TOULOUSE, France — Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah was buried in his hometown of Toulouse Thursday after Algeria, the serial killer’s ancestral homeland, refused his corpse.
About 15 mainly young men accompanied 23-year-old Merah’s gold-handled casket into the city’s Cornebarrieu cemetery, where Muslim prayers were recited before the al Qaeda-inspired killer was laid to rest.
Journalists were kept out of the cemetery by police.
Muslim official Abdallah Zekri had said he expected the body to be buried in an anonymous grave as “the family wants a burial that is the most simple and discreet possible.”
The burial took place after President Nicolas Sarkozy waded into the debate over where the man who killed three Jewish children, a teacher and three soldiers should be buried after he was killed in a police raid.
“He was French. Let him be buried and let’s not have any arguments about it,” Sarkozy told BFMTV news channel in a bid to bring an end to a tragic episode that eclipsed an increasingly tight presidential election campaign.
“I’ve said what I think of Mohamed Merah, who behaved in a monstrous way,” Sarkozy said.
Family members had wanted the body of the French-born Merah flown to Algeria, but Algeria refused the plan for security reasons.
“The family is disappointed, but at the same time it understands,” Zekri said.
Merah, branded a “monster” by French leaders after his killing spree, died in a hail of police bullets one week ago after a 32-hour siege at his Toulouse flat.
His father, Mohamed Benalal Merah, has lashed out at French authorities over his son’s death and threatened to sue France, drawing sharp criticism from French officials.