French interior minister Manuel Valls last week presented the findings of a damning official police internal investigation into the handling of the case of Toulouse gunman Mohammed Merah, a self-confessed jihadist who shot seven dead in a ten-day rampage in south-west France in March, and in which France’s intelligence services have been accused of deliberately hiding their role. Louise Fessard examines the report’s findings.
The father of one of the victims of a series of shootings in south-west France in March this year which claimed the lives of four adults and three children, says new evidence suggests that the suspected gunman, who was shot dead by police, was used as a double-agent by the French intelligence services and that the authorities have deliberately misled public opinion describing him as a “solitary” terrorist. In an exclusive interview with Mediapart, Albert Chennouf accuses the former head of the French domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini, of lying about his agency’s links with the gunman, Mohamed Merah. Chennouf says he believes Merah was killed to prevent him revealing the true nature of his dealings with the agency, and has told Mediapart that his family received death threats after he filed a lawsuit against Squarcini and former president Nicolas Sarkozy for ‘failure to render assistance to persons in danger’.
