Court told that killer a lone wolf

PARIS — A French ex-intelligence chief said Thursday that he believes Mohammed Merah acted alone during his 2012 shooting rampage that killed seven people, but that he received outside help during his preparations.

Bernard Squarcini told a court in Paris that Merah, who was killed days after the attacks at a Jewish school and against French soldiers, was radicalized by extremist networks in France and abroad.

“He acted alone for more efficiency and to make sure he would not leave traces behind him,” Squarcini said at the trial of Merah’s older brother, Abdelkader Merah. “Mohammed Merah acted alone, but other people were holding his hand.”

In March 2012, Mohammed Merah killed three French paratroopers in Toulouse and Montauban, in southern France. A few days later, he burst into a Jewish school, killed a rabbi and his two young sons and grabbed an 8-year-old girl and shot her in the head.

Squarcini, now a private security consultant, was heading the French police counterterrorism agency at the time of the killings.

At the time, Squarcini said Merah acted alone without any affiliation to any extremist network. He said Merah had been self-radicalized while in prison for petty crimes.

He appeared to backtrack slightly Thursday, telling the court that he had limited information about Merah’s connections at the time of the killings.

Merah had been on a list in 2006 of people suspected of being radicalized because of his relationship with his older brother, who is on trial on charges of complicity to terror in the shooting attacks in and near Toulouse.