BRUSSELS (MCT) — The serial-killer suspect who died after a 32-hour stand-off with French police was one of about 400 al-Qaida trained extremists in the European Union, the bloc’s top anti-terrorism expert estimated on Thursday.
Twenty-three-year old Mohamed Merah, a French national of Algerian origin, said he made contact with al-Qaida on trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan before embarking upon a deadly shooting spree around Toulouse.
“It is a phenomenon of ‘lone wolves,’ as we call them,” EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told the German news agency dpa. “We can estimate that they are in the 400s all across Europe.”
So-called lone wolves have become “more and more frequent” as “core” al-Qaida structures in Europe “have been weakened over the past three-four years,” the Belgian official added.
Commenting on appropriate countermeasures, de Kerchove suggested extending the EU legislation already enforced in Germany and Austria that criminalizes anyone who travels abroad to attend terrorist indoctrination camps.
