France arrests 20 suspected Islamists in dawn raids

Police in France have arrested some 20 suspected Islamists in dawn raids, French media say.

Several of the raids were in Toulouse, where gunman Mohamed Merah operated, but also took place in other cities.

Merah, who killed seven people in three separate attacks, was buried in Toulouse on Thursday after being killed in a shoot-out with police on 22 March.
Police have been hunting possible accomplices but sources said there was no direct link with the raids.

Merah's brother, Abdelkader, has been charged with aiding him and police are hunting a third man said to be involved in the theft of a scooter that Merah used in all the killings.
Forsane Alizza
The raids were carried out by the domestic intelligence agency, the DCRI, with the help of the elite Raid police commando group, Agence France-Presse news agency reports.

Continue reading the main story 

 

Merah's brother Abdelkader told police that when he helped his brother steal the Yamaha T-Max scooter used in the killings there was another person in the car. His identity has not been revealed.
But on Thursday they discovered a stolen Renault Clio containing parts of the motorbike and the crash helmet used by Merah 80 miles (130km) from the council house in Toulouse where he was shot dead last week.

Another part of the investigation is the USB memory stick that was posted to the al-Jazeera TV channel containing the video he took of the killings. It was dropped in a post box in the Toulouse area on the day the siege of Merah's flat began, which means someone else posted it. If a third man is on the loose, it raises the possibility there is another active terrorist prepared to strike again.

Several of the raids were in Toulouse, particularly the Mirail quarter, sources told AFP.

But there were also raids in Nantes, which is believed to be a centre for the Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) group, to which Merah had been linked by some French media.

It is a Salafist group that was dissolved by the interior ministry in an earlier investigation.
Other arrests took place in Lyon, Marseille, Paris, Nice and Le Mans.

Police sources told AFP that some weapons had been seized, including at least one Kalashnikov rifle.
After Merah's killings, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered police to evaluate the level of danger posed by those known to sympathise with radical Islamists.

Merah, 23, was buried at the Cornebarrieu cemetery in Toulouse on Thursday. His body was accompanied by around 15 men, although it was not clear who they were.

Toulouse's mayor had said it was "inappropriate" for Merah to be buried there, but Algeria, where his family is originally from, had refused to accept his body.

Merah died in a police assault on his flat in Toulouse on 22 March after a 32-hour siege. He had killed three soldiers in two separate attacks before shooting dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school.
Merah is said to have told police he wanted to avenge Palestinian children and to attack the French army because of its foreign interventions.