Mohamed Merah, killer of seven people in the French city of Toulouse this month, was shot and killed by an elite French police unit after a bloody 32-hour standoff at his apartment on rue du Sergent Vigne.
In the end, Merah, 24, sought martyrdom by ending his life in a blaze of gunfire, jumping out his bathroom window to his death with his Colt .45 pistol still firing. He boasted to advancing police that he had succeeded in bring France to its knees, and that his only regret was not being able to inflict more carnage and death.
Merah recorded his murder spree, including the slayings deaths of three young Jewish children who were chased down and killed at their school, on a video camera strapped around his neck. As one of his victims, a 7-year-old girl, tried to run away, he grabbed her by her hair and shot her in the head, before speeding away on his Yamaha motorcycle.
Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based cable news channel, had announced plans to broadcast the gruesome video, but soon changed its mind after receiving a wave of protests.
In the aftermath of Merah's death, the French police were accused of bungling the siege and failing to capture him alive. They were particularly criticized for not using sleeping gas to incapacitate Merah. French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated numerous times that he wanted Merah taken into custody so he could face trial.
An autopsy revealed that Merah died of a bullet to the temple fired by a police sharpshooter, although he was hit more than 20 times. He had been wearing a bulletproof jacket under his djellabah robes.
Investigators are still looking into the possibility that Merah had accomplices. His older brother, Abdelkader Merah, was arrested due to his connections with Islamist militants. Their mother has also been taken into custody.
Merah grew up on an impoverished housing estate and spent time in jails for various petty crimes. After becoming radicalized at Salafist mosques and inspired by horrific Internet videos, he was trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a Islamist terrorist. He earlier tried to enlist in the French Army, but was rejected due to his criminal record. When he subsequently attempted to join the French Foreign Legion, he resigned after one day.
Shooting his victims one at a time, at point-blank range, Merah has been labeled a "lone wolf" and a "do-it-yourself jihadi." The French domestic intelligence service, the DCRI, was periodically tracking Merah and had interviewed him a few months ago. During one of his trips to Afghanistan, Merah was actually captured at a roadblock and handed over to U.S. soldiers, who eventually returned him to France.
When questioned by DCRI officers, Merah claimed to have visited Pakistan and Afghanistan simply as a tourist. Surprisingly, even though U.S. authorities had already placed Merah on its no-fly list, he was still able to avoid being put on official surveillance by the French police.
Unfortunately, lone-wolf terrorists have the ability to avoid the surveillance tools and methodologies that have been so successful at undermining al-Qaida cells and other terrorist organizations. For all intents and purposes, Merah emerged from nowhere to launch his campaign of terror in Toulouse.
France has prided itself over the years for being a secular country, based on a bedrock of universal values. The traditional expectation had been that newly arrived immigrants would ultimately assimilate these values and take their places as citizens in the French Republic. In recent years, however, France has seen its social fabric stretched and torn, causing many to question how best to address these new challenges.
The hunt for Merah so captivated France that even the presidential campaign between Sarkozy and his Socialist opponent Francois Hollande was ultimately suspended for four days!
With Merah dead, the fight for the Elysee Palace has resumed in earnest. Sarkozy built his career on campaigns centered around reducing crime and better integrating non-European immigrants into French society and culture. He quickly tapped the vein of lingering concern over future Merahs by proposing new anti-terror laws that would make it a crime to view websites that glorified terrorism. Traveling abroad to receive terrorist training would also be outlawed. It is unclear how the Socialists will respond to the Merah legacy.
Terrorism experts must now come to terms with the growing threat posed by individuals, operating without external direction, who decide to launch low-cost attacks with readily available weapons. The horrific events in Toulouse demonstrate the risks posed by unpredictable individual militants, who cannot be traced or tracked through email or other interpersonal connections.
President Sarkozy has made clear his view that "terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community," but France remains a nation shocked and confounded by the damage inflicted by a solitary fanatic. It is essential, therefore, that democracies demonstrate their commitment and readiness to protecting their citizens from attacks of this type.
Merah's death denies his victims and the French nation of his trial, conviction and ultimate punishment. Instead, Merah became a shahid, a martyr, which was probably his goal all along.