What would prompt a 23-year-old man, born and raised in France, to chase a small, terrified Jewish girl into a school courtyard, look her in the eye and shoot her in the head?

The very idea brings back memories of the 1940s, of an era that many Europeans have worked diligently, with considerable success, to put behind them. But the echoes of history should not be silenced. The tragedy of Toulouse is a call to take another look at that crucial fight against the poisonous prejudice that ultimately devastated Europe in the middle of the 20th century.

I believe an honest examination will reveal a blind spot among those fighting prejudice that has allowed the ancient Jew hatred that infected Europe for centuries to survive. The blind spot is this: When the prejudice — and even the call for murder — is made in connection with the Palestinian cause, people look the other way and give it a pass.

Initially, the fact that he had murdered both Arabs and Jews made people conclude that this was the work of a racist, right-wing extremist. In recent years, Europeans have been alarmed by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. With a presidential election around the corner in France, the murders quickly took on political significance.

But the trail led to Merah, a self-described jihadist. Merah apparently called a television station to explain his actions, saying he wanted to “take revenge on the law against the full Islamic veil (in France) and also on France’s participation in the war in Afghanistan and to protest against the situation in Palestine.”

The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, reacted indignantly to the familiar, phony link. “It is time for those criminals,” he said, “to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions.”

It’s not just the criminals and the terrorists who should stop.

It is time to stop excusing anti-Semitic calls for the murder of Jews as an acceptable outgrowth of the Palestinian cause.

A couple of years ago, I was in the Netherlands when a pro-Palestinian demonstration broke into a familiar chant: “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” The “Jews to the gas” is a common cheer at Dutch soccer games. This was nothing new.

What was new is that this demonstration included a Dutch member of Parliament, Harry van Bommel of the Socialist Party, who continued along as his comrades called for a repeat of the Holocaust.

Political leaders and government authorities often act dismissively when Jews are the target of violence, particularly from Arabs. When a Jewish girl was beaten at school by five Muslim girls who called her a “dirty Jew” and shouted that she should “return to your country,” community leaders said they were “exasperated” by the endless attacks on Belgian Jews and asked the government to take action. Viviane Teitelbaum, a Jewish member of Parliament, condemned the failure of the Belgian media and the political establishment to speak out.

The earlier confusion in Toulouse is understandable. After all, when Jews are murdered, the killer could come from the left or from the right.

It’s easy to blame the situation of the Arab-Israel conflict, but Jean-Yves Camus, a French expert in extremism, says today’s prejudice includes the “new anti-Semitism” from radicalized Muslims and the old-fashioned hatred from the right, including neo-Nazis.

Often, when the Palestinian link is made, the prejudice comes from the left, couched as passion for human rights.

At times, human rights activists seem to have no problem with anti-Semitism — even of the genocidal variety — condemning it forcefully only if it is accompanied by anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim sentiment.

Just days before the Toulouse murders, on March 19, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva hosted an event featuring a high official from Hamas. That is a group whose easily obtainable charter calls not just for the creation of a Palestinian state, which is something I, like many other people, wholeheartedly support.

But Hamas’ charter also declares: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. … The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews). …” If a white supremacist organization advocated genocide as this one does, polite society would keep its distance, at the very least.

Instead, polite society contributes to a campaign to demonize Israel, fueling the hatred that is then unleashed against Jews in France and elsewhere. Last week, a U.N. official posted to Twitter a picture of a heartbreakingly injured Palestinian girl, tweeting “Another child killed by #Israel …” Turns out it was a 2006 picture of a girl who died falling from a swing. Back in 2006, Reuters had sent out the same picture, saying she was the target of a military strike, but later retracted it, explaining that the girl was the victim of a playground accident. Portraying Israelis as baby killers fits neatly into the old anti-Semitic narrative that outrageously claims Jews kill Christian children to make Passover matzos.

These types of “errors” are all too common, and they contribute to an air of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment. In Europe, that falls on fertile ground.

At least 400 anti-Semitic (which means anti-Jewish, for those who will argue Arabs are also Semites) French Jews have been killed in bombings. Belgian Jewish children are beaten, and Dutch Jews are afraid to wear their traditional head cover outside because it so often leads to pummelings.

A just-released survey in 10 European countries found that 24% of the French population holds anti-Jewish sentiment, up from 20% in 2009. In Hungary, Spain and Poland, anti-Semitic sentiment is “off the charts,” according to Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. Surveys show that 15% of Americans hold anti-Jewish views.

The sentiment is most common among European Muslims, some of whom have attended Islamic schools, whose Saudi-financed textbooks explained that Jews look like monkeys and pigs and seek “world domination.”

Why would a man kill small Jewish children? The answer has intrigued historians and psychologists for many centuries. But the more urgent question is what we can do to stop it from happening again. And the answer is that the first requirement is telling the truth about anti-Jewish ideologies.

The French police siege to capture a suspected al Qaeda-trained militant came to a bloody end Thursday morning when commandos shot Mohammed Merah in the head as he fired wildly back at them, authorities said.

Merah emerged from a bathroom in his apartment and fired more than 30 shots at police as they burst in to end a standoff that had lasted more than 31 hours, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

He jumped out a window onto a balcony, still shooting, and was found dead on the ground, officials said.

Two police officers were injured in the raid, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.

Merah had only two bullets left in his gun when he was killed, Molins said.

Merah, 23, was wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers, a rabbi and three children ages 4, 5, and 7. The shootings began March 11 and ended Monday with the slaying of the rabbi and the children at a Jewish school in Toulouse.

