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DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 22, 2012, 7:33 AM (GMT+02:00)

Al Qaeda killer Mohammed Merah

Heavily armed Al Qaeda gunman Mohammad Merah held off night-long police and commando assault to extract him from his Toulouse apartment. The siege began its second day Thursday, March 22 after an exchange of gunfire and explosions. The police tried using stun grenades, cut off water and electricity but – under orders to capture him alive – failed to draw the killer of a Jewish teacher and three children and three French soldiers out of the apartment.

Boasting he had acted for al Qaeda to “bring France to its knees,”  he said his only regret was that he had not killed more people. Residents of the house and vicinity were evacuated ready for a raid.

debkafile: His capture alive is vital in order to extract from him all possible information about al Qaeda and its operations in France and Europe.
Merah and his brother and brother’s girlfriend, who were arrested earlier in the day, will have been questioned about their ties with al Qaeda cells in Europe and other continents.
Questions are already being asked about how French intelligence and counter-terror agencies, which had held  him and family members under surveillance for some time, failed to discover the deadly plans they were hatching against Jewish and Moslem targets.
Mohammed Merah said he had trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which countries he visited in 2010 and 2011. A Kandahar prison official identified him as an al Qaeda bomber who was imprisoned for three years and escaped in a mass Taliban jailbreak in 2008.
The detained terrorist and his accomplices will be asked whether the attacks were part of a French Islamic or external politically-motivated master plan to cause President Nicolas Sarkozy to lose the coming presidential election. Islamists have longed pegged him as anti-Muslim, especially after he had the veil for Muslim women banned in public places. They also made a note of his Jewish background.
The expeditious and successful hunt for the motorcyclist in black who murdered a teacher and three children at the Jewish Ozar Hatora school in Toulouse on Monday and two French paratroops in Montauban last Thursday, energized Sarkozy’s sliding campaign for reelection. He showed himself to be capable of handling crises with the right measures of operational competence and sensitivity.

However the dragging-out of the Toulouse house siege by the terrorist’s wiles undercut this gain. Uncomfortable questions about his security service’s handling of a deadly terrorist conspiracy came to the fore and could hurt his prospects.
debkafile reported earlier Wednesday.
The killer, aged 24, of Algerian descent, injured three policemen in a shootout shortly after they surrounded the house before dawn Wednesday, March 21. His four Jewish victims were laid to rest in Jerusalem.

Toulouse police hunted him down to an address 2 kilometers from the Ozar Hatorah school where he committed his murders after identifying him as the motorcyclist in black who also killed two French paratroopers and wounded a third in neighboring Montauban last Thursday.
Merah fell under police suspicion after that attack but was not arrested. He was active in the extremist Islamic organization called Forsane Alizze which was only outlawed in February although it was long identified with al Qaeda.
The terrorist called French TV stations after the attacks and said he had avenged French participation in the Afghan war, the suffering of Gaza Palestinians and the Sarkozy government’s ban on the veil in public places for Muslim women. He had videotaped his murders to further propagate their impact.
The Jewish teacher, Yonathan Sandler, 30, his sons Arieh, 3 and Gavriel, 6 and the Ozar Hatorah principal’s daughter, Miriam Monstango, aged 8, whom he shot dead Monday at the Jewish school, were laid to rest at the Har Menuhot cemetery in Jerusalem Wednesday attended by masses of people and notables.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe flew to Israel with the victims and attended the funerals as a mark of French-Israeli solidarity in the face of he terrible murders. “Never doubt our determination to fight anti-Semitism in France which violates all our values and will not be tolerated,” he declared.

The dawn raid in Toulouse was accompanied by security police swoops on extremist Muslim hideouts across France.

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