The crackdown by counter-terrorism police this week in Mohamed Merah’s family entourage resulted in the custody of 6 women. 4 of them have been released, 2 have just been brought before an anti-terrorism judge.
Five women were arrested on Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 October by the Counter-Terrorism Sub-Directorate and the Central Directorate of the Criminal Police in their home in Toulouse or Albi. And a sixth went to the police station herself. They are part of the entourage of the Merah family, especially the older sister of the terrorist Souad Merah.
A first woman placed in police custody was released on Tuesday evening. The next day, 4 of them were finally released, with no chase for the moment.
One of them was Souad Merah’s neighbor. He had accompanied her to the airport to flee to Syria in 2014. According to his attorney Me Etelin, “She doesn’t have the slightest connection with jihadism, she has never been interested in it. When she took my client Souad Merah to get on the plane, she didn’t know what Mohamed Merah’s sister’s intentions were.” This mother of 2, who works in a nursing home, was released on Wednesday.
As for the last 2 women left in police custody, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has just indicated that they will be presented, this Friday 7 October, to an anti-terrorism judge. An indictment looms in an open judicial investigation for association with terrorist criminals.
According to Agence France Presse, the PNAT has opened a judicial investigation for “terrorist criminal association and avoidance by a parent of his legal obligations that compromise the health, safety, morals or education of his child”.
These 6 women have been in the crosshairs of the anti-terrorism police for several years. Some had already been heard during a preliminary investigation in 2014, then finally released.
According to a source close to the case, they are suspected of having stayed in Syrian terrorist groups in the Iraqi-Syrian area between 2013 and 2014, some accompanied by their children.
If they don’t have a direct link to the acting of Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in the Toulouse and Montauban attacks, justice wants to know what role they could play with Souad Merah in his escape from France and his radicalism.
