France buries killer Merah

Algeria refused to take his body

TOULOUSE, FRANCE – Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah was buried in his hometown Toulouse on Thursday, despite a protest by the French city’s mayor after the serial killer’s ancestral homeland Algeria refused his corpse.

Around 15 mainly young men accompanied 23-year-old Merah’s gold-handled casket into the city’s Cornebarrieu cemetery where Muslim prayers were recited before the al-qaida-inspired killer’s body was laid to rest.

Muslim official Abdallah Zekri said he expected the body to be buried in an anonymous grave as “the family wants a burial that is the most simple and discreet possible.”

The burial took place after President Nicolas Sarkozy waded into the debate over where the man who shot dead three Jewish children, a teacher and three soldiers should be buried.

“He was French. Let him be buried and let’s not have any arguments about it,” Sarkozy told BFMTV news channel.

“I’ve said what I think of Mohamed Merah, who behaved in a monstrous way,” Sarkozy said of the gunman.

Toulouse mayor Pierre Cohen called earlier for a lastminute delay to the burial, saying it was “inappropriate” for him to be buried in his hometown in southwestern France where he also carried out some of his killings.

But Zekri of the French Muslim Council told AFP that, after negotiations, Merah would be buried in the Toulouse cemetery’s Muslim section. Zekri earlier criticized the mayor’s call for a delay.

“The announcement is, frankly, ill-placed. Mohamed Merah was born here, he lived here, he died here. Let him be buried and be done with it. We must stop this argument,” he said.

Family members had wanted the Frenchman of Algerian descent flown to Algeria, but they changed their mind after Algeria refused the body.