French suspect showed no sign of militant leanings

[Dino Velvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/french-suspect...174820686.html

French suspect showed no sign of militant leanings

By THOMAS ADAMSON | Associated Press – 37 mins ago


PARIS (AP) — Just a few weeks ago, Mohamed Merah partied at a nightclub, and an acquaintance noticed nothing out of the ordinary about the former car body shop worker who another friend said liked to talk about "cars, bikes, girls and sport."
On Wednesday, they both stood stunned near a huge police cordon in a blue-collar neighborhood in the southwestern city of Toulouse where negotiators were trying to get Merah to surrender.
The 24-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent was holed up in his apartment after exchanging gunfire with police and suspected of killing three Jewish children, a rabbi and three paratroopers in a wave of attacks in southern France.
Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters that Merah was a self-taught Salafi who had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan. He also had a long criminal record, the prosecutor said, adding that the suspected gunman's brother had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq.
But according to acquaintance, Mehdi Nedder, nothing about Merah's social life in Toulouse before the French attacks made him stand out as a radical bent on sowing terror — or even that he had radical leanings.
Nedder, 31, described Merah as a "normal young man."
"Three weeks ago he was in at a nightclub," Nedder said in an interview. "And this morning I hear we're talking about al-Qaida. How can you change like that in three weeks?"
A friend of Merah's who would only identify himself by his first name, Kamel, recalled playing soccer with him as the two grew up in Toulouse.
"(He) was respectful and generous," said Kamel, 24. "We never spoke about weapons, religion or politics, but cars, bikes, girls and sport."
Police brought Mehdi's mother to the standoff scene to try to get her to negotiate Wednesday with her son, but she declined, saying she had no control over him, French authorities said.
As a teenager, Merah got caught up in petty crime, some of it involving violence, said his lawyer, Christian Etelin. But Etelin told BFM TV the recent wave of deadly shooting attacks didn't fit the profile of the suspect he first represented in 2004.
"He was a polite and courteous boy" who used to work in a body shop, Etelin said.
However, Etelin also said he was aware that Merah had been monitored by authorities after he made a visit to Afghanistan two years ago.
Western officials have been concerned for years about Muslim militants with European citizenship visiting northwestern Pakistan, possibly training for missions that could include terror attacks in Europe. In 2010 alone, dozens were believed to be there.
French authorities did not say whether they were aware that Merah had been training with militants before the attacks in France that began March 11 — or if they learned of the training after they closed in on him.
A person of the same name was arrested in southern Afghanistan five years ago and escaped from his prison cell in Kandahar province in a 2008 mass Taliban jailbreak, according to Kandahar provincial spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal. However, Faisal says their records also show that Merah was an Afghan citizen from Kandahar province.
In neighboring Germany, which regularly tracks extremists who head to Afghanistan or Pakistan for paramilitary training, a senior intelligence official said that he had never seen Merah's name come up. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.
American officials have been kept in close contact with French authorities as the killings of soldiers and Wednesday's standoff evolved, and are now "working to determine what the suspect's ties to al-Qaida might be," a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
British officials want to know whether Merah "had any links that could present threats to (Britain's) national security," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job.
"Another question will be if he was simply affiliated with a group, or whether someone in a group was giving him specific instructions," the British offical said. "At this stage, that doesn't appear to be the case but it's still in early days."
____
Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, David Rising and Paisley Dodds contributed from Washington, Berlin and London.

[russtafa]

i hope stavros,prospero and the gang jump on a plane to save the poor unfortunate lol

[Stavros]

Much as I like Toulouse, I think the professionals know what they are doing and why would I want to save a killer like that? Do you ever actually read my posts?

[Dino Velvet]

Still closing in.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/fr...055423403.html

French police close in on suspect in Toulouse school killings

By Laura Rozen
Senior Foreign Affairs Reporter






Elite French counter-terrorism police were closing in Wednesday to arrest a suspect in the killing this week of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse, France. The suspect in the attacks was identified as a 23-year-old Frenchman from Toulouse of Algerian descent named Mohammed Merah. He has reportedly traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, served jail time in France from 2007-2009 for non-terrorism related offenses, and allegedly has proclaimed ties to al-Qaida. Police earlier Wednesday arrested the man's brother, whose computer IP address was reportedly used to answer an ad for a motorbike for sale by one of three French soldiers shot last week.

The suspect's mother has been brought to the scene to try to assist police in persuading her son to surrender. France's Interior Minister Claude Guéant also arrived on the scene, outside a residential building in the northern Toulouse neighborhood of Croix-Daurade.
Mareh has barricaded himself in the building, which the police were surrounding after a thirteen-hour standoff, as French officials addressed the media nearby.
Earlier Wednesday, two French police officers were wounded in a shoot out with the suspect, MSNBC reported. The operation to try to take Mareh into custody has been broadcast live on French television all day.
French news channel BFM TV reported that Merah "was linked to Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), an Islamist group banned last month in France," the BBC reported. "From a family of five children, the suspect is a mechanic by trade, according to Le Point."
A man claiming to be the gunman called French broadcaster France 24 Wednesday saying he had filmed the killings and would post the videos online, the broadcaster said.


The same .45 caliber gun has reportedly been used in three separate shooting incidents over the past nine days, resulting in seven deaths in the Toulouse area. Those killed include four people at the Jewish school this week, as well as three French troops of North African and Caribbean descent, who were killed in two separate incidents last week. The victims were shot in the head by a gunman riding a black Yamaha scooter, reports said.
The chief suspect is said to have cited the death of Palestinian children as the reason for the attacks, and to have targeted the French troops of North African descent (like himself) because he considered them traitors. French police allegedly tracked him based on recent emails inquiring about the sale of the motorbike.
Killed in the attacks on Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse Monday were Jonathan Sandler, a rabbi and teacher at the school, his two sons, Gabriel and Arieh, ages 3 and 6, and Miriam Monsonego, the 7-year-old daughter of the school principal. A fifth person, a 17-year-old boy, was also wounded in the attack.
Those killed at the Toulouse Jewish school, who had dual French-Israeli nationality, were buried in Israel Wednesday. Their bodies were flown to Israel from France Wednesday, accompanied by their relatives and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.
The French embassy in Washington will give those who wish to sign a book of condolences over the Toulouse tragedy an opportunity to do so on Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.










A convoy carried coffins from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, France March 20, 2012. (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty …

[Dino Velvet]

Mohammed Merah killed by French Police Sniper fire.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/fr...133538199.html

[hippifried]

So... Was that the plan?

[russtafa]

i suppose the guy will be made a saint by the muslims

[Dino Velvet]

In Aftermath of Shootings, Sarkozy Is Seizing the Moment http://news.yahoo.com/aftermath-shoo...191724539.html

[russtafa]

France is sitting on a time bomb and so are large parts of Europe

[Prospero]

Russtafa wrote: "i hope stavros,prospero and the gang jump on a plane to save the poor unfortunate lol
__________________ It seems in his book that a man murdering Afghan women and children in their beds in Afghanistan is fine but a similar crime in Europe is not. BOTH are 100 per cent wrong Russ - old chap. Your hate blinds you. You really are such a simple minded man.