Authorities said the young man cited a variety of reasons for the killings, including France’s ban on the wearing of Islamic veils, the missions of its troops abroad and the oppression of Palestinians.

Police found video recordings of the attacks, ammunition and ingredients for explosives after he was killed, Molins said.

In the video of the first shooting of a French soldier in Toulouse, Merah told the soldier, “You kill my brothers, I kill you,” Molins told reporters. Another video shows Merah gunning down two more French soldiers in Montauban. He is heard saying “Allahu Akbar,” or God is great, Molins said.

Merah claimed to have posted the videos online, but police do not know when, where or how, Molins added.

Merah was wearing a bulletproof vest when police raided his apartment, the prosecutor said.

Gueant had said earlier police wanted to capture him alive, saying the priority was “to hand him over to the authorities.”

Merah said he wanted to “die with weapons in his hands,” Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said overnight.

After Merah’s death, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said everything had been done to bring him to justice alive.

But, he said, security forces could not be exposed to more danger as they sought to arrest him, since enough lives had already been lost.

Sarkozy’s political rival, Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande, congratulated police and said France had always shown that it “knows how to stand up against its worst enemies without losing any of its values.”

Campaigning for the French presidential elections, put on hold after the Toulouse school attack, has now resumed, with Sarkozy holding a rally in Strasbourg Thursday afternoon. The first round of voting is due next month.

Sarkozy told supporters that his thoughts were with the victims and their families.

The shootings were not the crime of a madman but of “a monster and a fanatic,” he said, and his crimes are “inexplicable and inexcusable.”

France is not racist or anti-Semitic, Sarkozy added, and the tragic events of the past few days have shown that the nation is stronger when it is united and lives by its values.

Police had surrounded Merah’s house at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, having tracked him down through computer sleuthing and clues linked to his motorcycle, authorities said.

As police first attempted to seize him early Wednesday morning, Merah shot and wounded two officers, said Molins, the prosecutor.

The prosecutor said Merah had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and also spent time in Afghanistan.

He was sent back to France after Afghan police picked him up at a traffic stop and alerted international forces to his presence, Molins said.

Merah’s activities led to his inclusion on the U.S. no-fly list, a U.S. intelligence official confirmed Thursday. Merah had been on the list for some time, one reason being that he had attended an al Qaeda training camp, the official said.

Christian Etelin, a lawyer who represented Merah in an earlier incident involving a traffic accident, also said Merah went to Afghanistan two years ago.

After the suspect’s death, Etelin said that Merah was psychologically damaged.

“He was completely cut off from reality,” Etelin said on CNN affiliate BFM-TV.

Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” earlier that the suspect called her about two hours before police surrounded his home and laid out details of the killings that only police would have known — “very, very specific information” such as the number of shots fired and the shell casings left behind.

“He seemed to be very aware that a massive manhunt was under way for him,” Kalondo said. “He said he wasn’t scared, and that neither capture nor death scared him at all.”

Officials worry about ‘lone wolf’ terrorists

Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years, Interior Minister Gueant said.

He had “already committed certain infractions, some with violence,” Gueant said.

Merah was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, Molins said.

The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the French military. His first attempt was in the northern city of Lille, where he was refused because of prior convictions, and his second, in July 2010, was in Toulouse, where he sought to join the Foreign Legion but left during the first round of tests.

Who is Mohammed Merah?

Merah was born in Toulouse, said Elisabeth Allanic, a magistrate at the Paris prosecutors office. Gueant said he was of Algerian origin.

Gueant said Merah “wanted to avenge Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”

France has about 4,000 troops supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The government has said it will pull them out by 2013.

Merah also was opposed to France’s recent move to ban women from wearing a full veil, Molins said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly rejected using his people as a justification for the French killings, calling the string of shootings a “cowardly terrorist attack.”

Merah belonged to a group called Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory, Gueant said. The French government banned the group in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan.

The group issued a “chilling warning” on its Facebook page before it was banned this year, calling on supporters to attack Americans, Jews and French soldiers, terror expert Sajjan Gohel said.

Police tracked Merah down via his brother’s computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an ad posted by the first victim, Gueant said.

In that first shooting, Imad Ibn Ziaten, a paratrooper of North African origin, arranged to meet a man in Toulouse who wanted to buy a scooter Ziaten had advertised online, the interior minister said. The victim said in the ad that he was in the military.

A message sent from the suspect’s brother’s IP address was used to set up the March 11 appointment, at which the paratrooper was killed, Gueant said.

Four days later, two other soldiers were shot dead and another injured by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet in a shopping center in the city of Montauban, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Toulouse.

In the attack at the private Jewish school Ozar Hatorah on Monday, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a motor scooter pulled up and shot a teacher and three children — two of them the teacher’s young sons — in the head.

The other victim, the daughter of the school’s director, was killed in front of her father.

Police, who said the same guns were used in all three attacks, launched an intense manhunt and late Tuesday night zeroed in on the apartment, about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Jewish school.

Syrian security fores pounded a densely populated Homs neighborhood Wednesday as the U.N. Security Council called on the government to work with its envoy to end the bloodshed.

At least 79 people were killed across Syria Wednesday, including 42 in Homs, according to the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria.

The LCC said at least 25 people slain in Homs were killed in the Khaldiya district, which had become a refuge in the devastated city for people fleeing other war-torn neighborhoods, such as Karm al Zaytoun, Bab Sbaa, Jib Jandali and Baba Amr.

