Press reports and comments by top intelligence officials suggest that Mohamed Merah, the alleged gunman who killed seven people including three Jewish schoolchildren in a nine-day shooting spree in Toulouse, was a French intelligence asset.
These revelations raise questions about French intelligenceâs failure to stop Merah, and whether this failure was dictated by political considerations. The investigation of Merah was led by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), run by Bernard Squarciniâa close associate of incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, previously running far behind Socialist Party (PS) candidate François Hollande in next monthâs presidential elections, has benefited from massive media coverage after the attacks and now is catching up to Hollande in polls.
In a March 23 Le Monde interview, Squarcini had confirmed that Merah had traveled extensively in the Middle East, even though his legal earnings were roughly at the minimum wage: âHe spent time with his brother in Cairo after having traveled in the Near East: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and even Israel. ⊠Then he went to Afghanistan via Tajikistan. He took unusual routes and did not appear on our radars, nor those of French, American, or local foreign intelligence services.â
Squarcini apparently aimed to bolster the official explanation for Merahâs ability to escape police: he was an undetectable âself-radicalized lone wolf.â This story is being shattered by revelations that French intelligence agencies were apparently in close contact with Merah, trying to develop him as an informant inside Islamist networks.
Yesterday Les Inrockuptibles noted Italian reports that Merah worked for Franceâs main foreign intelligence agency, the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE). It cited the paper Il Foglio: âAccording to intelligence sources that spoke to Il Foglio, the General Directorate of External Security obtained entry into Israel for him in 2010, presenting him as an informant, passing through a border post with Jordan. ⊠His entry into Israel, covered by the French, sought to prove to the jihadist network that he could cross borders with a European passport.â
Contacted by Les Inrockuptibles, the DGSE refused to confirm or deny Il Foglioâs story: âThe DGSE does not discuss its sources or its operations, real or imagined.â
In comments yesterday to La DĂ©pĂȘche du Midi, Yves Bonnetâthe former chief of the Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST), now absorbed into the DCRIâalso asked whether Merah was a DCRI asset.
Bonnet said, âWhat is nonetheless surprising is that he was known to the DCRI, not only because he was an Islamist, but because he had a correspondent at the domestic intelligence agency. Having a correspondent, it is unusual. Itâs not unexceptional. Call it a correspondent, call it a handler ⊠I donât know how far his relations or his collaboration with the service went, but one can ask questions.â
Squarcini denied yesterday that Merah was âan informant of the DCRI or of any French or foreign service.â However, his interview in Le Monde suggests that Merah was precisely that.
By Squarciniâs own admission, Merah repeatedly visited DCRI offices after his trips to Afghanistan and Pakistanâin October and November 2011âto discuss what he had seen. Squarcini called this âan administrative interview without coercion, as we were not in a judicial setting.â Thus Merah was freely giving the DCRI information it wanted to know; that is, he acted as an informant, officially or otherwise.
These revelations make officialsâ failure to identify and stop Merah all the more inexplicable. They also raise the issue of whether French intelligence officials were behind the highly irregular delays in the investigation of the shootings.
Though the shootings took place on March 11, March 15, and March 19, Merah only fell under suspicion on March 20âafter police compared a short list of Toulouse-area Islamists with a list of IP addresses of computers having browsed an Internet ad posted by the March 11 murder victim.
Journalist Didier Hassoux told Les Inrockuptibles that police obtained the list of 576 IP addresses âwhen the first killing, of a soldier, was reportedââthat is, on March 11. However, according to surveillance technology specialist Jean-Marc Manach, the IP addresses were not sent on to Internet service providers (ISPs) for identification until five days later, on March 16. The ISPs responded the next day.
This five-day delay is very unusual, Manach notes: âPolice sources told me that such operations [to obtain individual identities from ISPs] take only a few minutes. Another source, among those who usually respond to such judicial requests, said that they take â48 hours maximum.ââ
In a further blow to the official account of Merah as a âlone wolf,â a video of the killings made by the gunman arrived to Al Jazeera late on Monday, in an envelope postmarked Wednesday, March 21. However, on that day Mohamed Merah was holed up inside his apartment under siege by police, who had also detained his brother, Abdelkader. It is unclear who mailed the video, which had been heavily edited to disguise voicesâraising the possibility that Merah had accomplices in the killings.
French officials reacted ferociously to news of the video. Sarkozy called for any television channel obtaining such images not to broadcast them, while Hollande warned that Al Jazeera could lose its right to broadcast in France if it publicized the video.
Hollandeâs stance on the Toulouse video reflects the capitulation of the bourgeois âleftâ parties in France to law-and-order hysteria after these tragic shootings. No one has demanded an investigation of the intelligence agenciesâ role in the killings, though they now reek of a state operation. Nor have the French Communist Party, the New Anti-capitalist Party, or the PS pointed out that the Sarkozy administration, which has benefited electorally from the crime, faces legitimate suspicion that it might be involved.
This reflects the degeneration of the entire political establishment. Having backed imperialist wars in Muslim countries and waves of social cuts in Franceâas social-democratic officials in Greece pushed through even more devastating cuts demanded by the European Unionâthe âleftâ parties themselves now rely on chauvinist invocations of anti-Muslim patriotism. This leaves them prostrate before the security services and the Sarkozy administrationâs attempt to turn the Toulouse shootings into the basis for what appears to be a political coup.
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