In 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban, the massacre of the innocents


Ten years ago, France was seized with terror at the attacks in Toulouse and Montauban… With Retro Match, follow the news through the archives of Paris Match.

“What do three paratroopers of North African origin, a Franco-Israeli rabbi, and three children aged 3, 6 and 8 have in common?” asks Match in its edition dated March 22, 2012. When number 3279 went to print two days earlier, France still did not know anything about the “scooter killer”, his identity, the motive for his atrocious crimes: “To the hundreds of police officers who are now working night and day to identify him, the killer has left this enigma and rare clues. A gun and a scooter. A “modus operandi”, as the experts say. The Yamaha T-Max 500 cm3 scooter is a dream of sportsmen and city robbers alike, it is a machine that rivals the most powerful motorcycles and can climb in a few seconds to 180 km/h, ride sidewalks, and challenge the police roadblocks. He has become a nightmare, a monstrous figure that leaves behind rivulets of blood. Seven dead and two injured in eight days, including three very small children”, then write our special envoys Delphine Byrka, Caroline Fontaine, with Gregory Peytavin. Of the assassin, we only know the victims…

Imad Ibn Ziaten, March 11, 2012

“On Sunday March 11, we see him on an esplanade near a deserted gymnasium, about ten kilometers from the barracks of the 1st Regiment of the Francazal parachute train. Chief sergeant Imad Ibn Ziaten, 30, wants to sell his motorbike. He placed a classified ad on the Internet, and explained the low mileage of his large engine by his long absences “for the past two years”. He does not say that he worked in Chad and Côte d’Ivoire as an “air delivery crew chief” but specifies that he is a soldier. A para in civilian clothes, who still wears his helmet when he collapses near his motorbike. Imad Ibn Ziaten was shot in front of a gymnasium with a point-blank 11.43 bullet to the head. The witnesses see a man fleeing on a powerful scooter, a T-Max 500 cc Yamaha. – Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012

On March 11, 2012, the “scooter killer” ordered Imad Ibn Ziaten to kneel. The soldier remained standing, as his mother Latifa Ibn Ziaten recalled, on the tenth anniversary of her son’s assassination:

Abel Chennouf and Mohammed Legouad, March 15, 2012

“The assassination of the paratroopers of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment of Montauban suggests that we may be dealing with a mad killer. This time, there is no shortage of witnesses. The uniformed paratroopers have just entered the bakery in a small shopping center 100 meters from their barracks to buy sandwiches and cans of soda. They come out of the shop to withdraw money from the distributor. It is 2:10 p.m. on Thursday, March 15. The killer jostled an elderly person to whom he shouted: “Get out!” Its thirteen shots are lost in the noise of the chainsaws with which the municipal employees prune the row of plane trees along the wall of the barracks. It’s the baker’s terrifying howl that startles everyone. She was cleaning her window. Before his eyes, the killer finishes off the soldier who crawls towards his store. Three bullets.

Corporal Abel Chennouf, murdered at age 25. © Sirpa Earth / Sipa

Corporal Mohammed Legouad, murdered at 24.

Corporal Mohammed Legouad, murdered at 24. © Sirpa Earth / Sipa

“That’s when we went out, recalls Justine, the hairdresser. In front of the bakery, there was a man, face against the ground who was still moving. A few meters away, I saw two other bodies. And the blood A nurse, a client of the salon, rushed to take the pulse of one of the soldiers. She said, ‘It’s too late.’ We looked at each other, incredulous, petrified. There was a period of hesitation before the arrival, fast, of help.” A woman coming out of the pharmacy believes she sees the upper part of the killer’s face under the raised visor of his full-face helmet: “He has a tattoo or a scar on his left cheek,” she said.

For Corporal Abel Chennouf, 25, who was going to be a father this spring, it’s over. Medical teams are still trying to resuscitate Corporal Mohammed Legouad, 24. In vain. Loïc Liber, 26, is the only survivor, but unconscious. For three quarters of an hour, the emergency doctors struggle. The scientific police, the bloodhounds of the PJ, the soldiers are there. “It’s a carnage, a carnage”, repeats a non-commissioned officer over and over. All were shot at close range, in the back. An hour after the tragedy, two of the bodies are covered with a white sheet. Rest Loïc, taken to the Rangueil hospital, in Toulouse.

“Caroline will not be able to show their child to Abel.  Corporal Chenouf's companion is seven months pregnant.  On March 21, in Montauban, the unbearable puts life and death face to face.  - Paris Match n°3280, March 29, 2012.