The LCC said shelling and sniper gunfire rang out in Khaldiya as people pulled corpses from the streets. Dwellings there have been burned and destroyed, and there have been deaths and injuries. One man was killed by sniper fire, activists said. “Schools and mosques are also full of dozens of displaced residents from other neighborhoods. The trouble is, any small falling rocket can result in a real massacre,” activist Abu Abdallah said.

LCC spokeswoman Rafif Jouejati said Khaldiya and other Homs neighborhoods such as Qusour are new targets for the regime. The group said regime forces firing at families fleeing Baba Amr killed two children.

“The majority of the remaining people there are women and children who were fleeing Baba Amr. The regime is now targeting ordinary civilians. FSA presence is no longer a pretext,” she said, referring to the Free Syrian Army resistance.

Homs has been a hotbed of anti-government sentiment during the yearlong uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Activists said 39 corpses were recovered from the city’s Refaie district Wednesday. Abdallah said those people were killed around March 12.

Flirtatious e-mails fill al-Assad’s inbox

U.N. officials say the yearlong crisis has killed more than 8,000 people, while opposition activists put the toll at more than 10,000, most of them civilians.

After months of failed attempts to stop the killings in Syria, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday issued a presidential statement endorsing the peace mission of diplomat Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League joint special envoy to Syria.

His mission is to stop the violence, gain “timely” humanitarian aid access and foster a Syrian-led political transition.

“The Security Council calls upon the Syrian government and opposition to work in good faith with the envoy towards a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis,” the statement said.

Unlike resolutions, U.N. presidential statements aren’t legally binding. But they do require unanimous support. This is significant because Russia and China, two permanent council members, have been obstacles to adopting tough resolutions on Syria.

In its statement, the council cited “its gravest concern at the deteriorating situation in Syria, which has resulted in a serious human rights crisis and a deplorable humanitarian situation” and expressed “profound regret at the death of many thousands of people in Syria.”

“The Syrian government should immediately cease troop movements towards, and end the use of heavy weapons in, population centers, and begin pullback of military concentrations in and around population centers,” the statement said.

“As these actions are being taken on the ground, the Syrian government should work with the envoy to bring about a sustained cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties with an effective United Nations supervision mechanism.”

Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, would seek “similar commitments” from the opposition and all relevant elements to stop the fighting and work with him to bring about a “sustained cessation of armed violence,” the statement said.

The council called for a “daily two-hour humanitarian pause” for relief efforts and intensifying “the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained persons.” It wants freedom of movement for journalists and “a nondiscriminatory visa policy for them.”

It also urged respect for “freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the council move a “positive step” and said “the council has now spoken with one voice.”

Clinton sends a message to al-Assad

In remarks directed at al-Assad, she said, “Take this path. Commit to it. Or face increasing pressure and isolation.”

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice called the U.N. presidential statement “a modest step” but “a step forward for the Security Council towards a more unified approach.”

“Annan’s proposal is the best way to put an end to the violence, facilitate much needed humanitarian assistance, and advance a Syrian-led political transition,” she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the government and opposition “to work in good faith” with Annan toward peace.

Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin said Russia “will support a Syrian-led political process, this is the aim of Kofi Annan’s effort, and we will support whatever the outcome of that process might be.”

Security Council members also issued a statement condemning deadly attacks this month in Damascus and Aleppo, two seats of power and support for the regime.

“The members of the Security Council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed,” the statement said.

The Syrian regime has blamed these attacks on terrorists, a claim disputed by rebels.

Two U.N. missions are under way in Syria. One comprises a team of experts discussing ways to implement the proposals laid out by Annan, and the other is a humanitarian team that — along with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — is assessing the humanitarian needs in the country.

The United Nations, activists and human rights groups have documented widespread violations by Syrian government forces, including the use of torture, arbitrary detentions and indiscriminate shelling of neighborhoods.

Human Rights Watch said some anti-government forces have also committed abuses during the crisis, such as kidnappings, torture and executions. These allegations coincide with the emergence of armed resistance groups in recent months.

On Wednesday, a bomb targeting a military vehicle in the southern city of Daraa killed two Syrian soldiers, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Security forces shot dead two civilians after the blast.

Syrian state-run media said Wednesday that “a number” of law-enforcement members and several civilians were killed Tuesday when a “suicide terrorist” set off a car explosion in the Daraa countryside.

The observatory also said a Syrian soldier was killed Wednesday during clashes in Hama, also in western Syria.

In the Damascus countryside city of Harasta, anti-regime Free Syrian Army fighters clashed with regime soldiers, the LCC said.

CNN cannot independently confirm reports of casualties or attacks in Syria because the government has severely restricted the access of international journalists.

Mohammed Merah, 23, suspected in seven recent killings, remained holed up Thursday in an apartment in the southern French city of Toulouse, more than 24 hours after hundreds of officers lay siege.

Police continued to demand the surrender of the self-proclaimed jihadist.

Merah is wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers and of three students and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, in a string of shootings that began on March 11. He opened fire on police as they tried to break down his apartment door about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, wounding two officers, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Wednesday evening, police switched off the street lights in the district around the apartment, leading to speculation that a new raid was imminent as talks stalled.

Three loud explosions and flashes of light erupted shortly before midnight — but Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet told CNN the blasts were meant to pressure Merah back into talks with negotiators, and police had not moved in on the apartment.

