French soldier held in Toulouse terror probe

PARIS: A serving French soldier was arrested yesterday for questioning in connection with a hunt for accomplices of Mohamed Merah, the gunman who killed seven people in southwestern France last year.
The soldier was picked up at his barracks in the southern town of Castres yesterday morning, police sources said. His arrest follows the detention for questioning late Tuesday of two other men.
Three of Merah’s victims were French paratroopers, whom he said he had targeted because of France’s involvement in the NATO intervention in Afghanistan.
France’s prosecutor’s office says three people were arrested in southern France as part of the inquiry into last March’s Toulouse terror attacks.
The arrests come just 10 days after President Francois Hollande, speaking in Toulouse, said that France is tightening its intelligence-gathering to prevent further terror attacks like that of radical Mohamed Merah, who police say killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers a year ago.
Agnes Thibault Lecuivre of the prosecutor’s office said two people were arrested late Tuesday in Toulouse, adding that one of the arrests took place in the gritty Les Izards neighborhood where Merah spent some of his childhood. A third person was arrested yesterday morning in the nearby town of Castres.
No charges have been brought.
Detectives looking into the case are convinced that Merah, who had traveled to Pakistan in 2011, could not have acted alone and fear accomplices still at large could represent a security threat.
To date, the only person charged with helping him is his brother Abdelkader Merah, who has been in custody since last year but denies involvement in the killings.
Five other people have been detained and interrogated by police as part of the probe but they were all released without charge.
Since Merah’s death, it has emerged that he had been known to France’s security services for several years and it has become clear the threat he posed was disastrously under-estimated by agents who had contact with him.