PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy urged television networks on Tuesday not to broadcast video footage of three deadly shootings in southern France filmed by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman using a camera strapped to his body.
Qatar-based Al Jazeera is considering whether to show the film, received at its Paris bureau on a memory stick late on Monday, the network’s Paris bureau chief Zied Tarrouche said.
Gunman Mohamed Merah, 23, told police before he they shot him dead last week that he had recorded the images as he killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers at point-blank range in the city of Toulouse and nearby Montauban.
The film clips had been edited together with Islamic chants and readings from the Koran, Tarrouche said.
‘I call on executives of all TV stations that may have the images in their possession not to broadcast them under any pretext out of respect for the victims and for France,’ Sarkozy said following a meeting with police chiefs in Paris.
Al Jazeera staff sent a copy of the video montage to the network’s headquarters in Qatar for management there to decide how to proceed, Tarrouche told French BFM TV.
France is still reeling from the shootings a month before a presidential election in which Sarkozy faces an uphill struggle against a Socialist challenger.
Using a stolen scooter and a Colt .45 pistol, Merah carried out the three attacks over eight days before being cornered by police and eventually shot dead by a sniper after a more than 30-hour siege during which he confessed to the murders.
Tarrouche said the video showed all the murders of the soldiers and then the rabbi and the Jewish children, at the entrance to their school shortly before the start of classes. ‘You hear the voice of the person who carried out the killings. You also hear the victims’ cries,’ he said. ‘My feelings are those of any human being who sees horrible things. For me the issue is whether to broadcast this or not.’
The CSA broadcast regulator also asked television channels to not broadcast the video images, a spokesman said.
Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the footage could have a dangerous effect on people inclined to radical violence. ‘This incitement to violence, to murder, on minds that are often fragile or deranged, is absolutely detestable,’ he told Radio Classique. (UNI)