leading the investigation, told a news conference.
The gunman, who filmed his killings with a small camera, had already identified
another soldier and two police officers he wished to kill, Molins said. The
gunman had repeated promises to surrender this evening to members of the elite
RAID unit surrounding the house, which had been evacuated of its other residents.”
He has explained that he is not suicidal, that he does not have the soul of a
martyr and that he prefers to kill but to stay alive himself," Molins
said.Sarkozy, who is running for re-election in five weeks time, paid tribute
at a ceremony in an army barracks in Montauban, near Toulouse, to the three
soldiers of North African origin killed last week. A fourth soldier of Caribbean origin is in a coma.” Our soldiers
have not died in the way for which they had prepared themselves. This was not a
death on the battlefield but a terrorist execution," Sarkozy said,
standing before three coffins draped in the French flag after paying his
respects to bereaved relatives.” We must remain united. We should in no way
yield to discrimination or vengeance," he said in his eulogy.” France can only be great in
unity. We owe it to the memory of these men; we owe it to the three murdered
children, to all the victims."Sarkozy's appeal for national unity came
after far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a rival presidential candidate, said France should wage war on
Islamic fundamentalism.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said Merah was a member
of an ideological Islamic group in France but this organisation
was not involved in plotting any violence. He said Merah had thrown a Colt 45
pistol of the kind used in all the shootings out of a window of the block of
flats, where he has been living, in exchange for a mobile phone, but was still armed.
Two police officers were injured in a firelight with the gunman after police
swooped at 3 am local time (0200 GMT).Police sources said they had conducted a
controlled explosion of the suspect's car at around 9 am (0800 GMT) after discovering
it was loaded with weapons. Officials said police had also arrested Merah's
girlfriend and his brother, who is also known to authorities as a radical
Islamist.Gueant said Merah had contacted the first soldier he attacked on the
pretext of wanting to buy his motorcycle. Investigators identified the IP
address he used - that of his mother - because he was already under
surveillance for radical Islamist beliefs.” We knew, and that is why he was
under surveillance, that he had travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan,"
the minister said.Merah's telephone was tapped from Monday and with the help of
other information the police decided to raid his house.Merah has a criminal
record in France, Gueant said, but nothing indicating such an attack was possible.
A police source told that investigators had also received a tipoff from
a scooter repair shop in Toulouse where the gunman asked to change the colour
of the Yamaha scooter used to flee the shootings and to remove a GPS tracker
device.A group of young men from Merah's neighbourhood described him as a
polite man of slight build who liked football and motorbikes and did not seem
particularly religious."He isn't the big bearded guy that you can imagine,
you know the cliche," said Kamal, who declined to give his family
name."When you know a person well you just can't believe they could have
done something like this."Sarkozy had been informed of the standoff early
in the morning, officials said. The president's handling of the crisis could be
a decisive factor in determining how the French people vote in the two-round
presidential elections in April and May.The Jewish victims from the Ozar
Hatorah school were buried in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Parliament speaker Reuben
Rivlin said in his eulogy at the hill-top cemetery that the attack was inspired
by "wild animals with hatred in their hearts".Authorities said on
Tuesday that the gunman had apparently filmed his rampage through the school
with a camera strapped to his body.He wounded Rabbi Jonathan Sandler as he
entered the building, then shot an 8-year-old girl in the head, before
returning to kill Sandler and his two children, who had rushed to his side, at
point blank range.Immigrants and Islam have been major themes of the campaign
after Sarkozy tried to win over the voters of Le Pen, who accused the
government on Wednesday of underestimating the threat from
fundamentalism."We must now wage this war against these fundamentalist
political and religious groups that are killing our children, that are killing
our Christian children, our Christian young men, young Muslim men and Jewish
children," she told the i-Tele news channel, questioning the decision to
deploy in Afghanistan.But leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities said the
gunman was a lone extremist.France's military presence in Afghanistan has
divided the two main candidates in the election.Socialist frontrunner Francois
Hollande has said he will pull them out by the end of this year while Sarkozy
aims for the end of 2013.
