PARIS – Three new suspects were arrested in southern France Tuesday night and
Wednesday morning for their alleged involvement with Mohammed Merah, who killed
seven people, including four Jews, in March 2012 in Toulouse and another city in
the area.
The arrests came one week after the country commemorated the
first anniversary of the attacks.
Two of the suspects were detained on
Tuesday night in Toulouse, while the third was taken into custody Wednesday
morning in the town of Castres, according to police.
In March 2012,
Merah, a young Franco-Algerian Islamist, launched a series of terrorist attacks,
killing three French soldiers and four Jews, three of them children at a Jewish
day school.
He carried out the shootings from a motor scooter. He was
shot dead following a raid led by French antiterrorist police.
Soon
afterward, Merah’s older brother, Abdelkader, was arrested – and has been held
in detention ever since – for aiding him. Merah also filmed the
attacks.
After a third brother made revelations in a book he wrote,
police started searching for a “third man,” a mysterious accomplice they
suspected of having helped the terrorist.
Many French Islamists have been
detained over the past year for their suspected involvement in the
killings.
Last year, French president Francois Hollande and Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a joint commemorative ceremony at the day
school, Or Torah.
A week ago, Hollande and leaders of the local Jewish
and Muslim communities commemorated the events in Toulouse’s city center.
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