Suspect in French Killings Slain as Police Storm Apartment After 30-Hour Siege
Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old former garage mechanic who claimed responsibility for the brutal slayings of four men and three children, was shot dead on Thursday when security forces stormed the apartment where he had barricaded himself for more than 30 hours.
The death of Mr. Merah brought a violent end to a series of events that transfixed France, but also left unsettling questions about potential lapses by intelligence services, and the lives they may have cost.
Mr. Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent who claimed ties to Al Qaeda but apparently acted alone, was struck in the head by a bullet in the final moments of a fierce firefight, said François Molins, the prosecutor who led the investigation into the killings. Mr. Merah was found dead on the ground after leaping from the apartment through a low window, still firing, according to the interior minister, Claude Guéant. A Colt .45 pistol was found near him, with just two rounds remaining and an empty magazine nearby.
The authorities said they had hoped to take Mr. Merah alive, seeking information about homegrown terrorists and his shadowy path to Islamic radicalism. While the difficulty in preventing attacks by such “lone wolf” killers is widely acknowledged, Mr. Merah, who had traveled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, was in fact well known to the French police and intelligence services.
The foreign minister, Alain Juppé, told French radio before the raid on Thursday morning: “I can understand that one might wonder if there was a lapse or not. We need to bring clarity to this.”
Mr. Molins and other officials seemed at pains to explain why Mr. Merah had failed to attract the attention of investigators earlier, especially before he killed his final four victims, including three children, at a Jewish school on Monday.
“He’s not an individual who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan by taking the usual paths, which are obtained by certain facilitators and monitored by specialized services,” Mr. Molins said. “He figured it out all on his own.”
Yet, Mr. Molins said on Wednesday that Mr. Merah was arrested some years ago in Afghanistan by the Afghan police and turned over to the American military, which transferred him to the French authorities. He had also been on the United States government’s no-fly list for “some time,” an American law enforcement official said on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing national security matters. It is not clear whether the United States authorities shared that information with their French counterparts.
Asked why Mr. Merah had not been under closer scrutiny in France, Mr. Molins said that “thousands” of French people travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, explaining that France does not have the resources to monitor all of them.
Several terrorism experts disagreed, saying that Mr. Merah appeared to have been overlooked or underestimated, and adding that only about 15 to 30 men with a similar profile travel from France to the region each year.
“We’re not good enough at detecting them,” said Laurent Montet, a director and instructor at the Institute of High Studies in Criminology.
Mr. Molins also acknowledged that Mr. Merah was known to have “jihadist sympathies,” and had been questioned by intelligence services as recently as November, after returning from two months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The officials apparently accepted his explanation that he had been there as a tourist.
Mr. Merah procured a prodigious stock of firearms and ammunition — including several automatic weapons, which are rare in France — activity that is most likely to have involved contact with criminal groups and ought to have drawn the attention of French intelligence, said Mr. Montet, the criminologist.
There were also suggestions that more effective data analysis might have led the police to Mr. Merah in time to prevent his last murders. He was identified as a suspect only Monday afternoon, after the final four killings, according to Mr. Molins. Yet investigators had been in possession of the evidence that led them to him — an Internet trail that connected him to the first killing — since Saturday.
“Something might have been possible, here one can wonder a bit, in effect,” said Alain Bauer, a criminologist with the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.
French law is highly protective of personal privacy, Mr. Bauer noted, and French intelligence services are restricted in their ability to mine databases for potential threats, and take a more qualitative approach.
“In the United States, it’s the system that counts,” the antiterrorism magistrate Marc Trévidic said in an interview last year. “In France, it’s the men.”
Mr. Merah killed with shocking coldness, witnesses said, shooting each of his seven victims with a round to the head at point-blank range and filming his exploits, Mr. Molins said. According to the prosecutor, in the first recording Mr. Merah can be heard telling his victim, a soldier, “You kill my brothers; I’m killing you.”
In a video from the second shooting, which left two paratroopers dead and one critically wounded, Mr. Merah departs from the scene on a powerful motor scooter shouting, “God is great!”
Just before noon on Thursday, officers entered Mr. Merah’s apartment through a front door and windows, said Mr. Guéant, the interior minister. As the police reached the bathroom, Mr. Merah surged out “firing with extreme violence,” Mr. Guéant said.
More than 300 rounds reportedly were discharged in the firefight. One officer was slightly wounded, and two others were in shock.
Over the course of the siege, which began in the predawn darkness, Mr. Merah made a series of disclosures, officials said, claiming the seven killings and saying he had planned at least three more. The killings, he said, were meant to avenge the suffering of Palestinian children and to protest French intervention abroad as well as the banning of the full Islamic veil in France.
While he had earlier indicated that he hoped to live, just before 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Merah told the police he did not fear death. “I will go to paradise,” he said, according to Mr. Molins. At that point, he ceased communicating with negotiators. The raid began just under 12 hours later.
The authorities found ammunition of various calibers in the apartment, along with materials for gasoline bombs and several empty bullet clips. At his death, he wore a bullet-proof vest, a black djellaba, or traditional robe, and jeans, Mr. Molins said.
Investigators will now seek to determine if Mr. Merah indeed acted alone, as he insisted. Mr. Merah’s brother Abdelkader, 29, whom the authorities have described as a known Islamist radical with connections to jihadi networks, remains in police custody, along with his mother and a friend. Explosives were found in a car belonging to Abdelkader.
Earlier in the investigation, the authorities suspected both Merah brothers of potential involvement.
On Tuesday, the two were identified as primary suspects in the case, Mr. Molins said.
Plans were made late that night to arrest them, along with their mother. Even then, however, investigators had been unable to determine which of the two brothers was the man they were seeking.
It was not until Mr.Merah opened fired on the police agents sent to capture him that he became the prime suspect.
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Sources: CNN, NY Times, Russia Today, Youtube, Google Maps
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