Merah case: why were six women arrested in Toulouse and Albi ten years after the facts?
Six women, close to the jihadist Mohammed Merah and suspected of stays in Syria between 2013 and 2014, were arrested in Toulouse and Albi. Their custody can last 96 hours.
Ten years after the Merah affair, justice has not quite finished with the relatives of the Toulouse jihadist killed by the Raid in March 2012.
This Tuesday, October 4, six women, members of the “jihadosphere” of the terrorist Mohammed Merah, were arrested, between Toulouse and Albi, and placed in police custody at the Toulouse police station. Five of them were arrested at their homes and the sixth showed up at the police station, responding to a summons.
This dragnet, planned for a long time, is the result of an investigation by the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) into suspicions of stays in Syria that would have been made between 2013 and 2014 by these six elderly people today. between 31 and 43 years old.
It is in particular question of the financing of these stays in an international context where the Islamic State extended its perimeter of influence in Syria, preparing from the territory of Châm, the attacks of Paris, in November 2015, in particular. The PNAT investigation is entrusted to the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (Sdat). It has been open since 2014 for “for association of criminal terrorist criminals and evasion of parents from their legal obligations”.
Suspected for several years by the anti-terrorism justice system, several of them, close to radical Islam, had already been heard and then released without any charges being brought. But new elements led the investigators to hear them again.
According to our information, the existence of a terrorist project or an imminent attack on French soil has not been brought to light at this stage of the investigations.
These six people are not members of the Merah family but are indeed part of the sphere of influence of the ex-clan of the Toulouse terrorist.
A single conviction
After 2012, the investigation into the alleged supporters of Mohammed Merah in the Toulouse region gave rise to numerous arrests and hearings. On the basis of certain profiles, the investigators conducted their investigations by opening other files, in the appendix to the Merah case.
Between 2014 and 2015, the Essid, Clain, Barnouin, ex-figures of the Artigat cell (Ariège) flew to Syria with women and children, fearing to be held accountable for the terrorist crimes of the jihadist Toulouse. The Clain brothers and Sabri Essid are said to have died in Syria in 2019. The Albigensian Thomas Barnouin was arrested by Kurdish fighters in 2017. For their part, Jennifer Clain and Anne-Diana Clain, respectively, the niece of the Clain brothers and their sister, are still imprisoned awaiting trial. Jennifer Clain, 31, was arrested in 2019, upon her return to France.
The custody of these six women takes place in a particular context where France was recently condemned by the European Court of Human Rights concerning its “case by case” policy for the repatriation of women and children of jihadists. .
In the Merah case, only Abdelkader Merah was sentenced definitively for complicity in the crimes of his brother, to 30 years of criminal imprisonment in 2019. As provided for in the Criminal Code in terrorism cases, the police custody of these six women can last ninety-six hours.