Remy De La Mauvinere/Associated Press
Police officers and firefighters on Wednesday were positioned outside
a Toulouse residence in which a suspect in the Jewish school shooting
had barricaded himself.
By SCOTT SAYARE
Published: March 21, 2012
TOULOUSE, France — A 24-year-old man suspected in the methodical
killings of seven unarmed people in this region over the past 10 days
barricaded himself in a small apartment building in Toulouse early
Wednesday as negotiators tried to secure his surrender. In a standoff
that stretched past 12 hours, he fired several heavy volleys at the
hundreds of police officers ringing the building, and at one point
threw a .45-caliber gun out the window, of the kind used in all the
attacks.
Emergency services vehicles blocked a street during a raid on a house
to arrest a suspect in the killings of three children and a rabbi at a
Jewish school in Toulouse, on Wednesday.
The man was identified in French media reports as Mohammed Merah, a
French national of Algerian descent. Interior Minister Claude Guéant,
speaking at the site, said the man told negotiators that he belonged
to Al Qaeda and that the attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of
Palestinian children and to protest French military deployments
abroad.
Investigators believe the suspect was the motorcyclist behind the
killings of three paratroopers, two Arab and one black, 10 days ago,
as well as an attack on Monday outside a Jewish school that killed a
rabbi, two of his young children, and an 8-year-old girl that the
gunman held by the hair to execute, pausing to switch to a
9-millimeter gun when his .45 jammed. They believe he was wearing a
camera around his neck at the school to record his murders.
The suspect had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and called
himself a mujahedeen, or freedom fighter, and had been under
surveillance by the French domestic intelligence service for several
years, Mr. Guéant said, "though nothing whatsoever allowed us to think
he was at the point of committing a criminal act." He became a suspect
on Monday afternoon, after investigators traced an IP address, used in
connection with the killings of three French paratroopers 10 days ago,
to the suspect's mother, according to Pierre-Henry Brandet, a
spokesman for Mr. Guéant.
Aviv Zonabend, the vice president of the local branch of the Crif,
France's most prominent Jewish organization, who met with Mr. Guéant
on Wednesday morning, gave a slightly different account, saying that
investigators apparently had been unable to locate the suspect before
the shootings on Monday.
The police action started about 3 a.m. on Wednesday after lengthy
planning late Tuesday night, officials said. As the standoff
lengthened into the afternoon, The Associated Press reported that
Cedric Delage, regional secretary for a police union, said the suspect
has promised to turn himself into police and that if the suspect did
not, the police would attempt to arrest him by force. French
television reported at one point that the suspect had been arrested,
but then said the standoff continued. The suspect's mother was taken
to the building by police in the hope that she would help persuade the
man to surrender, Mr. Guéant said, but she declined to help, saying
that her son had refused to listen to her in the past. The suspect's
brother, who was known locally for his radical religious ideology, was
detained for questioning outside Toulouse on Monday, Mr. Guéant said,
without giving details.
President Nicolas Sarkozy was scheduled to preside over a funeral
service for the three paratroopers in nearby Montauban on Wednesday,
and was visiting their barracks at midday.
He had ordered the region's security alert to the high level of
"scarlet," giving security forces wide powers that include the
authority to close some public places, halt and search buses and
trains and deploy combined patrols of police officers and soldiers.
Police officers were ordered to guard Muslim and Jewish schools and
places of worship across the region.
Before the authorities said on Wednesday that their prime suspect
claimed ties to Al Qaeda, many analysts had speculated on whether he
was motivated by extreme right-wing passions coinciding with the
presidential elections.
After the shootings on Monday, the main candidates in the French
presidential campaign, including Mr. Sarkozy, suspended their
campaigns as political debate swirled around whether the killings were
somehow inspired by anti-immigrant issues.
But the suspect's reported links to Al Qaeda seemed likely to shift
that debate onto familiar themes of law and order and the fight
against terrorism, particularly if the authorities are able to end the
crisis with the arrest of the suspect, removing the immediate threat
of further bloodletting.
It remained unclear what the effect of the events in Toulouse would be
on the presidential election, which is only a few weeks away. Nor was
it clear whether they would stoke anti-Muslim rhetoric among some
politicians and voters. Muslims complain widely of feeling vilified by
some political elements, on the right in particular, and the
anti-immigration far right has been gaining unprecedented popularity
in recent months. It was also possible that the deaths in Toulouse
could cause a calming of the political discourse.
In Paris on Wednesday morning, Mr. Sarkozy met with Jewish and Muslim
leaders and called for restraint and solidarity among the populace.
"We must be united," he said in a brief address. "We must yield
neither to easy falsehoods nor to vengeance."
Before meeting with Mr. Sarkozy, Richard Prasquier, the national head
of Crif, the Jewish organization, said: "It is absolutely excluded
that we confuse this character — and the Islamist, jihadist, Al
-Qaeda-linked movement he represents — and the Islam of France, which
is a religion like all other religions."
"These acts are in total contradiction with the foundations of this
religion," said Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the French
Council for the Muslim Faith, who also met with Mr. Sarkozy.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment