Macron, Hollande and Sarkozy reunited in Toulouse on Sunday ten years after the Merah attacks
The attacks in Toulouse and Montauban, which occurred a few days before the presidential election in which incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist leader François Hollande clashed, marked the start of a series of terrorist attacks in France. The former presidents will participate in the ceremony.
Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Senate President Gérard Larcher, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo are also expected.
Tribute to the victims
The French head of state and his condemned counterpart must lay a wreath in the courtyard of the Ohr Torah school (formerly Otzar Hatorah school), at the foot of the “Tree of Life”, a monument in tribute to the victims.
MM. Macron and Herzog will then go to a concert hall in downtown Toulouse, the Halle aux grains, where a tribute ceremony will be held for the victims of the March 2012 killings. In memory of the victims, several texts will be read by their friends and members of their families, then the President of the State of Israel and the President of the Republic give speeches.
Several other highlights are planned during the day, outside the presence of the Heads of State, in particular a gathering of former students of the school, a round table on radicalization and the fractures of French society as well as a play by theater performed on Sunday evening.
Thirty Hour Siege and Assault
Ten years ago, the series of attacks on Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old delinquent, caused fear: on March 11, in Toulouse, a soldier from the 1st Parachute Train Regiment, Imad Ziaten, 30, was the first to fall with a bullet to the head. On the 15th, three soldiers were designated as they withdrew from the money in front of the barracks of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment in Montauban: Mohamed Legouad, 23, and Abel Chennouf, 26, were killed; Loïc Lieber, a 28-year-old Guadeloupean, remains quadriplegic.
On March 19, around 8 a.m., the case took another turn: two children, Myriam Monsonego, 7, and Gabriel Sandler, 3, were shot dead at close range in the playground of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse. A few seconds earlier, Arie Sandler, 6, and his father Jonathan Sandler succumbed to bullets from the helmeted killer.