“Oh, you Jews! Allah has permitted us to kill your brothers on French soil and here on the soil of the Islamic State.” So says the speaker in an Islamic State video released in March, which allegedly shows a Palestinian Mossad agent being shot dead by a child executioner. Standing next to the boy and behind the kneeling detainee, the man, whose face is uncovered, speaks French with the cadence of the banlieues, France’s troubled urban slums that have proved fertile recruiting grounds for the Islamic State and other jihadist groups. He has been identified as none other than Sabri Essid, the “half-brother” of the infamous Jewish school killer, Mohammed Merah.
In 2012, the 23-year-old Merah, a wannabe jihadist who had made exploratory visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan, went on a killing spree in and around his hometown of Toulouse. He killed three French paratroopers in two separate incidents on March 11 and 15, gravely wounding a fourth. Merah made clear he considered the killings retaliation for the participation of French troops in NATO operations in Afghanistan. Then, on March 19, he pulled up in front of the Ozar Hatorah school on his signature TMAX motor scooter and proceeded to shoot dead three children, aged 3 to 8, and a teacher. Merah himself would be killed in a shootout with French police three days later.
It was at the burial of Merah one week after his death that Sabri Essid identified himself to a French journalist as Merah’s “half-brother.” In fact, they were stepbrothers. According to French press reports, in the summer of 2011, Essid’s father, Mohamed, married Merah’s mother, Zoulikha, in a religious ceremony. As far as Islamic law is concerned, Merah thus became Mohamed Essid’s stepson.
In the Islamic State execution video, Sabri Essid can be seen placing a paternal hand on the child executioner’s shoulder while praising the “young lions of the caliphate” (all translations from French by the author). The intimacy of the gesture is not feigned: That boy is Essid’s own stepson, Rayan. The 12-year-old was recognized by former classmates from the elementary school he attended in Toulouse.
When he left France for Syria in March 2014, Essid reportedly took his entire family with him: his wife Leila, Rayan, her son from a previous marriage, and three children of their own. The youngest was just 6 months old. Sabri’s younger brother Walid also went along for good measure.
Essid’s departure caused particular consternation in France, since he was well-known to French security serv ices—and not only on account of his relationship to Merah. Already in December 2006, Essid had been detained by Syrian authorities in what has been described as an al Qaeda safe house along the Syrian-Iraqi border. He was captured in the company of a French Muslim convert by the name of Thomas “Abdelhakim” Barnouin. Repatriated to France in February 2007, the two men were arrested immediately upon their arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Judicial investigations identified Essid and Barnouin as members of what has come to be known as the “Toulouse group,” a network specializing in the recruitment and dispatch of jihadists to fight American and allied forces in Iraq. Both men would be found guilty of forming part of a terrorist enterprise and sentenced to prison terms. In the meantime, Barnouin is also reported to have left France for Syria.
The spiritual guide of the Merah-Essid clan is said to be a reclusive Syrian immigrant who goes by the name of Olivier Corel. Born Abdulilah Qorel some 68 years ago, Corel lives in the rustic village of Artigat, 55 miles south of Toulouse, where Mohammed Merah and other members of the family are known to have visited him. Corel was arrested in connection with the Toulouse group investigations, but charges against him were eventually dropped. Last November, he was again arrested, this time in connection with investigations into possible accomplices of Merah.
Sabri Essid is not the only prominent member of the clan to have left France to join the Syrian jihad. Just two months after Essid’s departure, it was Souad Merah’s turn to go. In May 2014, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve revealed that Souad, Mohammed’s older sister, had fl own to Gaziantep, Turkey, and was presumed to have traveled from there to jihadist-controlled territory in northern Syria. At just some 30 miles from the Syrian border, Gaziantep is a frequent stop for European jihadists on their way to Syria.
Like Essid, Souad left France with her four children in tow, the youngest being 9 months old. In Syria, she is believed to have reunited with Abdelwahed El Baghdadi, her husband under Islamic law and the father of her two youngest children.
Also like Essid, Souad Merah was well-known to French security services for her radicalism—so much so that she was under electronic surveillance at the time of her departure. Along with brother Abdelkader, she is believed to have been a major infl uence in the radicalization of Mohammed Merah. Abdelkader (“Kader” for short) is currently under arrest pending charges. He is suspected of having aided and abetted Mohammed Merah in preparing his attacks.
