France targets militants in raids
Police arrest 19, seize weapons in crackdown on ‘radical Islamists’
PARIS— In the wake of Mohamed Merah’s terror attacks that killed seven in southwestern France, French police carried out a series of raids Friday across the country, rounding up 19 people described as radical Islamists.
Following Merah’s dramatic death more than a week ago, President Nicholas Sarkozy had asked the police to analyze the danger posed by those with known sympathies for Islamic militancy.
Early Friday morning, the result became apparent. Elite squads raided homes in Toulouse, where Merah lived, and in Nantes, Lyon and in the Paris region. The raids were conducted by the judicial police and the domestic spy service, the DCRI.
Sarkozy said that 19 people had been rounded up. The operation “is not simply related to Toulouse, it’s around the country, it’s linked with a form of radical Islamism,” Sarkozy remarked on Europe 1, adding that weapons were seized, including Kalashnikov rifles.
“The trauma of Montauban and Toulouse was deep in our country,” he said, “a bit like the trauma that followed Sept. 11 in the United States and New York.”
Sarkozy vowed to continue the raids and predicted that they would lead to deportations. “There will be other operations that will continue and will allow us also to remove a certain number of people from the national territory,” he said.
At least one known militant group was known to have been targeted in the operation. Forsane Alizza — or “Knights of Pride” — headquar- tered in Nantes, had just been banned in late February. Its website is no longer operational, but some of its videos are still available on Youtube.
The government claimed it was a group whose intentions were violent, and it was training its members for “armed combat.” A recruitment drive by the group placed a call for “soldiers.” It called for Sharia law in France and openly voiced support for known terrorist groups.
Its leader, Mohammed Achamlane, was among those taken in Friday. Police seized weapons, including three Kalashnikovs, a Glock pistol and a grenade, in the arrest, ac- cording to Europe 1. Sarkozy’s government has acted pointedly following Merah’s death on March 22, deciding to ban several foreign Islamic clerics from entering France for an Islamic conference in April, judging them incompatible with French values. Sarkozy promised, if re-elected, to criminalize the visiting of Islamic extremist websites and travelling to foreign countries for terrorist training. The police operation comes one day after the burial of Merah just outside Toulouse. Controversy surrounded the burial after Toulouse’s mayor said the body shouldn’t be buried in his city. Algeria, where the family had sought to bury him, also refused. Merah was born in France and was a French citizen. “He was French,” Sarkozy told French TV. “Let him be buried and let’s not have any arguments about it.” About two dozen people from his neighbourhood in Les Izards attended the funeral, according to French media, but members of his family were not there. Merah’s brother Abdelkader, 30, was also arrested following Merah’s death and last Sunday he was indicted on preliminary charges. Police suspect Abdelkader, whose fun- damentalist views are known to authorities, helped to groom his younger brother and helped him organize the murders.
Merah, 23, an unemployed mechanic with a long history of delinquency, killed three French paratroopers, a rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren, all in point-blank shootings, which police said he filmed. An edited video of the shootings was sent to the Paris office of Al-jazeera, which decided not to broadcast it after Sarkozy urged it not to.
Merah confessed to the killings during a siege of his apartment, which lasted 32 hours.