Apparently he got shot in the head, jumped out a window, kept firing, and was then found dead: I fully expect that the coroner will rule the whole thing a suicide. I am given to understand that your average European terrorist – and this guy appears to qualify – is remarkably prone to ending it all by shooting themselves in the head, multiple times. How did Tom Clancy rather infamously put it once, again? Something like “A real death-grip on the gun.”
As you might imagine, I have very little sympathy for a jihadi mass murderer… and, frankly, there’s a good rule about messing with French counter-terrorist organizations: don’t. Police or military, those guys are legitimately hard-edged tough SOBs who operate as if the laws don’t apply to them, mostly because those laws effectively don’t. The only thing keeping Merah alive was probably the concern that he might have had useful counter-terrorist info. Based on circumstances, I’m going to guess that the consensus was that he did not. Or at least that the information would have been less useful in the long run than would be the spectacle of the French squashing a bug with a sledgehammer.
A sledgehammer made of explosives.
Via AoSHQ.
Didn’t they add the Explosives Sledgehammer to one of the Red Faction games?
Oh, no, that was the Ostrich Hammer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ_XFQqmNxs
This reminds me of the Red Army Faction terrorist the Hamburg police caught while I was stationed in West Germany in the 1980s. While under 24-hour surveillance in her cell, she managed to not only hang herself, but shoot herself nine times in the back of the head with a police-issue 9mm. While having her hands cuffed behind her back. Judge at the inquest ruled it a suicide, and that was the end of that. People who wish we were more like Europe seem to always overlook the fact that European cops play for keeps, and deal out severe beatings to mouthy drunks and other people who get the kid-glove treatment over here. Wonder why that is.