“Caroline will not be able to show their child to Abel. Corporal Chenouf’s companion is seven months pregnant. On March 21, in Montauban, the unbearable puts life and death face to face. – Paris Match n°3280, March 29, 2012. © Pascal Pavani / AFP

(…)

[Le tueur] continued on its way towards the city center, taking narrow streets and intersections with heavy traffic. The 46 video surveillance cameras of the municipal police of Montauban follow him for 4 kilometers. “He was heading towards Toulouse, but he did not take the highway: no toll passage was recorded,” said an investigator. His speed – between 70 and 90 km/hy including in the city center – does not make it possible to identify crucial details: “His route was risky. In some one-way streets, he could have gotten stuck behind a garbage truck , a delivery vehicle, an ambulance. From the shopping center roundabout where he shot down the paratroopers, he should have fled in the opposite direction. Either he already knew the route, or he wanted to reach a specific point” , observes the investigator. Pedestrians were nearly run over. A bus driver, a motorist testified, but nothing about the moments preceding the tragedy. The killer appeared out of nowhere.

Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012

Myriam Monsonego, Arieh, Gabriel and Jonathan Sandler

In front of the Ozar Hatorah Jewish college and high school, three cameras are installed on each side of the gate where, Monday, March 19, Jonathan Sandler awaits. The rabbi holds his two young sons, Gabriel, 3, and Arieh, 6, by the hand. This image haunts Baroukh, his friend and neighbour. A former pupil of the Toulouse school where he returned to teach religion, the rabbi is waiting for the vehicle which is to take his children to school. His wife stayed in their third-floor apartment, with their 1-year-old baby. The Sandler family left Israel to settle in Toulouse in September.

“Jonathan Sandler's former classmates remember a serious student, but who was not lacking in humor.  After a detour through the eco-management college, he decided to go and study in a yeshiva in Jerusalem.  He returned to France in 2007. It was there that he married Eva.  Together they have a first child, Arieh.  Gabriel and little Liora will be born in Israel.  Jonathan taught Torah.”  - Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012.

“Jonathan Sandler’s former classmates remember a serious student, but who was not lacking in humor. After a detour through the eco-management college, he decided to go and study in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. He returned to France in 2007. It was there that he married Eva. Together they have a first child, Arieh. Gabriel and little Liora will be born in Israel. Jonathan taught Torah.” – Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012. © AP/SIPA

Did Jonathan see the scooter park near the school? The driver takes the time to put it on its crutch. He is dressed in black, wears gloves, a white full-face helmet. He stops in front of the rabbi. And shoot him, his sons, and Myriam, an 8-year-old blonde girl, the principal’s daughter who is also waiting for the car to go to school. She is injured, tries to flee. The killer’s weapon jams. Two students aged 15 and 17 then saw him pull out a 9 mm Mini Uzi type “submachine gun”. They see the man running behind her. He grabbed a handgun from the inside pocket of his black leather jacket. It’s an 11.43, the same gun that killed the soldiers. “Not an original model but doctored” says a source close to the investigation. And, coldly, he fires a bullet in the temple of the little girl, still at close range.

One of the boys still wonders why he was spared. He is 15 years old, is one meter away. The man looked him straight in the eye before killing the girl. A man of average height, rather stocky, white, with light eyes, not blue eyes but verging on green. It is especially “the icy and determined look” that strikes the teenager. “I should have been killed,” he repeats to his mother. Her 17-year-old boyfriend also describes a man with light, almond-shaped eyes.

The unconscious little girl, already dying, is carried to the hall of the boarding school where she is given mouth-to-mouth, cardiac massage. The friends will then try to help Aharon, 17, who was seriously injured in the stomach and lungs by a bullet. The weapon “watered” the exterior sheet metal wall. We will discover 6 traces of impacts in height. And, on the ground, between 13 and 19 cases. Opposite the school, a neighbor hears the two-wheeler start with a bang. Samy, who is dropping off his 15-year-old son, sees a motorcycle arrive which, at full speed, brushes his car. Upon discovering the bodies, he is sure to have seen the assassin.

The whole scene was caught on camera. But Nicole Yardeni, regional president of Crif, who watched this monstrous film, can no longer remember. It’s too awful. “Everything gets confused, we let ourselves be overwhelmed by emotion. When he runs after the little girl, his weapon jams, he changes weapons. Afterwards… I didn’t look anymore.”

Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012

Three days after the killing of the Ozar Hatorah school, France will discover the true identity of the “scooter killer”, a small thug turned Islamist terrorist, Mohamed Merah.

“The pain of France” – Cover of Paris Match n°3279, March 22, 2012. © Paris Match


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