Around 12:30 a.m. Thursday (7:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), a police convoy left the scene with what appeared to be someone huddled beneath a blanket in the back seat of one of the cars. But there was no sign the siege was breaking up, and two more explosions rang out about an hour later.

Merah told French police that he trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and that he planned to attack more soldiers and police Wednesday, Molins said. He said he was acting alone, the prosecutor added.

Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” that the suspect had called her about two hours before police arrived at his residence and laid out details of the killings that only police would have known — “very, very specific information” such as the number of shots fired and the shell casings left behind.

“He seemed to be very aware that a massive manhunt was under way for him,” Kalondo said. “He said he wasn’t scared, and that neither capture nor death scared him at all.”

Hours into the siege, French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke at a memorial service for the three paratroopers, calling their killing “a terrorist execution.”

One of the victims was due to become a father soon, but “a killer without scruples decided that he would never meet the child to be born,” Sarkozy said.

Earlier Wednesday, Sarkozy called on his nation “to unite together to show that terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community.”

Sarkozy’s office said U.S. President Barack Obama had called his French counterpart to offer his condolences and praise the efforts of French police. France and the United States are more determined than ever to fight together against terrorist brutality, Sarkozy’s office said.

Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.

He had “already committed certain infractions, some with violence,” Gueant said.

Merah was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, Molins said.

He was back in a Toulouse court February 24 for causing an accident with injuries and driving without a license and was sentenced to a month in jail, his lawyer Christian Etelin said on BFM-TV. He had not begun serving that sentence, Etelin said.

The attorney also said Merah went to Afghanistan two years ago.

He was sent back to France after Afghan police picked him up at a traffic stop and alerted international forces to his presence, Molins said.

The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the French military. His first attempt was in the northern city of Lille, where he was refused because of prior convictions, and his second, in July 2010, was in Toulouse, where he sought to join the Foreign Legion but left during the first round of tests.

Gueant said in Toulouse on Wednesday that he expected Merah to give himself up, but the standoff continued.

At one point, a handgun was thrown from the window of the apartment, but the minister said the suspect had other weapons, as well as a car containing more arms near his apartment.

Merah broke off communications with police late in the morning, Gueant said, but started talking again several hours later, a police officer said. The suspect was being stubborn and difficult to talk to, said Didier Martinez, a Toulouse police press officer.

Who is Mohammed Merah?

Merah was born in Toulouse, said Elisabeth Allanic, a magistrate at the Paris prosecutors office. Gueant said he was of Algerian origin.

Gueant said Merah “wanted to avenge Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”

France has about 4,000 troops supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The government has said it will pull them out by 2013.

Merah also was opposed to France’s recent move to ban women from wearing a full veil, or burqa, Molins said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly rejected using his people as a justification for the French killings, calling them a “cowardly terrorist attack.”

“It is time for those criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions,” Fayyad said in a statement Wednesday.

The suspect belongs to a group called Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory, Gueant said. The French government banned the group in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan.

The group issued a “chilling warning” on its Facebook page before it was banned this year, calling on supporters to attack Americans, Jews and French soldiers, terror expert Sajjan Gohel said.

Police tracked the suspect down via his brother’s computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an ad posted by the first victim, Gueant said.

Imad Ibn Ziaten, a paratrooper of North African origin, arranged to meet a man in Toulouse to sell him a scooter he had advertised online, the minister said. The victim said in the ad that he was in the military.

A message sent from the suspect’s brother’s IP address was used to set up an appointment to inspect the bike, an appointment at which the paratrooper was killed March 11, Gueant said.

Four days later, two other soldiers were shot dead and another injured by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet in a shopping center in the city of Montauban, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Toulouse.

In the attack at the private Jewish school Ozar Hatorah on Monday, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a motor scooter pulled up and shot a teacher and three children — two of them the teacher’s young sons — in the head.

The other victim, the daughter of the school’s director, was killed in front of her father.

Police, who said the same guns were used in all three attacks, launched an intense manhunt and late Tuesday night zeroed in on the apartment, about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Jewish school.

Meanwhile, the bodies of the four victims in the school shooting arrived in Israel, where they were buried in Jerusalem.

Why are Jewish dead flown to Israel for burials?

“Today, all Israel is in pain and mourning over the deaths of innocent children and a dedicated father,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told the families as the coffins were lowered from the plane.

The teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, was born and raised in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, but pursued his religious studies in Israel. He married and had children before returning to teach at the Toulouse school, French Jewish representatives said. His sons, Gabriel, 4, and Arieh, 5, were buried with him.

The other victim, 7-year-old Miriam Monsonego, was buried separately on Wednesday.

Forty percent of French practicing Jews are buried in Israel, according to the Consistory of Paris, a group representing Jewish communities.

The U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned the French attacks “in the strongest terms possible,” in a statement Wednesday.

The group’s president, Salam Al-Marayati, said: “(We) call upon the people of France to come together and not allow their national resilience to be impacted by these acts of terror.”

Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old man described by French authorities as a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist, has been named as the chief suspect in a series of shootings that have left seven people dead.

As a standoff with security forces in Toulouse continued Wednesday, a picture emerged of a man who was already known to the police and had apparently sought out Islamist jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“He claims to be a jihadist and says he belongs to al Qaeda,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters in Toulouse. “He wanted to avenge the Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the suspect told the officers surrounding his apartment that he had acted alone — and that he had intended to carry out more attacks on police and a soldier Wednesday.

His only regret was that he was not able to kill more people, the prosecutor said.

