The siege continued…

Tiberge posted this at 2:43 a.m.:

The police have a suspect in the Toulouse and Montauban murders. RAID, a special elite unit of the French police, stormed a building in Toulouse at 3:10 a.m. As soon as the police arrived, the suspect opened fire. One policeman was wounded in the knee, another was slightly injured. Still barricaded inside, the man is now negotiating with the police through the door.

The young man, 24, of French nationality and Pakistano-Afghan or Algerian origin, lives in Toulouse. He has already made several trips to Afghanistan, and claims to be a salafist, belonging to al-Qaeda. He said he wanted to avenge Palestinian children. The young man was monitored on his return from Afghanistan by the central agency for internal intelligence (DCRI). When the affair exploded, the DCRI made a connection since the suspect lives in Toulouse.

He is considered as the main suspect. His brother has been arrested. The building is now closed off and the area sealed. Many reporters are on the scene. Interior Minister Claude Guéant and chief of the antiterrorist unit Olivier Christen are on the scene as well.

The New York Times has further information on the siege and the suspect, also posted at about 2:30 a.m. Among other things, the police now know his name. It is … Muhammad. That’s a common name on the traditionalist right, of course. Just not our traditionalist right.

The Times continues:

Before the authorities said on Wednesday that their prime suspect claimed ties to Al Qaeda, many analysts had speculated on whether he was motivated by extreme right-wing passions coinciding with the presidential elections.

After the shootings on Monday, the candidates suspended their campaigns as political debate swirled around whether the killings were somehow inspired by anti-immigrant issues in a long and heated campaign when President Sarkozy is trying to win back voters who drifted to the far-right National Front party.

But the suspect’s apparent links to Al Qaeda seemed likely to shift that debate onto familiar themes [LA notes: you can almost hear the Times reporter snapping his fingers in dismay: “Damn, no right-wing killer, just another Muslim terrorist we have to cover up for, and more fodder for the right!”], also associated with Mr. Sarkozy, of law and order and the fight against terrorism, particularly if the authorities are able to end the crisis with arrest of the suspect, removing the immediate threat of further bloodletting.

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Svein Sellanraa (a contributor at The Orthosphere) writes:

I think they’ll do more than hush it up—if only because the case has received too much coverage to be flushed down the memory hole immediately, at least here in Europe. Here’s how I think it will be spun. We already know that only white Europeans are moral actors—the liberal ones for good, the conservative ones for evil—while nonwhites are simply passive receptacles without free will or moral responsibility. It follows that whenever nonwhites do something bad, the evil (conservative) whites are always ultimately at fault somehow. The gunman in this case is an Algerian Muslim, and white conservatives must therefore ultimately be at fault for his crimes. Considering the facts of the case, I predict the blame will be pinned on either Israel or Marine Le Pen and the Front National—possibly both. Look for phrases like “climate of hatred” to be thrown about a lot in the coming weeks.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 21, 2012 06:23 AM | Send