The national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office announces that it will open a judicial investigation after the six police custody this week. Six women were arrested Tuesday morning between Toulouse and Albi
by the anti-terrorist sub-directorate and the central directorate of the judicial police.
Four have since been released but two of them were brought before a judge on Friday. They were part of the entourage of Souad Merah, the sister of the terrorist Mohammed Merah, author of the attacks of March 2012, in Toulouse and Montauban.
The shadow of Souad Merah
The entourage of Merah is the subject of an investigation, opened since 2014, by the national anti-terrorism prosecution. A date on which Souad Merah, stuck S, would have left Toulouse with her four children for Syria, where her husband was then. Her former lawyer Maître Christian Etelin denies that she was able to cross the border to join the Islamic State. The trace of Souad Merah is then lost in Algeria.
But what the investigators seem to be able to prove now is this departure for Syria, thanks to a better knowledge of the networks and information, probably obtained from people returning from Syria. Already heard in 2014 by the investigators, these women were again arrested this week because of these advances in the investigation.
The two risking an indictment are therefore suspected of having lied to them, eight years ago: the judges now suspect them of having left with Souad Merah in Syria or else for having organized their departure together for the Iraqi-Syrian zone. Brought to Paris, these two women risk being indicted for “association of terrorist criminals” and “subtraction by a parent from his legal obligations”. Concretely: this means that they would have gone to Syria, with their children, minors.
Her neighbor freed
Among the four women released, the client of Maître Etelin did not understand why she was worried, eight years after the disappearance of Souad Merah. Former neighbor of the terrorist’s sister, she was suspected of having helped her go to Syria in 2014. In any case, this youngster from Toulouse led Souad Merah to Barcelona, from where the latter flew away to Gaziantep, the last stop for her before Syria. “They asked her if she had been to Syria. They insisted on knowing whether, because she had accompanied Souad Merah to the airport, she was likely to know that Souad Merah could have made this trip to Syria. But they realized that they were in the most total misunderstanding as far as she is concerned” assures the lawyer about his client.
Certainly, he says, she was friends with Souad Merah, known for her Salafist beliefs: “They talked to each other very often, as neighbors, but she in no way shared her radical religious convictions. The only thing she thought about while in police custody was that she has two children and a job in an nursing home. She was terribly unhappy not to be able to continue her normal family life”.