He was nicknamed the "scooter killer".
Before being identified and killed on March 22, 2012 after 32 hours of siege, Mohamed Merah sowed death between Toulouse and Montauban.
In the space of eight days, the Islamist terrorist, still wearing a helmet and equipped with a GoPro camera, murdered seven people in cold blood, including three children, and seriously injured a soldier and a teenager.
The petty criminal from the city of Izards in Toulouse, who proclaimed himself an "al-Qaeda fighter", puts a stop to a country in the middle of an electoral campaign.
As Emmanuel Macron travels to Toulouse on Sunday March 20 to pay tribute to the victims of Merah, a look back at this bloody raid which brought France into a new era of terrorism.
Read alsoIslamist terrorism: a hideous and protean threat
MARCH 11
, 2012. A little after 4 p.m., the police discovered the body of a man in a car park near a gymnasium in the city of Hers, east of Toulouse.
This is Staff Sergeant Imad Ibn-Ziaten.
The 30-year-old soldier had come to sell his motorcycle to a buyer who responded to his ad published on the leboncoin.fr site.
Perched on a powerful T-Max scooter and equipped with a GoPro camera, the man questions him: “
Are you in the army?
Are you military?
before asking him to get down.
The parachutist refuses.
He was shot 11.43 in the head.
The police, in the early days, evoked a settling of accounts or a family dispute.
MARCH 15.
Around 2 p.m., in Montauban, three "red berets" in fatigues who withdraw money close to the 17th parachute engineer regiment are the target of a shooter.
His face concealed by a full-face helmet and still equipped with a camera, he fired while shouting “
Allahu Akbar
”.
He kills Corporal Abel Chennouf, 25, and 1st Class Mohamed Legouade, 23.
The third soldier, 1st class Loïc Liber, 27, was seriously injured.
Hit in the throat and spinal cord, he will remain quadriplegic.
The investigators make the connection between the two events and direct their research on a “killer of paras”.
The track of the Merah brothers is back.
The front page of Le Figaro on March 20, 2012. Le Figaro
MARCH 19.
Shortly before 8 a.m., the "scooter killer", as he was called in the press, reappeared in front of the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse.
Armed with an automatic Uzi-type weapon that jammed, then the same Colt 45, the helmeted man opened fire on a group of seven people gathered on the sidewalk and killed a 30-year-old religion teacher, Jonathan Sandler, and her two sons, Gabriel, 3, and Arie, 6.
The shooter then entered the yard where he killed the daughter of the school principal, Myriam Monsonégo, 8, and seriously injured another 15-year-old student, Aaron Bryan Bijaoui.
He fled, still on his scooter.
Again, the whole scene was recorded on his GoPro camera.
The Scarlet Vigipirate plan is decreed for the Midi-Pyrénées region
MARCH 21-22.
Investigators have identified the killer, Mohamed Merah.
They locate him in an apartment on the Côte Pavée in Toulouse and wiretap him on March 20.
The next day, he is surrounded by the Raid police.
After 32 hours of siege, the terrorist, who claimed responsibility for all his acts but refused to surrender, was shot dead by the police.
In his jeans, the police find a USB key with all the images of his appalling murderous journey.
During a first trial in 2017, Abdelkader Merah, the brother of Mohamed Merah, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for terrorist association.
On April 18, 2019, the Special Court of Assizes of Paris held against him on appeal the count of complicity in assassinations and sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Mohamed Merah's childhood friend, Fettah Malki, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.