On March 20, at 11 a.m. local time all the French schools held a moment of silence. Thus the French paid their last respects to the three schoolchildren and the teacher of the Jewish school killed in Toulouse. We remind our readers that the school Ozar Hatorah was attacked on Monday morning when children were going to classes. According to the eyewitnesses, an armed man rode the moped towards the school and started shooting the children on the ground where the primary school students are brought.
The French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the Toulouse school and called the murder a national tragedy. According to him, all three attacks were carried out by one and the same person whose motive was probably anti-Semitism. All the religious schools, including all the Jewish and Muslim ones, have been taken under a special protection, he added.
The presidential decree has introduced the regime of the highest level of the terrorist threat in the south-western regions of France. For the first time in the history of the country the scarlet, highest level of the anti-terrorist plan “Vigipirate” has been put into operation. This allows the authorities interfering into the everyday life and taking security measures including mixed police and military patrols who have the power to stop the public transport and close down schools. All the religious schools, including the Jewish and Muslim ones, have been taken under a special protection.
In other words, the real hunt for the criminal started in the region Midi-Pyrenees. It is supposed that he is also involved into two crimes committed last week when three soldiers from North Africa were killed. According to the sources, close the investigation bodies, in all the three attacks the same weapon and the black stolen motorbike were used. The investigators are working on two main versions: according to one of them the murders have been committed by an Islamite, according to the other version – by an ultra-right extremist.
Having analyzed the recordings of the outdoor surveillance camera, the representative of the Jewish community of Toulouse Nicole Yardeni says that the one who shot children looked absolutely calm and normal: “He was calm when he left, too. He looked as if he had killed the animals.”
The town of Montauban where the soldiers were killed and injured is not far from Toulouse. One of the victims was a black soldier; others were from the families of expatriate North Africans. The investigation believes that the criminal had racist and anti-Semitic motives. The evidence of this is the webpage of one of the suspects who had been fired from the army shortly before.
“It is not a mass murderer as, for example, Richard Durn who killed eight people and injured 19 in 2002 or the Norwegian Anders Breivik… It is a selective killer of a certain category who can be called a serial killer,” BBC quoted the words of the criminalist Stephane Bourgoin.
The investigation has the information that the schoolchildren in Toulouse and soldiers in Montauban were killed from one and the same gun and that the criminal drove a Yamaha motorbike and acted equally coolly in both cases.
The tragedy in the Toulouse Jewish school provoked indignation, horror and sympathy in many countries. Israel expressed its readiness to help France to investigate the murder of the three children and their teacher. The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that “one cannot deny that this crime was motivated by the merciless and deadly anti-Semitism.” “I am sure,” he added “that the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the government will do their best to find the criminal and Israel will provide any help for this.”
Delphine SIMON, radio journalist at France Inter:
“We have no idea about murderer’s motive and who he is. The police believe that this crime has racist signs since all the victims are Jewish, Muslims or expatriates from Africa. Probably, this is one of the versions of all these crimes. However, nobody knows criminal’s motives. Probably, he is an insane or a serial killer.
“We do not know whether these murders are related to the presidential campaign in France. When the police catch the killer they will find out whether this connection exists.
“The only thing we can be sure about is that during the election campaign such incidents attract more attention of the media and influence the political life of the country. Now the election campaign has been suspended for two days. It is true that this murder has influenced the election campaign.
“Sarkozy has close ties with the Jewish community in France, and since the security is one of the main aspects of his campaign, we can expect that he will benefit from these incidents. Although Holland has a positive attitude towards the Jewish community as well, Sarkozy is more likely to win form the Monday incident.”
Roland FREUDENSTEIN, head of research and deputy director of the Center for European Studies in Brussels:
“Not only France but the whole Europe is shocked by these murders. The premeditated murder of kids is especially shocking. Everyone is wondering who has done it. The information we have indicates to an insane killer (like it was in Norway) or a small group of people. There is an assumption about three soldiers fired from the airborne unit in Montauban in 2008 because of their neonazi inclinations. It explains how the criminal chose his victims: immigrant soldiers from that unit and Jewish children and their teacher. However, the fact that one of the killed soldiers was from North Africa and the other one from the Caribbean basin can be a coincidence. At least, one of them does not fit because of his ethnical or religious belonging since the murderer (who found his victim on the Internet through the advertisement of the motorbike sale) could not have found out the name and the ethnical origin of his victim. In this concern we should not ignore the hypothesis about a jihadist or terrorist attack: the Jewish and soldiers sent to Afghanistan (like the Montauban unit) were the obvious target for this murderer. However, some of the elements of his behavior show that he is a professional soldier which contradicts the hypothesis about the jihadists.
“The presidential campaign has been suspended and it is very difficult to predict how these murders will influence it. As a rule, any emergency situation or national disaster help the current president. Any further speculations are just guesses. If the murders were committed by jihadists the crisis may strengthen the conservative wing (President Sarkozy). If they were committed by neonazis it may strengthen the position of the left wing that tends to blame Sarkozy for using the thesis about the danger of racism. However, it is too early to make any predictions. Now we feel sorry when thinking about the families who lost their relatives and we are afraid of the next attacks if the criminal or criminals are not arrested soon.”
P.S. French police surrounded the house in Toulouse, where, presumably, now there is the suspected of shooting in the Jewish school in Toulouse. Within 10 days as a result of attacks in the south of France there were 7 people killed. French Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters that the person in the besieged house confessed that he is a part of “Al Qaeda.” His name is Mohammed Mera, he is a French citizen of Algerian origin. According to the minister, during the raid two policemen have already been wounded. The mother of the 24-year old suspect was brought to the house to help the police conduct the negotiations. His brother was arrested according to Gueant. The minister said in an interview to a French television channel that this man had told the police about his desire to “take revenge for Palestinian children.” The suspect also said that he condemns the crime committed by the French army in Afghanistan. “After the first two attacks French domestic intelligence was watching him… Then, in the course of the investigation decisive evidence was discovered,” Agence France Presse quoted an unnamed official. One of the eyewitnesses told the newspaper Liberation that police in helmets and bulletproof vests closed off the residential district of Toulouse, where the raid is taking place.
