generalspeaking

Implacably Stupid

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been busy. All part of his duties as president, of course. All part of his re-election strategy as well; by happenstance, not design, obviously.

Strange, that he telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to commiserate; those eight souls whom Mohammed Merah murdered after all, were French. That he also killed four French Jews, three of whom were very young children was horribly unfortunate but entirely explicable as top targets for jihadists.

But he did other presidential things in the wake of the carnage left by the 23-year-old French-Algerian-turned-mujahadeen. Who became a martyr for al-Qaeda, even though he personally far preferred only to become a mass murderer, and would very much have liked to continue living, thank you very much.

President Sarkozy announced new measures to combat Islamist indoctrination and recruitment through the Internet, through foreign travel and within prisons. Good luck on that front.

French security agents, having Mohammed Merah in their sights for the past several years on suspicion of a malign enterprise, joining his fate with that of Islamist fanatics in a world-wide net of jihad-waging warriors for Islam, evidently lost sight of his enterprising endeavours. Under surveillance, purportedly, yet he was able to avail himself of bullet-proof vests, grenades, machine guns.

"He liked danger - he used to race cars and motorbikes and do dangerous stunts. that turned into delinquency and petty crime. But to then start killing people, that is something quite different." Social worker, commenting on the teen-age Merah

He and his older brother Abdelkader were knownto have been involved in two Islamist organizations, The Knights of Pride and a militant jihadist network, the Toulouse group. The Toulouse group? Home-bred and home-proud; dedicated to the work of Islamist destruction of Western ideals starting right at home, and the trail went cold?

"Mohammed was about 18 years old, but we think he may have been in contact with those on the list, through his brother, including more recently when members of the group were released from prison", according to an investigator. Under surveillance for five years, but no alarm bells rang particularly loud when he travelled several times to Afghanistan and Pakistan for jihad training.

Next thing the security investigators knew he was under siege at 17 Rue Sergent Vigne, where the housing complex had to be vacated of its residents, vehicles searched for explosives, negotiations between the police and Merah ongoing and went on for 32 hours. France's interior minister commented: "Officers used to this type of situation said they had never seen such a violent assault".

Before that he claimed it was the intention of the authorities to have the police capture Merah, not kill him. "We have one priority - to take him alive so that he can surrender to face justice." Or be encouraged to keep on talking, because he was quite effusively willing to describe his exploits, his intentions, his background and training.

It might have been increasingly instructive in how to deal with future such events.

"We tried to the end to negotiate his surrender. He announced at 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday that he wanted to die weapons in hand and that is what he did". Wearing an Arab robe over a bullet-proof vest as he leaped through a window, catching a bullet to the head. And he will speak no more.

How will the police now explain to the satisfaction of all those curious to hear their reasons, why they failed to take seriously the complaints that people who lived in the housing estate lodged against him, that he was actively engaged in courting teen-age Algerian boys to become involved with his fanatical Islamist ideology.

Entertaining them with videoed atrocities. Enraging their mothers, and then threatening those women; following up those threats with physical assaults. Were the police deaf, dumb and just entirely implacably stupid?

Labels: France, Human Fallibility, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Friday, March 23, 2012