French jihadi terrorist Mohamed Merah visited Israel in 2010, Israeli security
forces confirmed on Monday.
Merah went on a murder spree last week,
killing three French soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi in Toulouse,
before dying in a shootout after a 30-hour standoff outside his
apartment.
“He was here for three days in September of 2010,” a security
source said.
Merah entered Israel from Jordan via the Allenby border
crossing. Upon his entrance, he was questioned by security forces before being
allowed in. Israeli authorities say his passport was authentic.
Merah’s
visit to Israel came before his trip to Afghanistan, the source said.
“We
don’t know of any hostile activity he took while he was here,” the source
continued.
Security services added that they are unaware of any arrest of
Merah in Jerusalem for carrying a knife, as French authorities had earlier
claimed.
French authorities charged Merah’s older brother, Abdelkader
Merah, on Sunday with being complicit in the premeditated murders of seven
people.
Meanwhile, a group of visiting French parliamentarians paid a
condolence call Monday to Shlomo Sandler, the father of Yonatan Sandler who was
killed last week along with his two young sons in Toulouse.
The
delegation consisted of six French parliamentarians and opinion leaders
affiliated with French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for Popular Movement
party visiting the country as part of Project Interchange, an educational
institute of the American Jewish Committee.
One of the participants, Guy
Teissier, chairman of the National Defense and Armed Forces Commission in the
French National Assembly and the mayor of Marseille, said the “ties between
Israel and France” were strong, and that participating in this delegation was an
“opportunity for me to show our country’s attachment to the State of Israel, an
attachment which the tragedy of these past days in Toulouse has
highlighted.”
In May Project Interchange brought in a similar delegation
from the rival Socialist Party.
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this
report.