The prime suspect in the recent spree of murders in France turns  out to have been under police surveillance, in Afghan custody at one point, American military custody at another – none of which seems to have had any effect on his actions. From Scott Sayare’s account, Cornered Suspect Admits Killing 7 in France, Officials Say

TOULOUSE, France — A 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the methodical killings of four men and three children in this region over the past 10 days, officials said, after barricading himself in a small apartment building in Toulouse surrounded by hundreds of police officers.

The French authorities said he had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, called himself a mujahedeen, or freedom fighter, and had been under surveillance for years. In a standoff that stretched past 14 hours, he fired several heavy volleys at the hundreds of police officers ringing the building, injuring two, though neither seriously. At one point the suspect threw a .45-caliber pistol from the window, the same kind used in each of the three attacks. The prosecutor leading the investigation said the man, Mohammed Merah, made a series of disclosures to a negotiator, including that he had been trained by Al Qaeda, and that the attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children, and to protest French military deployments abroad as well as a recent French law banning the full Islamic facial veil in public. He admitted to planning at least three more killings, said the prosecutor François Molins, speaking at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Merah claimed responsibility as the helmeted motorcyclist who killed three paratroopers in Toulouse and the nearby city of Montauban, all three of Arab descent, over the past 10 days, Mr. Molins said. Boasting that he had “brought France to its knees,” he also admitted to a brutally cold attack on Monday outside a Jewish school that killed a rabbi, two of his young children, and an 8-year-old girl, the prosecutor said. In that attack, the gunman held the girl by the hair to execute her, pausing to switch to a .45 when his 9-millimeter pistol jammed. Investigators believe he was wearing a camera around his neck at the school to record his murders. Mr. Merah had planned to kill a soldier Wednesday morning, and at some point to kill two police officers here, Mr. Molins said. The chief editor of France 24 said in a televised interview that she had spoken by telephone to a man who claimed to be the shooter in the hours before the police surrounded Mr. Merah’s building. “He was calm, was speaking in very good French and punctuated by Arabic expressions,” said the editor, Ebba Kalondo. She also said he spoke of planning more attacks and intending to post video of his killings online. The suspect had been detained by Afghan police at one point during his travels in Afghanistan and Paksitan, Mr. Molins said, and was transferred into American custody and returned to France. Afghan authorities did say a man named Mohammed Merah had escaped from a prison in the city of Kandahar in a mass jail break orchestrated by the Taliban in 2008. but that he was definitely an Afghan citizen.

Interior Minister Claude Guéant said that the Mr. Merah cornered in Toulouse had been under surveillance by the French domestic intelligence service for several years, “though nothing whatsoever allowed us to think he was at the point of committing a criminal act.”