Muslim Hate in France
Mohammed Merah (Shootings in Toulouse, France)
The New York Times
March 22, 2012
Mohammed Merah, 23, has been identified as the man suspected in the methodical killings of seven unarmed people in Toulouse, France, over a period of 10 days in March 2012. He died on March 22 when he jumped out a window, firing a weapon, during a raid and shootout that ended a 30-hour standoff with the police.
Mr. Merah was described as a French national of Algerian descent, a former garage mechanic and petty criminal who made two trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years, and said that he had been trained by Al Qaeda.
Investigators believe the suspect was the motorcyclist behind the killings of three French paratroopers, all of Arab descent, in early March, as well as an attack on March 19 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.
While much about Mr. Merah’s past remained unclear or unverified, he seemed to be another example of the kind of homegrown terrorist, with a European nationality and passport, considered a major security threat in a period when Al Qaeda has largely disappeared as a coherent organization.
On March 21, he barricaded himself in a small apartment building in Toulouse as negotiators tried to secure his surrender. He initially indicated to negotiators that he hoped to live, but then said that he wished “to die with weapons in his hands.”
In the first hours of the standoff , he fired several heavy volleys at the hundreds of police officers ringing the building, injuring several, though none seriously. At one point he threw a .45-caliber gun out the window, of the kind used in all the attacks.
The next morning, the police entered the apartment and slowly searched each room using video equipment and fearful of a possible trap. Not finding Mr. Merah in any of the other rooms, they came to the bathroom last. As the police began to inspect the bathroom with the cameras, Mr. Merah burst forth and began firing. More than 300 rounds were discharged during the firefight, and two officers were lightly wounded.
France’s
interior minister, Claude Guéant, speaking at the site, said the
suspect told negotiators that the attacks were meant to avenge the
deaths of Palestinian children and to protest French military
deployments abroad.
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. He became a suspect after investigators traced an IP address used
in connection with the killings of the three paratroopers to the man’s
mother.
The authorities said they initially suspected both Mr. Merah and his brother Abdelkader, 29, who was known locally for his radical religious ideology and had been detained for questioning outside Toulouse on Monday.
Explosives were found in Abdelkader’s car two days after the school shootings, the police said, and Mr. Merah was tracked in part because his mother’s computer had been used to make contact with his first victim, a French soldier selling a motorbike online, whom Mr. Merah says he killed on March 11.
Two days after the attack, investigators viewed surveillance tapes from the killings that showed the gunman, with what appeared to be a video camera strapped to his chest, seeming to film his actions as he coolly shot his victims. They also met with a motorcycle dealer who recalled a visit by one brother, which allowed them to identify the two as primary suspects in the case.
They were able to locate the two later that day, he said, and plans were made to arrest them, along with their mother. Investigators were not certain at that point which brother had been the gunman. It was not until Mr. Merah opened fired on the elite police agents sent to capture him that he became the prime suspect.
President Nicolas Sarkozy was scheduled to preside over a funeral service for the three paratroopers in nearby Montauban on March 21, and was visiting their barracks at midday. A fourth paratrooper had been critically wounded; he was black.
The bodies of those killed at the school had been flown overnight to Israel for burial. They were Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, a religious instructor; his two sons, Arye, 6, and Gabriel, 3; and Miriam Monsonego, 8, the daughter of the school’s principal. Rabbi Sandler was a French citizen; the three children had dual French-Israeli nationality.
After the school shootings, 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 rhetoric.
France tries Pakistani man for torching woman
Tue Feb 10, 2009
PARIS, Feb 10 (Reuters)
- A Pakistani man went on trial in France on Tuesday for setting his
ex-girlfriend alight after she refused to marry him, in a case that rights
groups are using as as a symbol of violence against women in poor neighbourhoods.
Amer Mushtaq Butt, 28, doused Chahrazade Belayni in petrol and set fire to her
on the street as she was leaving her home in the under-privileged Paris suburb
of Neuilly-sur-Marne in 2005.
She suffered third-degree burns on 60 percent of her body, fell into a coma and
underwent many operations. Belayni, now 21, works for the police.
"I want him to pay for what he did, not for my sake but to show other girls who
have problems with their partners that it's possible to fight back and the
justice system won't abandon them," she told reporters just before the trial
opened.
Butt fled to Pakistan after the attack on Belayni but returned to France to hand
himself in a year later. He has confessed to the attack and blamed it on an
obsession with the young woman. He faces a maximum sentence of life in jail.
At the start of the trial, the court rejected a request from Belayni that the
hearings take place behind closed doors, causing her to burst into tears.
Human rights groups such as the prominent "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" ("Neither
whores nor submissive women") say violence against women is rife in certain poor
communities with high Muslim populations on the outskirts of French cities.
The activists say some young Muslim men take out their frustrations about
poverty and discrimination on women, demanding that they cover up according to
Islamic tradition. If they refuse, they are considered "whores". (Reporting by
Thierry Leveque; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Louise Ireland)