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The Daily Tar Heel

TOULOUSE, France — He spent the day holed up in an apartment building during a standoff with French police, suspected of killing seven people in a shooting spree that has shocked France as well as those who grew up with him.

A picture has begun to emerge of the suspected gunman, identified by French media as Mohamed Merah, a French national of Algerian origin.

Law enforcement officials say he is a cold-blooded killer, in thrall to radical Islam. But friends of the suspected scooter shooter describe him as a regular guy, who dabbled in petty crime and prayed at a mosque in a local housing project.

Merah, 24, told police negotiators he has links to the al-Qaida terrorist network, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said. Merah spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which landed him on the radar of France’s intelligence services, Gueant said.

The director of Kandahar prison in Afghanistan, Ghulam Farooq, confirmed that Merah had been imprisoned at the facility in 2007. He is believed to have escaped during a mass jail break.

In Toulouse he was known for petty crimes — about 10 instances, with some “marked by violence,” according to Gueant.

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