Macron, Hollande and Sarkozy reunited in Toulouse, ten years after Merah
EEmmanuel Macron is going to Toulouse on Sunday March 20 for the ceremonies to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the attacks perpetrated by Mohamed Merah, which killed seven people, in the presence of the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, as well as François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Nearly 2,000 people are invited to these ceremonies organized by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif). Emmanuel Macron had indicated that he accepted the invitation in a speech read during the Crif dinner at the end of February in Paris, calling for a “general mobilization of all of society” to fight against anti-Semitism, and promising to “continue the fight” “without letting go”.
“The joint presence (of Emmanuel Macron and Isaac Herzog) intends to mark the friendship that binds France and Israel, as well as the desire of the two heads of state to continue their common fight against terrorism and anti-Semitism”, indicates the Elysée. Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Senate President Gérard Larcher, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo are also expected.
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Several texts read in memory of 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. Emmanuel Macron and Isaac Herzog will then go to a concert hall in downtown Toulouse, the Halle aux grains, where a tribute ceremony will take place 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 will deliver speeches.
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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. The French and dismissed presidents, each accompanied by their wives, must then have dinner together on Sunday evening at the Élysée Palace.
The story of bloody attacks
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.
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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. Several hundred investigators are mobilized to identify the author who switched to fundamentalism during stays in prison, but passed under the radar of anti-terrorism.
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On the night of March 20 to 21, the police launched an operation to arrest him, but the RAID encountered unexpected resistance from the suspect who opened fire through the door of his apartment. Parliamentary police negotiators with the young offender, who claim responsibility for the three attacks on behalf of Al-Qaeda. The last sat for thirty hours, until the assault at the authorized course he was shot down.
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. “I immediately understood that Islamist barbarism has no limits, that it killed to kill,” said François Hollande during an interview on Radio J broadcast on Sunday.