But, Molins added, Merah indicated he was not on a suicide mission. He “does not have the soul of someone who would commit suicide, does not have the soul of a martyr. He would prefer to kill and to live,” the prosecutor said.

A French national of Algerian origin, Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for a couple of years, having “already committed certain infractions, some with violence,” Gueant told CNN affiliate BFM-TV.

Merah has spent considerable time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the minister added.

Lawyer Christian Etelin, who represented Merah in connection with previous minor offenses, said his client went to Afghanistan two years ago.

He had become suddenly radicalized, Etelin told CNN affiliate BFM-TV, and wanted to become more involved politically.

Etelin last saw Merah, whom he described as having a “complex” personality, on February 24, when he appeared in court accused of driving without a license and causing an accident with injuries.

Merah was sentenced to a month in prison and was to appear before the judge again in early April to determine where he would serve that sentence, the attorney said.

But a series of clues, some relating to a scooter used in the attacks, instead led investigators to the apartment in Toulouse where he holed up under siege for hours, Molins said.

The shootings have revealed a ruthless and determined killer.

All seven victims were shot in the head, most at point-blank range, and authorities said they were carefully targeted because of their religious and ethnic backgrounds.

The gunman’s first victims were three soldiers of North African origin who had recently returned from Afghanistan, who were shot dead in two separate incidents. Days later, the killer struck again, killing a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school Monday.

Merah claims to want to bring France “to its knees,” Molins said.

He told police he had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, Molins said.

He was sent back to France after being picked up at a traffic stop by Afghan police who reported his presence to international forces, the prosecutor said.

Although his neighbors describe him as being a quiet man, at home Merah had watched violent jihadist videos online, including footage of decapitations, Molins said.

He was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, the prosecutor added.

The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the country’s armed forces. The first time, in the northern city of Lille, he was turned down because of his prior convictions. The second time, in July 2010, he attempted to sign up for the Foreign Legion in Toulouse but left during the first round of testing, the ministry said.

As the net closed on the suspect early Wednesday, two police officers were wounded as shots were fired from the apartment where he is holed up.

Gueant said authorities found weapons in the suspect’s car, which was parked near the building.

Police tracked Merah down via his brother’s computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an advertisement posted by the first victim, Gueant said.

His brother Abdelkader Merah has been detained, and police are questioning other family members, including his mother, Zoulika Aziri, Molins said. She lives in the Toulouse suburb of Mirail, BFM-TV reported.

Merah’s activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan led to him being placed under surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence agency, the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, for suspected involvement as a radical Salafist, Gueant said.

But little is known about what might have triggered a radicalization.

He was born in Toulouse in October 1988, according to Elisabeth Allanic, magistrate at the prosecutor’s office in Paris, and at one time he worked in a garage in a Toulouse suburb.

Lawyer Etelin told BFM-TV he had represented Merah since 2004 or 2005, when his client was a minor, mostly over accusations of theft.

He said Merah had been “polite and courteous” and had shown no signs then of a tendency toward radicalization.

That might have changed after his trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but Etelin said he didn’t notice a big difference.

“I never discussed his political ideas with him. I knew he was politically active but he never spoke to me about this. He didn’t want to talk about this,” Etelin said.

“He was very discreet on this. But I never had the impression that he was an individual radically different from the one I knew in the beginning. I always knew him as being someone very flexible in his behavior, courteous, polite, soft and certainly not rigid to the point of being led by a certain fanaticism.”

Etelin has mainly been in contact with Merah’s older sister, who, along with their mother, he recounted, was “exasperated” with Merah’s minor crimes and said “it was not possible to see him being serious.”

Merah grew up in a northern suburb of Toulouse called Les Izards, which Etelin described as an area with some drug-related activity.

Merah was never mixed up in drug-related incidents but rather with robbery, he said.

Etelin has not spoken to Merah since he was named as the suspect in the killings in Toulouse and Montauban but fears the siege of his apartment will end in further violence.

“There is no situation more terrible than the one he is in now, where he will die or will commit suicide,” Etelin said.

French authorities continue to negotiate with the suspect as they seek to take him into custody alive.

Mitt Romney scored a decisive win in the Illinois Republican presidential primary Tuesday night, with the former Massachusetts governor holding a double-digit lead over his top rival.

“We thank the people of Illinois for this extraordinary victory,” Romney told supporters in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. “Elections are about choices. Today, hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois joined millions of people in this country in this cause.”

With 99% of precincts reporting, Romney led former Pennsylvanian Sen. Rick Santorum by a 47%-to-35% margin. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was running third at 9%, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich brought up the rear at 8%.

Exit polls showed Romney led strongly in the Cook County suburbs and the “collar counties” around Chicago, where about half of Tuesday’s votes were cast.

Live blog

The victory led several observers to question whether the remaining GOP field still has a chance of denying Romney the chance to carry the party’s standard against President Barack Obama in November.

Romney “hasn’t definitely won,” CNN political analyst David Gergen said. “But in a campaign that has had many, many unexpected twists and turns, I think we may look back tonight and say tonight was the final big turning point.

“Here in a big state, Newt Gingrich has faded as a candidate,” Gergen said. “Santorum had a chance to go one-on-one against Romney, in effect, and Santorum somehow has gone off the rails in his campaign.”

Santorum has made a series of high-profile gaffes in the past week, saying Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico needs to adopt English as its principal language to become a U.S. state, and saying Monday that the unemployment rate “doesn’t matter to me.” Romney’s campaign jumped on the remark, but Santorum said that “of course” he cared about joblessness — but his candidacy was “about freedom.”

