Verdict expected in Paris trial of jihadi Merah's brother
PARIS (AP) - The highly watched trial of the older brother of Islamic extremist Mohammed Merah is nearing its end in a Paris court.
The jury has started to deliberate over the 2012 killing spree on a Jewish school and soldiers, the first of what became a wave of jihadi attacks in France.
After an often tense and emotional one-month trial, the court - made up only of professional magistrates - is set to return a verdict later Thursday.
The criminal trial of Abdelkader Merah, a 35-year-old Franco-Algerian, is the first time a French court has considered charges in the attacks that took the lives of three Jewish schoolchildren, a teacher and three paratroopers over nine days in the southern Toulouse region.
The 23-year-old gunman, Mohammed Merah, who was the single killer in the attacks, died after a dramatic 32-hour televised standoff with France's police special forces.
Abdelkader Merah, who has been in custody since days after the attacks, is accused of complicity in the killings. He has always denied helping his younger brother prepare for the deadly rampage, and claimed it again Thursday morning before the five-member jury went behind closed doors to reach a verdict.
"I want to say I have nothing to do with the murders perpetrated by my brother," he said from a glass-enclosed dock.
Earlier this week, public prosecutor Naima Rudloff requested the maximum sentence for Merah: life imprisonment with 22 years before any possible parole.
The prosecutor insisted the two brothers were "complementary" in the terror plot, Mohammed being the "fighter" and Abdelkader "the one with the knowledge." She said the older Merah "crafted" and "shaped" his younger brother. "His guilt is beyond doubt," Rudloff told the court.
The Toulouse shooting spree was to mark the start of an era of homegrown jihadi violence in France. The period since the 2012 attacks has seen an upsurge in deadly attacks in the country, many of them carried out by young Muslim people born and radicalized in France.
The defense lawyers have claimed there is no tangible proof to convict Abdelkader Merah as an accomplice of his brother and asked the court to acquit their client, "well aware that it would be unbearable for the victims and the public."
In his last defense plea, lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti, asked the court to show "judicial courage." He said "Abdelkader Merah embodies the evil by default."
"If Abdelkader Merah is here, it's because his brother is dead, and if Mohamed Merah was in the court dock, he would be there alone," Dupond-Moretti argued.
More than five years after the attacks, emotions still proved raw during the trial, with victims' families sometimes letting their anger out, both inside and outside the courtroom.
Alongside Abdelkader Merah in the defendants' dock has been an acquaintance of the two brothers, Fettah Malki, a 35-year-old Algerian national who moved to France as a child. He is accused of providing weapons, ammunitions and a bulletproof vest that Mohammed Merah used during his rampage and the ultimate standoff with the police. Malki has maintained he was unaware of his friend's deadly terror plot. The prosecutor asked for the maximum 20-year sentence against him.
During the trial, the older Merah denied being the source of his brother's radicalization, admitted for the first time that Mohammed was a "terrorist" and said he felt ashamed by his killings. But, in the same time, he also claimed "democracy is a religion" and that he places "Islamic law above the French constitution."
"I wake up Muslim. I live Muslim. I eat Muslim. I sleep Muslim," said the older Merah.