Toulouse and Montauban shootings – Mohammed Merah
Over eight days in March 2012, a gunman on a scooter killed seven people in three attacks in south-western France. On 11 March, paratrooper Staff Sergeant Imad Ibn-Ziaten was shot dead in Toulouse. On 15 March, Corporal Abel Chennouf and Private Mohamed Legouad were killed in Montauban, and a third soldier, Corporal Loic Liber, was left in a coma. On 19 March, the gunman attacked the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, killing Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Gabriel and Arieh, and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego.
Police identified the gunman as Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian origin from Toulouse. After a siege at his flat lasting about a day and a half, a police commando shot him dead on 22 March. The BBC reported that prosecutor François Molins said Merah cited the fate of the Palestinians, the French military presence in Afghanistan and France's ban on the full veil as motives. The BBC also reported that France's domestic intelligence agency had known of his trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan and had questioned him in November 2011.
On 18 April 2019, a special Paris assize appeal court found Merah's brother Abdelkader Merah guilty of complicity in the terrorist murders and attempted murders committed by Mohamed Merah in March 2012. It sentenced him to 30 years' imprisonment, two-thirds of it non-parole. He had been acquitted of complicity at his first trial. (Translated from the French press release of the Paris prosecutor-general.)
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