Santorum skipped Illinois on primary night and awaited the results in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In his concession speech, below a banner that proclaimed “Freedom,” he said he was staying in the race to battle a government he said is “trying to order us around.”

“This is an election about fundamental and foundational things,” Santorum said. “This is an election about not who’s the best person to manage Washington or manage the economy. We don’t need a manager, we need someone who’s going to pull government up by the roots and do something to liberate the private sector in America.”

In Illinois, he led among blue-collar voters, in rural areas and among those who considered themselves “very conservative,” according to the exit polls. But the surveys showed Romney leading heavily among the more than 50% of voters who ranked the economy as the No. 1 issue in the campaign. And among the 37% who considered the chances of beating President Barack Obama in November their top quality in a candidate, three-quarters said they were voting for Romney.

Exit polls

Gingrich, meanwhile, issued a statement blasting Romney for relying on his vast financial resources rather than offering “solutions that hold the president accountable for his failures.”

“To defeat Barack Obama, Republicans can’t nominate a candidate who relies on outspending his opponents 7-1,” Gingrich said.

But Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul told CNN, “That’s like a basketball team complaining they lost to another team because their players were too tall.”

“Fund-raising is part of a campaign. So is organization,” she said.

And Romney’s Illinois campaign chairman, State Treasurer Dan Rutherford, said it’s time for the rest of the field to start thinking about bowing out.

“My state has already gone to bed now,” Rutherford said in a written statement. “We’ve already put this in the bank. I think that it’s about time some of these candidates step back and say what’s the best interest for the nominee to be able to take on Barack Obama and the White House, and when is it they need to say ‘OK, I gave it my best shot, and now let’s move to the next chapter in our lives.’ ”

Illinois results, county by county

But Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley said his candidate plans to continue campaigning in upcoming contests in Louisiana, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“Some of these states who typically are force-fed an establishment nominee at this point are getting to see the campaign up close and personal,” Gidley said. “They’re going to get to see Speaker Gingrich. They’re going to get to see Mitt Romney. They’re going to get to see Rick Santorum. We’ll see, as we move into the convention, just who people are gravitating behind.”

And Santorum advisers were putting out the word that they were planning to fight for the nomination on the floor of the Republican convention in Tampa if necessary.

Delegate calculator l Delegate tracker

“We do acknowledge that it’s difficult for any candidate to get to a majority prior to the national convention,” Santorum delegate director John Yob said. “If this race goes to the floor of the national convention, we view that at as favorable terrain for Santorum because the delegates to the national convention will by and large be more conservative than the primary voters who voted in the binding contests.”

Gingrich also plans to head into Louisiana, which holds its GOP primary Saturday. So does Paul. But CNN analyst Erick Erickson, a longtime Romney critic, said “the writing’s on the wall” for the rest of the field.

“This comes down to Mitt Romney,” Erickson said. “Not only is he the front-runner, but the nominee. This is a clear win for Mitt Romney tonight in a state with blue-collar voters, with industrial voters and suburban voters.”

The 54 delegates at stake Tuesday night will be awarded proportionately, and they are likely to further pad Romney’s estimated lead, putting him closer to the 1,144 needed to clinch the GOP nomination. But for the former Massachusetts governor, who has struggled to win over the conservative GOP base, a clear popular-vote win might be just as important.

He finished third in Alabama and Mississippi primaries a week ago, behind Santorum and Gingrich. But unlike the Deep South states, Illinois has a large, somewhat moderate GOP electorate concentrated around Chicago.

Nuts and bolts of Illinois primary

Romney regained a bit of momentum on Sunday when he trounced Santorum in Puerto Rico’s primary. He got 83% of the vote, picking up all 20 delegates at stake, and cutting back on time in Puerto Rico to make weekend stops in Illinois. He also dropped his emphasis on the math that he argued made it clear that he alone has the only shot during the primary and caucus season to clinch the nomination.

Over the past few days, he appeared to be increasing his attention to female voters and to gas prices, as well as touting his business credentials and suggesting Santorum would be an “economic lightweight.” In response, Santorum asked if Americans wanted a president with ties to big banks.

“I heard Gov. Romney here called me an ‘economic lightweight’ because I wasn’t a Wall Street financier like he was. Do you really believe this country wants to elect a Wall Street financier as the president of the United States?” Santorum asked at a campaign rally in Rockford.

Armed rebels fighting the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad have committed “serious human rights abuses,” an influential human rights watchdog said Tuesday.

In an open letter to leaders of the opposition, Human Rights Watch cites “increasing evidence” of kidnappings, torture and executions and calls on those forces “to refrain from engaging in these unlawful practices.”

The report emerged as the death toll continued to mount in Syria, with dozens of deaths recorded Tuesday by activists. U.N. Security Council members and other world powers worked to address the crisis, which started a year ago when the government began a violent crackdown against protesters.

“We have no time to waste, no time to lose,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Indonesia. “The situation has reached unacceptable, intolerable situation now. … I sincerely hope that the international community will continually speak in one voice and particularly the Security Council, I hope, will be able to be united so they can speak in one voice.”

Al-Assad’s regime has been denounced across the globe for its apparent slaughter of civilians in an attempt to quash the opposition over the last year.

The United Nations, Syrian activists and groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented widespread violations by Syrian government forces, including the widespread use of torture, arbitrary detentions and indiscriminate shelling of neighborhoods. But abuses by anti-government forces also have been documented during the crisis.

