France releases suspected killer's mother
Source: Agencies |
March 25, 2012, Sunday
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AUTHORITIES investigating France's deadly shooting rampage have released the mother of the Islamist fanatic blamed for the killings but continue to hold his older brother and the older brother's girlfriend, officials said yesterday.
Police are trying to determine whether 24-year-old Mohamed Merah had any help in carrying out the execution-style murders of seven people that have shocked France and refocused attention on the threat of radical Muslim terrorists.
Merah's brother, Abdelkader, was flown to Paris for further questioning yesterday, along with his girlfriend, but a lawyer for Merah's mother, 55-year-old Zoulhika Aziri, said she had been released without charge.
Her lawyer, Jean-Yves Gougnaud, said in the southern French city of Toulouse that Aziri's world had been "turned upside down."
"She is devastated," he said after her release. "At no time could she have imagined that her son was the one who did it."
Aziri was freed late on Friday from a police station in Toulouse, a judicial official said on condition of anonymity because the information wasn't cleared for public release.
Mohamed Merah, who claimed allegiance to al-Qaida, died in a hail of gunfire on Thursday after a dramatic 32-hour standoff with police at his apartment in Toulouse. At one point, police brought his mother to the scene, but she refused to urge her son to surrender, officials said.
Merah had filmed himself carrying out attacks in southern France that began on March 11, killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers with close-range shots to the head, prosecutors say. Another Jewish student and a paratrooper were wounded, and five police officers were injured trying to dislodge Merah from the apartment.
Investigators are trying to figure out whether Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, acted alone.
They have found no signs the suspected gunman was under orders from al-Qaida or any militant group, a top French official said on Friday - disputing Mohamed Merah's claim of terrorist ties before he died in a shootout with commandos.
Police are trying to determine whether 24-year-old Mohamed Merah had any help in carrying out the execution-style murders of seven people that have shocked France and refocused attention on the threat of radical Muslim terrorists.
Merah's brother, Abdelkader, was flown to Paris for further questioning yesterday, along with his girlfriend, but a lawyer for Merah's mother, 55-year-old Zoulhika Aziri, said she had been released without charge.
Her lawyer, Jean-Yves Gougnaud, said in the southern French city of Toulouse that Aziri's world had been "turned upside down."
"She is devastated," he said after her release. "At no time could she have imagined that her son was the one who did it."
Aziri was freed late on Friday from a police station in Toulouse, a judicial official said on condition of anonymity because the information wasn't cleared for public release.
Mohamed Merah, who claimed allegiance to al-Qaida, died in a hail of gunfire on Thursday after a dramatic 32-hour standoff with police at his apartment in Toulouse. At one point, police brought his mother to the scene, but she refused to urge her son to surrender, officials said.
Merah had filmed himself carrying out attacks in southern France that began on March 11, killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers with close-range shots to the head, prosecutors say. Another Jewish student and a paratrooper were wounded, and five police officers were injured trying to dislodge Merah from the apartment.
Investigators are trying to figure out whether Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, acted alone.
They have found no signs the suspected gunman was under orders from al-Qaida or any militant group, a top French official said on Friday - disputing Mohamed Merah's claim of terrorist ties before he died in a shootout with commandos.
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