A billboard in Toulouse commemorating the victims of Mohammed Merah’s gun attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in March 2012
Chaotic scenes broke out on Wednesday at the trial in France of the brother of an Islamist extremist who carried out a spree of terrorist attacks around the southern city of Toulouse in March 2012, including a gun assault on a Jewish school that resulted in the brutal murders of a rabbi along with three young children.
Shouts and jeers erupted from the gallery at the court in Paris during the testimony of Zoulika Aziri — the mother of 35-year-old Abdelkader Merah, who could face a life sentence if he is found guilty of having aided his brother, Mohammed, in carrying out three separate terror attacks between March 11-19, 2012. Mohammed Merah was shot and killed by French police on March 22 of that year at the culmination of a 30-hour siege after he was tracked down.
Tempers at the court flared after Aziri’s lawyer, Eric Dupond-Moretti, justified her decision to lie in some of her statements to the court by describing her as a grieving mother. “This woman is the mother of the accused, but she is also the mother of a dead man,” he said, when urging prosecution lawyers to be less aggressive in their questioning. At this point in the proceedings, the brother of Sgt. Imad Ibn Ziaten — an off-duty French-Moroccan paratrooper shot dead by Mohammed Merah on March 11, 2012 — cried out “Are you not ashamed?” before leaving the courtroom sobbing in the arms of his relatives.
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