“We are not a sensationalist network. We are not looking to broadcast images without measuring the risks and consequences,” the bureau chief, Zied Tarrouche, told French news network BFM-TV.

“This is why management will decide today during a meeting in Qatar whether to broadcast this video or not,” he said. “We should know in a few hours.”

French police said Monday they had copies of the videos, shot by Mohamed Merah during his killing spree that left seven dead, that had been sent on a USB memory stick to Al-Jazeera’s office.

Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, had previously boasted of filming his killings and witnesses had told police that he appeared to be wearing a video camera in a chest harness.

A police source said investigators had been passed the footage that had been sent to Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based news network that is watched throughout the Arab world.

Merah was killed in a shoot-out with police on Thursday at the end of a 32-hour siege of his apartment in Toulouse.