Al-Jazeera refuses to broadcast footage of French killing spree

Arabic news network Al-Jazeera has been given footage of the deadly attacks on soldiers and a Jewish school in France, but said it will not air the tapes.

French police have said the footage, apparently showing Mohamed Merah with a camera strapped to him as he killed three soldiers, a Jewish school teacher and three young pupils, was not sent by the gunman.

The tapes include the cries of his victims.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, French officials, and family members of the victims had asked that it not be broadcast.

The footage was on a USB key sent with a letter to the Paris office of the Qatar-based television company, Zied Tarrouche, the station’s Paris bureau chief, said on the French TV station BFM.

The letter, written in poor French with spelling and grammar errors, claimed the shootings were carried out in the name of al-Qaida.

Police traced the attacks to Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, who was killed last week after a more than 30-hour standoff with police at his apartment building.

Merah had claimed to police that he had links to al-Qaida, travelled to Afghanistan, and received weapons training in the militant-riddled Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. However, authorities have questioned some of Merah’s claims.

The attacks began on Mar 11 with the murder of a French soldier. Before the spree ended, two more soldiers and three Jewish children and a rabbi were killed.

“In accordance with Al Jazeera’s code of ethics, given the video does not add any information that is not already in the public domain, its news channels will not be broadcasting any of its contents,” a statement from Al-Jazeera stated.

The channel said the video was received from an anonymous source on Monday evening and was immediately passed on to French police.

A French official close to the investigation said it was not sent by Merah.

He said technical experts have concluded that the video was sent on Wednesday from near southern Toulouse, the same day that Merah was trapped in his apartment by the predawn police raid.

Al-Jazeera said it had received many requests by media to look at the video, but it would deny all of them.

Tarrouche said the video had been manipulated after the fact, with religious songs and recitations of Quranic verses laid over the footage.

“You can hear gunshots ... You can hear the voice of this person who has committed these assassinations,” he said.

“You can hear also the cries of the victims, and the voices were distorted.”