“The Syrian government’s brutal tactics cannot justify abuses by armed opposition groups,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Opposition leaders should make it clear to their followers that they must not torture, kidnap or execute under any circumstances.”

Human Rights Watch says the protest movement had been “overwhelmingly peaceful” until September, when reports emerged of military defectors and residents taking up arms to defend themselves against government raids and to strike checkpoints and security sites.

“The intensity of the fighting has increased since early February 2012, when the government began large-scale military attacks against opposition strongholds throughout the country,” the group said.

The past year has seen the formation of a resistance group of anti-government military defectors called the Free Syrian Army and a political opposition movement called the Syrian National Council.

Human Rights Watch said many of the anti-government groups reported to be carrying out abuses do not appear to belong to an organized command structure or to be following Syrian National Council orders.

“But Syria’s opposition leadership has a responsibility to speak out and condemn such abuses,” Human Rights Watch said. “On March 1 the SNC created a military bureau to liaise with, unify, and supervise armed opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army,” the group said.

Human Rights Watch said those kidnapped include security forces, government-supported militia members known as shabiha and their backers. Security force members and civilians also have been tortured and executed, it said.

“Certain armed attacks by opposition groups were motivated by anti-Shia or anti-Alawite sentiments arising from the association of these communities with government policies,” Human Rights Watch said. Al-Assad’s government is dominated by the minority Alawite community, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. About three-quarters of the Syrian population are Sunnis.

Syrian National Council member Sheikh Anas Airout notes “some exceptional situations and unfortunately these are reactions to the horrors, the crimes and the atrocities that the regime keeps committing against our people.” But he told CNN that the abuses are “totally unacceptable.”

“For a year now, the Syrian opposition didn’t resort to any unacceptable act against any pro-Assad civilian or even the soldiers who are killing our people. We encourage our free men to show mercy to our captives because we want to prove to the world that we are better than the Assad regime and we will always be. We do not want to repeat the regime’s same mistakes. Saying that, we have to keep it in mind that when we see the killing machine of Assad and his thugs slaughtering our people every hour of the day and the whole world is sitting aside and watching, we know and we understand that there would be some elements who would commit such acts.”

Free Syrian Army Lt. Riad Ahmed said a “few incidents are a drop in a bucket in comparison to what the regime is committing.”

“The FSA have prisoners and we treat them based on the Geneva Convention. We know that our soldiers and our civilians, men, women and children are being tortured, beaten up and even killed by the Assad thugs,” Ahmed said.

The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said at least 52 people were killed across Syria Tuesday.

The Syrian regime launched new assaults on Homs province Tuesday, killing one of the first organizers in the Syrian uprising, an opposition group said.

Heavy shelling in the city of Homs claimed the life of 23-year-old Abdul Rahman Orfalli, the Homs Coordination Committee said. The group said Orfalli helped organize the first protests in the city last March.

He had been arrested twice and tortured during a five-month detainment before returning to Homs to lead demonstrations, the group said.

The LCC reported the discovery in Idlib province of three Free Syrian Army members who had been executed, each shot in the head. The group said the men also “had insults written on their bodies.”

It also said the army stormed a field hospital in Idlib and killed three members of the medical staff.

U.N. Security Council members were expected to discuss Syria in closed session on Tuesday. They could support a “presidential statement” supporting the mission of Kofi Annan, the special joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria. U.N. presidential statements aren’t legally binding, like resolutions, and require unanimous support.

A five-member U.N. team with expertise in politics, peacekeeping and mediation was in Syria, according to Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general. The team will stay as long as it is making progress toward goals set by Annan, del Buey said.

The U.N. effort is viewed as an attempt to lure China and Russia — two countries that have refused to formally condemn the Syrian regime — to join others in pressuring Syria to cooperate with Annan, who met with al-Assad this month and laid out a series of proposals intended to end the crisis.

Russia and China have said they want an end to the violence but would not place the blame squarely on the regime. Both countries also have major trade ties with Syria.

Ban urged an end to violence by all sides, dialogue for a political solution and unhindered access for humanitarian aid workers.

U.N. officials say the Syrian crisis has killed more than 8,000 people, while opposition activists put the toll at more than 9,000 — most of them civilians.

The Syrian regime consistently blames “armed terrorist groups” for the violence. CNN cannot independently confirm reports of casualties or attacks in Syria because the government has severely restricted the access of international journalists.

A lawyer for Sgt. Robert Bales said Tuesday “there may be explanations” for the alleged shooting this month by his client of 16 Afghan civilians, but — even if that is what happened — the government will have a difficult time making its case.

“I don’t know if the government is going to prove much,” lead attorney John Henry Browne told CNN about the shootings of nine children, three women and four men in a village in southern Afghanistan. “There’s no forensic evidence, there’s no confessions.”

He added, “Nothing really justifies killing women and children in a noncombat situation. But there may be explanations if that’s true. And right now I want to say once again, I’m not sure that’s true.”

Bales, who had served three tours of duty in Iraq before being sent to Afghanistan, may have been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, Brown said. Bales suffered a traumatic brain injury during a roadside bomb explosion and lost part of his foot in separate tours in Iraq, his attorney has said. “Anybody that has seen what he’s seen and done what he’s done at the request of the military — and I’m not talking about these allegations — I think would have PTSD … Dragging parts of bodies around is not something you forget very often.”

He said he expects his client to be charged on Thursday, probably with “homicide and a bunch of other charges,” and predicted that the case would last two years.

