3/21/12, "3 blasts outside hideout of French terror suspect," AP, USA Today
"Three explosions were heard near an apartment building in southwest France where a suspected gunman who boasted of shooting seven victims in an al-Qaeda-linked terror spree is holed up.
Three explosions were heard near an apartment building in southwest France where a suspected gunman who boasted of shooting seven victims in an al-Qaeda-linked terror spree is holed up.
Orange flashes lit up the night sky with each blast near the Toulouse apartment building where police have surrounded 24-year-old suspect, Mohamed Merah.
Earlier Wednesday, in a tense, daylong standoff, French riot police in southwest France, demanded the surrender of a gunman.
Hundreds of police cordoned off the streets around an apartment complex in the city of Toulouse to arrest the suspect, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, and a firefight erupted. Three police were wounded and negotiations with the suspect dragged on for hours.
Prosecutor Francois Molins said the gunman, Mohamed Merah, was a self-taught radical Salafi who expressed glee at killing three Jewish children, a rabbi and three French paratroopers. Merah had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan, he said.
The prosecutor said Merah was planning to kill another soldier imminently, so police had to launch the 3 a.m. raid.
In the negotiations, the suspect "expresses no regret, only that he didn't have time to have more victims. And he even bragged, he said, of bringing France to its knees," the prosecutor said.
The gunman's brother and mother were being detained. Molins said the brother, Abdelkader, had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq.
French authorities — like others in Europe — have long been concerned about "lone-wolf" attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who self-radicalize online. Molins' comments, however, marked the first time a radical Islamic motive has been ascribed to killings in France in years.
The police raid was part of France's biggest manhunt since a wave of terrorist attacks in the 1990s by Algerian extremists. The chase began after France's worst-ever school shooting Monday and two previous attacks on paratroopers beginning March 11, killings that have horrified the country and frozen campaigning for the French presidential election next month.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has played up nationalist themes in his bid for a second term.
"Terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community," Sarkozy declared Wednesday on national television before heading to funeral services for the two paratroopers killed and another injured Thursday in Montauban, near Toulouse.
The suspect repeatedly promised to turn himself in Wednesday, then halted negotiations. Cedric Delage, regional secretary for a police union, said police were preparing to storm the building.
After bouts of deadly terrorist attacks in France in the 1980s and 1990s, France beefed up its legal arsenal — now seen as one of the most effective in Western Europe and a reference for countries including the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sarkozy's office said President Obama called him Wednesday to express condolences to the families of the victims and praise French police for tracking down the suspect. The statement said France and the United States are "more determined than ever to fight terrorist barbarity together."
In recent years, French counterterrorism officials have focused mainly on al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of Osama Bin Laden's network that has its roots in an insurgent group in Algeria, a former French colony.
The suspect has told police he belonged to al-Qaeda and wanted to take revenge for Palestinian children killed in the Middle East,* Interior Minister Claude Gueant said, adding the gunman was also angry about French military intervention abroad.
"He wants to avenge the deaths of Palestinians," Gueant told reporters as talks went on. "He's (also) after the army."
Molins said Merah's first trip to Afghanistan ended with him being picked up by Afghan police "who turned him over to the American army who put him on the first plane to France."
"He had foreseen other killings, notably he foresaw another attack this morning, targeting a soldier," Molins said, adding also planned to attack two police officers. "He claims to have always acted alone."
Merah has a long record as a juvenile delinquent with 15 convictions, Molins added.
An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Merah had been under surveillance for years for having "fundamentalist" Islamic views.
During the standoff, police evacuated the five-story building, escorting residents out using the roof and fire truck ladders. The suspect's apartment was on the ground floor of the postwar building, locals said.
French authorities said Merah threw a Colt .45 handgun used in each of the three attacks out a window in exchange for a device to talk to authorities, but had more weapons like an AK-47 assault rifle. Gueant said other weapons had been found in his car.
"The main concern is to arrest him, and to arrest him in conditions by which we can present him to judicial officials," Gueant added, explaining authorities want to "take him alive … It is imperative for us."
Delage said a key to tracking the suspect was the powerful Yamaha motorcycle that he has used in all three attacks — a dark gray one that had been stolen March 6. The frame was painted white, the color witnesses saw in the school attack.
According to Delage, one of the suspect's brothers went to a motorcycle sales outfit to ask how to modify the GPS tracker, raising suspicions. The vendor then contacted police, Delage said.
The shooter has proved to be a meticulous operator. At the site of the second paratrooper killing, police found the clip for the gun used in all three attacks — but no fingerprints or DNA on it.
Those slain at the Jewish school, all of French-Israeli nationality, were buried in Israel on Wednesday as relatives sobbed inconsolably. The bodies of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 3, and 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego had been flown there earlier in the day.
At the funeral ceremony in Jerusalem, Myriam's eldest brother, Avishai, in his 20s, wailed and called to God to give his parents the strength "to endure the worst trial that can be endured."
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, meanwhile, denounced the deadly shooting attack at the Jewish school and condemned the link to Palestinian children.
"It's time for criminals to stop using the Palestinian cause to justify their terrorist actions," Fayyad said in a statement. "The children of Palestine want nothing but dignified lives for themselves and for all the children.""
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Ed. note: Palestinian children were never targeted by Israel, it's the opposite. Two Palestinians recently slashed the throats and stabbed the hearts of sleeping Israeli children:
3/14/11, "Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.
The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom. With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (four) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats."...
3/14/11, "Our World: Three Jewish children," Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick
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3/14/11, "Dead Jews is no news," Mark Steyn, The Corner
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Soros group J Street objected to mention of the Fogel murders in general US discussion of Israel borders:
"J Street Statement on the Rothman-Austria Letter on Incitement and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
- "J Street objects to the letter’s use of the horrifying murder of an Israeli family in the West Bank" which it says it's on record condemning. (And doesn't want anymore talk about apparently).
(I could not find a date on the J Street web page. But the Fogel murders, also known as the 'Itamar murders' took place in March 2011. Further discussion of J Street reaction to the Fogel murders in AT article below. ed.)
4/1/11, "Incitement by Palestinian Arabs: The Role of J Street," American Thinker, Lawrence W. White, MD
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Ed. note: Israel never retaliated against any children for this.
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Update, 3/22/12, BBC, "Christian Etelin, a lawyer who has previously acted for Merah (the killer), said his client had violent tendencies.
"There was his religious engagement, an increasing hatred against the values of a democratic society and a desire to impose what he believes is truth," Mr Etelin said.
He also denied earlier reports that Merah had been jailed for explosives offensives in Afghanistan, saying his client was in jail in France for robbery with violence at the time - from December 2007 to September 2009."..."French gun suspect 'wants to die'," BBC.
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