Attacks by Al-Qaeda or a far-right group? The misdeeds of a lone wolf? It will take several days to establish a link between these attacks and their author, a young radicalized Islamist in prison who has passed under the radar of anti-terrorism. An Islamist named Mohamed Merah. In 2012, he is 23 years old. He grew up in a climate of family violence, experienced foster homes and delinquency, and traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.
Imad Ziaten, his first victim
On March 11, 2012, a soldier from the 1st Parachute Train Regiment, Imad Ziaten, 30, was the first to fall. He posted an ad on Le Bon coin to sell a motorcycle. Appointment taken in a parking lot in Toulouse, Mohamed Merah lodges a bullet in his head and leaves on a powerful scooter.
On the 15th, three soldiers withdraw money in front of the barracks of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment in Montauban. Mohamed Merah parks his scooter, approaches and opens fire. Mohamed Legouad, 23, and Abel Chennouf, 26, are killed. Loïc Lieber, a 28-year-old Guadeloupe, will remain quadriplegic.
Objective ? Identify the killer
On television sets, experts, journalists and police follow one another, build hypotheses and try to draw conclusions. “Who wants these paratroopers? At that time, as the soldiers killed are of North African origin, one wonders if these are racist crimes. At this stage, we have no element leading to the Islamist hypothesis,” says historian Jack Thomas.
Children killed at close range
On March 19, around 8 a.m., the case took another turn. At close range, he murders two children, Myriam Monsonego, 7, and Gabriel Sandler, 3, who are trying to escape him in the playground of the Ozar Hatorah school. A few seconds earlier, Arie Sandler, 6, and his father Jonathan Sandler succumbed to bullets from the helmeted killer.
Several hundred investigators are mobilized to identify him. Among the computers that clicked on Imad Ziaten’s ad, they go back to that of Mohamed Merah’s mother. At that time, suspicion fell on Abdelkader Merah, the older brother who lives in Auterive, near Toulouse. Nicknamed “Bin Laden” in the Izards neighborhood where they grew up, he is known to Directorate General of Homeland Security (DGSI) for his membership in the Salafist movement.
A 30 hour siege
On the night of March 20 to 21, the police launched two almost simultaneous operations. Abdelkader Merah is arrested. But the Raid encounters unexpected resistance from its sibling. Entrenched in his apartment in a residential area in the east of the city, he opened fire through the door and forced them to withdraw.
Police negotiators negotiate with the young offender, who claims responsibility for the three attacks on behalf of Al-Qaeda. The siege will last 30 hours, until the assault during which it will be brought down.
Presented as his “mentor”, Abdelkader Merah will be sentenced to 30 years in prison for “complicity in assassinations”, the justice considering that he “knowingly provided aid or assistance in the preparation of the crimes committed by Mohamed Merah”.
“There is always hate”
Latifa Ibn Ziaten, mother of the first soldier killed, regrets that the jihadist was not captured alive and tried. She had been shocked to hear, a month after the attacks, young people from the Izards telling her: “Mohamed Merah is a martyr, a hero of Islam”.
Since then, she has founded the association Imad for youth and peace, carrying a message of fight against fanaticism. She says she is “worried” because “youth is fractured, suffers a lot. I meet many young people who no longer have hope. There is always hatred, we are not immune”.
For his part, Jonathan Chetrit, a former student of Ozar Hatorah who teaches up to secondary school, resumes in his book, “Toulouse, March 19, 2012”, the poignant testimonies of other survivors of the trial of Abdelkader Merah. He regrets “media treatment focused on the personality and the family of the killer”, rather than on his victims.
On March 20, a commemorative ceremony is planned in Toulouse in the presence of relatives of the victims, politicians and religious leaders.
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