Killer trained with Taliban
French authorities try to figure out when, how 24-year-old became an extremist
TOULOUSE, FRANCE – For Mohamed Merah, the Frenchman suspected of killing four Jews and three Muslim soldiers in southwestern France, the road to radicalization ran from a delinquent childhood in Toulouse to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Merah, 24, who was holed up in a suburban Toulouse apartment Wednesday, besieged by police commandos, claimed affiliation with alQaida and said he wanted to avenge Palestinian children, French Interior Minister Claude Guéant said.
The suspect, a French citizen of Algerian origin, had been under surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence service for several years after being identified in Afghanistan.
But back home he led a normal life of soccer and night clubbing, worked in a car body workshop, loved motorbikes and showed no sign of militancy, according to friends and neighbours.
Merah had a string of 15 convictions by juvenile courts, mostly for theft, including several involving violence, and had served several short prison terms.
But Guéant told reporters “there was no evidence that he was planning criminal actions.”
As police psychologists tried to talk him into surrendering peacefully, Merah gave the same impression of calm determination and self- control as the gunman on a scooter recorded by security cameras at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school on Monday.
Exactly when and how Merah slid from petty crime to Islamist radicalism remains unclear.
“His radicalization took place in a Salafist ideological group and seems to have been firmed up by two journeys he made to Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the minister said.
During the first of those trips, Merah was picked up by chance at a road check by local police in Kandahar and handed over to the U.S. army, which put him on a flight back to France, according to François Molins, the public prosecutor in charge of the case.
A French security source said that was in 2010, after Merah had spent about a year in the Afghanistan/pakistan region. The gunman said he had undergone military training with al-qaida in the Pakistani province of Waziristan, Molins told reporters.
U.S. officials declined comment on any role in handling Merah in Afghanistan but said they believed he was probably not affiliated with what remains of the core alQaida organization.
Instead, they believe he is probably a lone wolf, or almost-lone wolf, with at most a handful of associates including perhaps his brother.
The daily Le Monde said Merah had trained with Pakistani Taliban fighters in a border tribal zone before being sent into southwestern Afghanistan to fight against NATO forces supporting the Kabul government.
French troops are part of that operation, which may explain why the first victims of the gunman’s killing spree were paratroopers killed in Toulouse on March 11 and Montauban on March 15.
French intelligence sources said about 30 French fighters trained by the Taliban were believed to have taken part in attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan.
Merah’s profile is typical of hundreds of second- or thirdgeneration French immigrants from north Africa who have travelled to Afghanistan or Pakistan over the last two decades attracted by militant Islamist groups, security officials say.
On his return to Toulouse, Merah led a normal life. He lost his job a few months ago and spent a lot of time alone at home watching videos on the Internet, including some of gruesome Islamist beheadings of hostages, according to the prosecutor.