French Police surround apartment of Islamic terrorist Mohamed Merah suspected of the murder of Jewish children, tense stand off in Toulouse France

Dear All

Recently the French people suffered a terrible blow as a lunatic killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in three separate attacks in France.

The horror of these events cannot be understated; it was acts of unspeakable inhumanity.

Such was the outrage that the French authorities have launched a massive manhunt for the killer and have made an arrest.

The person sought is French national Mohamed Merah who was jailed for bombings in Afghanistan in 2007.

Merah isn’t French by birth, he is of Algerian origin, captured for the bombings he escaped months later in a mass prison break organised by Taliban insurgents.

At present there is a tense stand off Merah with French authorities who have tracked him down.

Whether he is the killer of seven people remains to be seen but clearly he is a dangerous individual who is not fit to live in society.

The killing of the Jewish children was particularly cold blooded; they were executed by gunshot to the head.

During the siege with Merah, two French police officers have been injured

The fire fight happened during the initial raid on the house in the southern city of Toulouse which according to reports was unsuccessful.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the suspect "wants to take revenge for Palestinian children" killed in the Middle East, and is angry at the French military for its operations abroad.

In war, people accept that people will be killed during the fighting but people like Mohamed Merah aren’t soldiers, they are criminals and terrorists.

The murder of innocent people cannot ever be justified; Merah represents the worse type of person in society that many people would gladly see hanged by the neck.

But his life will go on because in the West, there exists values that Merah doesn’t have, and those values will save his life.

If he is responsible for the deaths of the seven people, his sentence should life in prison.

Either way, he is already several charges to face and is going there anyway.

Reports say that the siege is continuing but at some point the French may storm the apartment in which case Merah will probably be killed by French Special Forces.

And they will end this quickly and finally.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University