But Browne denied that money woes could have led to Bales’ alleged conduct.

“Sure, there’s financial problems,” Browne continued. “I have financial problems, 99% of America has financial problems. You don’t go and kill women and children because you have financial problems.”

Browne also denied that the soldier was drunk at the time of the shootings. “A couple of sips of somebody else’s bottle,” he said. “But that’s not drinking.”

He said he had met with Bales had met with three of his lawyers, including Browne, for 11 hours and that Bales was in shock and doesn’t remember what happened. “That’s common with concussive injuries,” he said. ‘You remember certain things; you don’t remember other things.”

The attorney said he will not pursue an insanity defense for his client, but one of diminished capacity, CBS reported.

The military will also conduct a separate investigation into the circumstances surrounding Bales’ assignment to the combat outpost in southern Afghanistan, the top commander for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan said Tuesday.

The administrative review, which will take place separately from the criminal investigation, will be conducted by U.S. Forces Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen told the House Armed Services Committee.

The investigation will consider how Bales was assigned and why he was assigned to the combat outpost, Allen said. “It will look at the command relationships associated with his involvement in that combat outpost,” Allen said.

“He’s a soldier’s soldier,” defense lawyer Browne said. “He didn’t particularly want to go over there, and he could have used reasons not to, but he did as he was told.”

A defense official told CNN Tuesday that the military had not started the probe. “It is in preparation to start soon,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record and asked not to be identified. “That is by design not to conflict with the criminal investigation.”

The investigation will examine other administrative, training and command channels “to see if anything can be attributed to the incident,” the official said.

The official said the investigation will go beyond Bales’ time in Afghanistan and will look at deployment decisions and training he received prior to arriving in that country.

Bales, who is being held at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, stands accused in the killings in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, allegations that have strained already tense U.S.-Afghan relations and intensified a debate about whether to pull American troops ahead of their planned 2014 withdrawal.

After the shootings, which took place in two neighboring villages just outside a U.S. outpost in the Panjwai district, Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded troops withdraw from villages and return to their bases. He said relations between the two countries were “at the end of their rope.”

Afghans are insisting that the suspect be returned to Afghanistan to face trial, even as villagers and lawmakers question the U.S. military’s account of what happened.

U.S. officials have alleged Bales left his outpost alone and carried out the killings in the villages alone.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has promised Karzai a full investigation and said the United States will bring the shooter to justice.

The trial will be held in the United States, though the location has not been decided, a U.S. Forces Afghanistan legal expert told reporters Sunday. “We will develop charges hopefully within the next week,” said the expert, who would not speculate on what they might be.

Discussions are under way for the United States to compensate relatives of the victims, the expert added.

The government of Afghanistan will not be present in the court, the expert said in response to a question, but some Afghans may be taken to the United States for Bales’ trial.

Accounts from the military, Bales’ family, friends and neighbors paint a portrait of a man who bore scars from wounds he received during three previous combat tours to Iraq but remained committed to serving his country, and deployed to Afghanistan in January.

It will come as no surprise that the Conservative-led UK government says lower taxes bring in more revenue, because the rich will come and business will spend.

Taxes cut, pensioners hit

And it is not a surprise that left leaning parties disagree and say that such a policy will get the rich off the hook while poorer workers pay too much tax.

UK finance minister George Osborne is trying to have it both ways.

The UK will cut the corporate tax rate eventually to 22% and the top rate of personal tax from 50% to 45% – at a time of austerity. He says the top rate did not bring in the revenue expected. The rich do find ways around these things.

Fiscal plan

On the other hand, Osborne announced a host of loop-hole closing when it comes to the super rich buying and selling property. This all in the name of fairness.

London benefits greatly from non-citizens buying here. People from Russia, India, China and the Middle East buy properties in central London, and don’t always pay the tax citizens do. But that is changing. Further, owners of any home worth more than £2 million will pay a higher rate of tax. The government is creaming a bit more off the top.

Of course governments always promise to crack down on tax avoidance and to close loop holes. Can the UK actually do it?

Cutting taxes for the rich will please Conservative voters. Raising the “Mansion Tax” will please others, though maybe not the non-doms who call London a second or third or fourth home. What it won’t do is drive the rich from London.

The government can and should take a bit more from those who come here for the freedom, schools, reliable services and lifestyle.

Eleven countries, including Japan and European nations, have significantly reduced their Iran oil purchases and should not be subject to new U.S. sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress Tuesday.

The countries are Japan, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, according to a State Department statement.

“The actions taken by these countries were not easy. They had to rethink their energy needs at a critical time for the world economy and quickly begin to find alternatives to Iranian oil, which many had been reliant on for their energy needs,” said Clinton in the State Department statement.

“Only two months after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, we have made progress in shrinking Iran’s oil export markets, and isolating its Central Bank from the world financial system. The United States is leading an unprecedented international coalition of partners that has brought to bear significant pressure on the Iranian regime to change its course.”

There are 12 other countries purchasing oil from Iran that could face sanctions. A State Department official who briefed reporters on the announcement would not list the countries, but major importers of Iranian oil include China, India and South Korea.

Those countries could look at Japan as an example of how to ween off Iranian oil, said the State Department official. Japan has reduced its oil purchases from Iran by 15% to 22% in the last half of 2011, the official said.

The president needs to make a final decision by March 30 as to whether those other countries have or have not met the requirements to significantly reduce Iran oil purchases. If the president determines any countries have not, the countries’ banks will face sanctions starting at the end of June.