PARIS (AFP/EJP) --- Interior Minister Manuel Valls slammed Mohammed Merah’s sister Souad for making televised comments Sunday on the French M6 channel, which he said constituted an “apology for terrorism and anti-Semitism and a provocation to religious and racial hatred”.
In a statement Monday, Valls condemned “with the strongest firmness” the young woman’s words, in which she described herself “proud” of Merah’s actions, who was killed by police after having assassinated three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban, followed by three Jewish children and one teacher in Toulouse, between March 11th-19th this year.
The public prosecutor’s office in Paris opened a preliminary enquiry Monday into Souad Merah’s “apology for terrorism”, learned AFP from a judicial source.
“Although given in the context of a private conversation; these words can only be perceived as an apology for terrorism and anti-Semitism and a provocation to racial and religious hatred,” added the minister.
According to him, “they express and propagate an primal and violent ideology, characteristic derived from a sectarian nature, which runs contrary to the fundamental values of the French Republic”.
“These words are an insult to the memory of Mohamed Merah’s victims, as well as their families, to whom we should give our full support,” continued the statement.
The Interior Minister re-emphasised “his determination to relentlessly fight against all dangerous and abject words and actions that threaten the values of France”.
He affirmed equally that “all legal means, administrative and judiciary, will be used to ensure that the authors of such evil will answer for their actions”.
So it will show, he stressed, “that supposedly religious sermons, whether public provocations or internet indoctrination, all forms of extremism which support and justify recourse to violence deserve to be fought by the democratic means and voices,” concluded the minister.
Meanwhile, Abdelghani Merah, the oldest brother of the motorbike murderer, revealed Monday on BFMTV he had placed a bug to “trap” his sister Souad, in images filmed with a hidden camera and televised by M6, to unveil the inherent anti-Semitism in his family.
“If I chose to place a bug and to trap my sister, it’s because I wanted to prove my claims...I did what I had to do, I said what had to be said,” insisted Abdelghani Merah, who is currently estranged from his family, who he claims to be responsible for the bloody actions of Mohamed.
“My mother always said that Arabs are born to hate the Jews and that’s a phrase I heard all through my impressionable childhood. Mohamed was immersed in all this and the Salafists gathered a bomb already wired to explode,” asserted Abdelghani on BFMTV.
“Yes, we’ll have other Mohamed Merahs if we allow families to continue like that, especially when there are warning signs. My two nephews, we teach them to hate the Jews, to hate the non-believer, we sow the Jihadist videos, but we don’t explain to them that they’re forgeries,” he continued.
“I was very scared for my son, I was scared he’d be indoctrinated...I asked him if he was capable of donning an explosive belt and blowing himself up in the metro or indeed going to steal a kalshnikov from a drug dealer...thankfully my son had a moral education, he had a good foundation and his principles were strong enough to resist their doctrine,” he adding, stressing that he wanted to distance himself as much as possible from his family and that he had come to give evidence to the judiciary.
The Imam of the Great Mosque of Paris Dalil Boubakeur condemned Tuesday on Europe 1 the “verbal frenzy” of Souad Merah.
“We are appalled by the violence, seriousness and danger of these inciteful words and we regret their broadcast, hoping they won’t be received as the real Islam, which is the religion of peace,” he said.
“We condemn the verbal frenzy,” he added, committing his “support to protect our youth from these words,” slamming the peak time broadcast.