In recordings made public in November 2012, Souad Merah declares that she is proud of her brother Mohammed and thinks highly of Osama bin Laden. Denouncing the “injustices” committed by “the Jews and the Americans,” Souad praises Salafists—adherents of the radical Islamic current of which both the Islamic State and al Qaeda form part—for taking action while others merely talk. Referring to herself (in the third person) and other members of the clan, Souad excitedly continues, “Sabri, Mohammed, Kader, Souad, all of us—and they [the French security services] know very well who we are— we support the mujahedeen. We don’t hide it. . . . Mohammed took action. . . . He took the next step. . . . I am proud. I am proud. Yeah, I am proud!”
Souad’s words were secretly recorded by another of her brothers, Abdelghani. The anti-Islamist “black sheep” of the family, Abdelghani has said he made the recordings to dissociate himself from the other Merahs and expose the antisemitism in which Mohammed was “immersed” from childhood. His own relationship with a woman of Jewish origin (now his wife) was, he says, such a profound source of discord in the family that, during an argument about it in 2003, Kader stabbed him seven times, nearly killing him. According to Abdelghani, guests at a memorial service held at his mother’s home a few days after Mohammed Merah’s death broke into ululations of joy and, rather than offering condolences, congratulated his mother on her son’s actions.
Whereas Essid emerged in the March video as an Islamic State spokesperson, the Syrian adventure of Souad and her immediate family appears to have gone less smoothly. In September 2014, her husband Abdelwahed returned to France via Turkey with two other French Syria recruits, including Imad Jebali, a boyhood friend of Mohammed Merah and convicted alumnus of the Toulouse group. Souad’s lawyer, Christian Etelin, claims that the three men ran afoul of the Islamic State and were imprisoned before they somehow managed to escape and fl ee across the Turkish border. “They’re just happy to be alive,” Etelin told France’s Europe1 radio. “They really thought that they were going to be executed.”
The trio of jihadists had apparently arranged to turn themselves in upon their arrival in France. Indeed, the arrest was such a done deal that France’s ministry of the interior announced it shortly after a fl ight from Istanbul touched down at Orly airport outside of Paris around noon on September 23. The only problem was that Abdelwahed and his companions were not on the plane. Instead, they were on another fl ight en route to Marseille, where later that afternoon they passed through customs untouched. “Even we were amazed,” Jebali told the French media. Unexpectedly finding themselves free men, the trio rented a car at the airport and drove off. The next day, they pulled up in front of a closed gendarmerie station, notifi ed the authorities of their presence, and patiently waited for the police to come get them.
As for Souad herself, her stay in Syria appears to have been cut short by matters of the heart. According to France’s iTélé news channel, upon getting to Syria she discovered that Abdelwahed had taken another wife, prompting her to gather up her children again and leave for her parents’ native Algeria. According to the latest reports, Souad and her two youngest children are still living there today. Her two oldest children returned to France the same day as Abdelwahed.
“Oh, you Jews! Allah has permitted us to kill your brothers on French soil.” In hearing Sabri Essid’s words, one cannot but think of the crimes of his “half-brother” Mohammed Merah. But the immediate reference is undoubtedly to the four persons killed at the kosher supermarket at Paris’s Porte de Vincennes in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack this past January. Amedy Coulibaly, the perpetrator of the Porte de Vincennes killings, was himself killed when police raided the store. In a video posted on the web posthumously, Coulibaly pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the “caliph” of the Islamic State. His wife under Islamic law, Hayat Boumeddiene, is reported to have fl ed France for Islamic State territory.
Essid’s remark is particularly signifi cant in light of reports in some Western media that call into question the antisemitic character of the Porte de Vincennes killings, suggesting that Coulibaly took refuge in the kosher market merely “by accident” and without any specific intention of targeting Jews. He was at the time wanted by the police in connection with the murder of a French policewoman the previous day
But Sabri Essid and his fellow jihadists of the Islamic State clearly have no doubt about the antisemitic character of the killings; nor does their discourse allow any doubt about the centrality of antisemitism to their ideology more generally. Still addressing “the Jews” in the March execution video and referring to Jerusalem by the Arabic expression Bayt Al-Maqdis, Essid continued, “Soon you will see the army of the caliphate attacking your land and your fortresses, and it will liberate Bayt Al-Maqdis from your impurity, Allah willing. . . . Oh, Jews! Those who gave you Bayt Al-Maqdis said the crusades are over. But today we say to you that the Islamic conquests have just begun, and the Jews tremble, because the promise is near.”
John Rosenthal is the author of The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion.
