His motive? "France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive," Mohamed Benalel Merah claims.
(AFP) The Islamist gunman whose murder spree shocked France will be buried in his ancestral homeland Algeria, his father told AFP Monday, adding that he planned to sue France over his son’s death.
"(God willing), I have decided to bury my son in Algeria," Mohamed Benalel Merah said, referring to his son Mohamed Merah, 23, who was shot dead by French police on Thursday in Toulouse at the end of a stand-off after his shooting attacks that killed seven.
"Mohamed has an Algerian passport and has been listed with the (Algerian) consulate in Toulouse since his birth," the elder Merah said.
He also hit out against France for having shot his son instead of taking him alive at the end of a 32-hour siege at his apartment in Toulouse.
"France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in," he said. "They preferred to kill him."
"I will hire the biggest named lawyers and work for the rest of my life to pay (their) costs. I will sue France for having killing my son."
