ALGERIA/FILE: An Algerian lawyer who plans to file a formal complaint over the shooting by French police of the Toulouse gunman, Mohamed Merah, says she has 'evidence' on video

Record ID: 574078

  • Title: ALGERIA/FILE: An Algerian lawyer who plans to file a formal complaint over the shooting by French police of the Toulouse gunman, Mohamed Merah, says she has 'evidence' on video
  • Date: 3rd April 2012
  • Summary: TOULOUSE, FRANCE (FILE - MARCH 23, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS APARTMENT BLOCK POLICE AT ENTRANCE
  • Embargoed: 18th April 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France, Algeria
  • City:
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA4WLNWLMF1RRR3ULYGCTXBYXAS
  • Story Text: The laywer acting for the father of Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah said on Monday (April 2) she had received two videos taken during the police assault on his apartment during a 30-hour standoff that ended with his death.
    Zahia Mokhtari, who has been retained by Merah's father to press charges in France against the elite police forces that assaulted Merah's Toulouse apartment, said both videos lasted about 20 minutes and that she suspected one of them was shot by the gunman himself.
    "(And in these videos) one was able to see that he was surprised by this operation against him because in the video he was addressing the French security forces saying: 'why are you killing me? I am innocent, you have betrayed me.' And that's what persuaded us to think there was a relationship between them," she told Reuters Television.
    Prosecutors say that during the standoff, Merah confessed to the shooting of three French soldiers, two Jewish children and their teacher in three separate incidents last month, in what officials described as the worst terror attacks in France since a wave of bombings in the mid-1990s.
    Merah was buried in an unmarked grave in Toulouse last week after Algerian authorities refused to acquiesce to his father's requests to have him buried in the family plot in a village south of the capital, Algiers.
    Mokhtari, a fluent French speaker, insisted on giving the interview in Arabic. She had earlier told Reuters Television by telephone that she was waiting for the issuance of a French visa to allow her to travel to Paris to work on lodging a formal complaint.
    She declined to show the videotapes, saying they would be provided to French authorities when the complaint is lodged
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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