TOULOUSE, France — In a dramatic end to a 32-hour standoff, a
masked French SWAT team slipped into the apartment of an Islamist
extremist Thursday, sparking a firefight that ended with the
suspect jumping out the window and being shot dead in the head.
Mohamed Merah, 23, was wanted in the deaths of three French
paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi – all killed
since March 11 in what Merah reportedly told police was an attempt
to "bring France to its knees."
Police had been trying to capture him alive since a predawn raid
Wednesday to arrest him at his apartment in the southwestern city
of Toulouse. The killings he was accused of – and boasted about to
police – have shocked France, ignited fear in moderate Muslims
about stoking discrimination and may even affect the country's
upcoming presidential election.
The seven slayings, carried out in three motorcycle shooting
attacks, are believed to be the first killings inspired by Islamic
radical motives in France since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking in Paris, said an
investigation was under way to see if Merah, a French citizen of
Algerian descent who claimed links to al-Qaida, had any
accomplices.
His mother and a brother were detained Wednesday by police after
the mother's computer became a critical link in tracking Merah
down. The brother Abdelkader had already been linked to Iraqi
Islamist networks.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Internet messages,
reported Thursday that a lesser-known jihadist group was claiming
responsibility for the attacks in France. SITE said Jund
al-Khilafah issued a statement saying "Yusuf of France" led an
attack Monday, the day of Jewish school shootings. There was no
independent confirmation of the claim.
Authorities said Merah espoused a radical form of Islam and had
been to Afghanistan and the Pakistani militant stronghold of
Waziristan, where he claimed to have received training from
al-Qaida. He also had a long record of petty crimes in France for
which he served time in prison.
Merah told negotiators he killed to avenge the deaths of
Palestinian children and to protest the French army's involvement
in Afghanistan.
After initially agreeing to surrender, Merah declared he would
resist and that it would be either them or him.
"If it's me, who cares? I'll go to paradise," Prosecutor
Francois Molins quoted Merah as saying.
Molins said Merah burst out of his bathroom when police gingerly
entered his apartment Thursday morning, wildly firing his gun about
30 times before jumping out an apartment window.
"(He) launches an assault, charging police through the apartment
and firing at them with a Colt .45, continuing to advance, armed
and firing, as he jumps from the balcony," Molins said.
Merah fired "until he was hit by a retaliatory shot from the
RAID (elite police unit), which felled him with a bullet to the
head," Molins said, insisting that police fired in
self-defense.
It was not clearly exactly when he was hit by the bullet to the
head.
The prosecutor said police had gone in cautiously, using robot
cameras to see if there were any boobytraps. Three members of the
special squad were wounded Thursday, bringing the total of injured
French officers throughout the standoff to five.
Merah, lying on the ground below his second-story apartment, was
wearing a flak jacket and black djellabah robe. A Colt 45 – the
type of weapon used in the three attacks – was at his side along
with a sack, Molins said.
Merah had made "extremely explicit films" of all three deadly
attacks, video since viewed by police, and claimed to have posted
them online, the prosecutor said. Merah told investigators where to
find the bag with the videos, caught by a camera that had been
strapped to his chest and given to someone else to keep.
In the film of the March 11 attack that killed a paratrooper,
the prosecutor said the gunman is heard saying: "You kill my
brothers – I kill you."
In his film of the second attack, on March 15 that killed two
paratroopers and wounded a third in nearby Montauban, Merah cried
out "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great" in Arabic, the prosecutor
said.
Authorities spoke little about the video of the third attack at
a Jewish school in Toulouse. A witness to another video of that
rampage, from a school camera, said it was chilling and had
described him shooting young children in the head.
A stash of arms was found in a car rented by Merah, including an
automatic Sten pistol, a revolver, a pump-action rife and an Uzi
submachine gun. Ingredients for Molotov cocktails were stashed on
the apartment balcony. Inside, were three empty ammunition clips, a
pot packed with pieces of ammunition and a Colt .45 with a
near-empty clip.
Merah had told investigators where to find the car.
More than 200 special investigators had worked to track him
down. They found his mother's computer, which he used to respond to
an online ad posted by the first victim, a paratrooper trying to
sell his scooter. They also found a Yamaha motorcycle shop where
Merah suspiciously sought information about how to deactivate a GPS
tracker.
After the standoff ended, Sarkozy announced tough new measures
to combat terrorism. He said anyone who regularly visits "websites
that support terrorism or call for hate or violence will be
punished by the law." He also promised a crackdown on anyone who
goes abroad "for the purposes of indoctrination in terrorist
ideology."
The French president also appealed to citizens not to confuse
violence with France's estimated 5 million Muslims.
"Our Muslim compatriots had nothing to do with the crazy motive
of a terrorist," Sarkozy said, noting that Muslim paratroopers were
among those killed.
The threat of radical Islam in France was apparently affecting
the presidential race, in which Socialist Francois Hollande has
long been the pollster's favorite to unseat Sarkozy, a
conservative.
A poll released Thursday suggested that Sarkozy may benefit
politically from the horror of recent days.
The survey by CSA suggested Sarkozy would slightly dominate the
first round of voting on April 22 but lose to Hollande in the May 6
runoff, by 36 percent to 45 percent. That was the smallest spread
yet and the highest score for Sarkozy so far for polls by CSA in
this campaign.
The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday, after the rabbi and
three children were killed at a Jewish school but before details
about Merah emerged. A total of 1,003 people were questioned by
telephone.
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