French police say terror suspect inspired by Toulouse Jewish school killer

Man who planned to shoot up Paris nursery school says he is ‘heir of Mohammed Merah,’ a terrorist who killed three children and a rabbi in 2012

By Marcy Oster 5 April 2019, 7:55 am

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This file photo taken on March 25, 2012, in Toulouse, southwestern France, shows France's Jewish scout placing flowers under a banner paying tribute to the victims of jihadist Mohammed Merah who killed three children and a teacher at the 'Ozar Hatorah' Jewish school. (AFP/Eric Cabanis)

JTA — French police say a man suspected of planning a thwarted attack on a nursery school was inspired by Islamist radical Mohammed Merah, who killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012.

The man arrested last week in the Seine-et-Marne region near Paris described himself as the “heir of Mohammed Merah.” He reportedly had been planning an attack on children at a nursery school, and had already selected the school, BFM TV reported.

The man, who was known to French intelligence services, was charged on March 29 with planning a terror attack and remains in police custody.

Merah killed Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and two of his children as well as another girl in March 2012 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 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.