"Operational Failure"

"How come the police's best unit did not manage to arrest a man all alone? They should have flushed him out with a high-dosage tear gas. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes. Instead of which, they throw volleys of grenades. In fact, I think this operation was conducted with no precise tactical plan." Christian Prouteau, founder of GIGN, elite security unit of French Gendarmerie

France's RAID police unit, had their orders. To bring in the 23-year-old French Algerian. Alive. A trial would ensue and justice would be seen to be done. The families of the victims required that. The French justice system required that this be done. And the police themselves, the intelligence units could profit from further information that might be revealed throughout the course of a trial.

"To be frank, if it had been about neutralizing him dead or alive, by 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday it would have been over. Four of my men are wounded due to the fact that we tried right to the end to bring him out alive", contended Amaury de Hauteclocque furiously, chief of RAID police, in responding to the criticism from Mr. Prouteau, an obvious rival.

But the suggestion remains, and it should be adequately addressed: why the decision to lob grenades, and not consider the efficacy of tear gas to immobilize the murderer? Had this been done, he would have emerged from the building, he would have been speedily taken into custody and the long siege would not have occurred, nor his four men wounded in the pursuit of their duty so awkwardly undertaken.

"Operational failure", was the opinion of an analytical study in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. Written by a former special forces officer who obviously knows of what he speaks, given his experience and expertise, now heading a counter-terrorism think-tank.

"The objective was not complicated. A residential apartment, a single fugitive, no explosives, no hostages, in an area that is not enemy territory or a battlefield, but one which allows the security forces [to] deploy as they wish."

"This is not how a professional unit to combat terror behaves" wrote a former commando officer in Israel's Maariv newspaper. These are no mere critical responses from members of the public who see fault in everything, but informed critiques relating the interpretation of those who have faced similar types of experiences which they carried out with professionalism and due regard for the purpose to be accomplished.

Bernard Squarcini, head of the DCR domestic French intelligence agency defensively detailed Mohamed Merah's life trajectory; petty criminal offences, jail, radicalization "self-radicalised ... alone, reading the Koran." Confirming the man's trips through Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, on to Afghanistan via Tajikistan and later Pakistan where he took weapons training in Waziristan.

None of these activities, singly or collectively seemed to alarm French authorities sufficiently so that Mr. Merah would be picked up and serious interrogated. None of these events alerted French authorities sufficiently so that they would opt for surveillance that should have stopped him from acquiring a considerable and very deadly arsenal of weapons.

Brother Abdelkader, five years Mohamed's senior has informed police where he is being held in detention: "I am very proud of my brother. I regret nothing for him and I approve of what he did." Which may go some way to explaining the family's fascination with terror and the fact that Abdelkader's girlfriend and mother are still being held in detention.

A number of French Muslim students proposed a one-minute silence in honour of Toulouse's al-Qaeda aspirant on a "homage' Facebook page before it was banned. Some in the French media speak of Mohamed Merah as a "child" victim of Muslim economic hardship in France.

Most French schools held a moment of silence to honour the victims of his hate, but one teacher in Rouen chose to stage a moment of silence for Merah. Some of the Rouen classroom students left in protest while others gave that moment of silence for Merah, and one student relieved himself of the opinion that the murder victims of Mohamed Merah "deserved it", because the teacher explained that he was a "victim", whose reported links to al-Qaeda were a media invention.

After protests erupted, the education authority in Rouen suspended the teacher, while pointing out the disciplinary action does not reflect upon her as "guilty" of anything.