French Serial Shooter in Standoff with Police; Linked to al Qaeda, Taliban

French police are engaged in a standoff with a suspect in three deadly attacks — who threw his handgun out of the window of a building after being surrounded by police — but he has other weapons, the French interior minister says. Claude Gueant said Wednesday that the suspect is talking to a police negotiator, and claims he will surrender in the afternoon, but by midmorning he had reportedly stopped negotiating. The minister says police want to take him alive. The suspect is identified as Mohamed Merah and he had been arrested for bomb making in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar in 2007 but broke out of jail months later after a daring Taliban prison break, the director of prisons in Kandahar told Reuters. Ghulam Faruq said that Merah was detained by security services on Dec. 19, 2007 and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace, Reuters reports. He added that authorities had been monitoring the suspect for years, but gave no further details. The announcement comes after an elite French anti-terror police unit raided a home early Wednesday in search of the suspect, who claimed to be a member of Al Qaeda.

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