France killer’s Algerian family in ‘shock’

Family of the Islamist gunman dubbed a “monster” in France for slaying seven people spoke of their shock as plans took shape Tuesday to have his body sent to Algeria for burial.

Mohamed Benalel Merah, the father of killer Mohamed Merah who died in a shootout with French police, told AFP by telephone he was on his way Tuesday to Algiers “to settle personal affairs”.

The father, who lives in Frenda about 350 kilometres (220 miles) southwest of the Algerian capital, had insisted the day before that he wanted his son buried on Algerian soil.

The family wants to bury him in the homeland “to avoid the grave being desecrated in France,” Mohamed Merah’s maternal uncle, Djamel Aziri, told AFP.

Aziri said the situation was “a nightmare”, telling journalists Monday in Medea, a village some 90 kilometres west of Algiers, that news of the killings had come as a “shock”.

He recalled the last time he saw Mohamed Merah some two years ago. “He seemed lost when he came to visit us in 2010,” he said.

The 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent was shot dead by police at the end of a 32-hour standoff in the southwest French city of Toulouse after claiming the killings of three French soldiers, three Jewish children and a trainee rabbi in the region.

Neighbours in Frenda said the elder Merah, who has threatened to sue over the death of his son, was busy with the paperwork required to have the body transferred from France.

The killer’s family will file a demand for the transfer of the body to Algeria, Abdallah Zekri, an official of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) told AFP.

“Inshallah (God willing), I have decided to bury my son in Algeria,” the elder Merah said on Monday.

“Mohamed has an Algerian passport and has been listed with the (Algerian) consulate in Toulouse since his birth.”

The father has also told AFP that he plans to sue France for having shot his son rather than capturing him alive.

“France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in,” he said. “They preferred to kill him.

“I will hire the biggest named lawyers… I will sue France for having killed my son.”

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Tuesday said: “If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame.”

And a senior advisor to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, called the threat of legal action “indecent”.

The elder Merah lives in the heart of Frenda, a town of some 75,000 inhabitants, with his third wife.

Last week, he opened his house for three days to receive condolences, neighbours said.

His first wife, the killer’s mother, lives in France with two daughters.