Brother of Toulouse killer to face special court

A special court will try the brother of Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in a murderous spree in the French city of Toulouse in 2012, for complicity in the attacks, judicial sources said Wednesday.

Merah, a self-described Al-Qaeda sympathizer who had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren, a teacher and three soldiers in Toulouse and nearby Montauban in a nine-day killing spree in March 2012.

His brother Abdelkader, who had been under closer scrutiny by intelligence services than Mohamed, claimed he was unaware of the plans for the attacks, which prompted stepped-up surveillance of suspected Islamic extremists.

Three anti-terrorist judges also ruled that another alleged accomplice, Fettah Malki, should appear before the panel of expert judges.

Malki, who has also been charged with complicity in the murders, has admitted supplying Merah with an Uzi submachine gun and a bulletproof vest.

Judicial sources said Malki too has denied any advance knowledge of Merah’s plans.

Charges were dropped against a third man, Mohamed Mounir Meskine, who was suspected of helping the Merah brothers steal the scooter used in the killing spree.

It was not immediately known when the trial would start.

Merah killed Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and two of his children as well as another girl in March 2012 year at the Otzar Hatorah school in Toulouse. Days earlier, Merah killed three French soldiers in two attacks in the suburb of Montauban, France. He was killed March 22 in a shootout with police in his Toulouse apartment where he hid after the school killings, which he said in a video he perpetrated as part of jihad and to avenge the suffering of Palestinian children.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that France could be harboring “dozens of Merahs.”

France, which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, has seen an upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks.

In January last year, an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris two days after the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.

The attacks have prompted a sustained rise in Jewish emigration from France to Israel.