The lawyer for the father of the man police shot dead in Toulouse claims to have video proof that Mohamed Merah was needlessly killed.

"/> The lawyer for the father of the man police shot dead in Toulouse claims to have video proof that Mohamed Merah was needlessly killed.

" />

Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

TOULOUSE

Toulouse father: ‘my son was liquidated’

The lawyer for the father of the man police shot dead in Toulouse claims to have video proof that Mohamed Merah was needlessly killed.

Published: 2 April 2012 10:08 CEST

Toulouse father: 'my son was liquidated'

In an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, Zahia Mokhtari said she had seen the videos and they proved the police did not want to capture Merah alive.

“What I saw on these videos is proof that Mohamed Merah was manipulated,” she said. “I will be presenting this proof to the French judicial authorities.”

Merah was shot by the elite RAID unit of the French police on March 22nd after he was cornered in a Toulouse apartment block.

Merah was the chief suspect in the murder of three school children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the town, as well as the deaths of three French soldiers.

“They didn’t want him alive,” said the lawyer. “What I’ve seen shows there was a deception and we need to show the truth.”

In the two videos, Merah is alleged to tell police “I’m innocent, why do you want to kill me, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Mokhtari said she will be in Paris this week to join forces with a French lawyer to launch legal action.

She said the videos were given to her by people “at the heart of events” who wanted to “get the truth out.”

The RAID unit has insisted that it gave Merah every chance to come out alive.

“If an assault was launched, it was by Merah,” said the chief of the unit, Amaury de Hauteclocque.

23-year-old Merah was killed after a 32 hour siege in the apartment block where he was tracked down after the seven killings which took place over three days on March 11th, 15th and 19th.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

READ ALSO:

In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent.

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

Url copied to clipboard!