Mother of Toulouse Terror Victim Alleges Mistreatment by Police in Investigation

"I had an appointment at the police station. I found the welcome cold and brutal. There were many accusations. They even went so far as to ask me if one of my sons might not have killed his brother," Latifa Ibn Ziaten recounts in an interview with La Dépêche du Midi. "I will never forget the green eyes of that commissioner. I was not a victim but a culprit. At the reception, they told me: ’Ah yes, it’s the settling of scores with the motorcycle.’ It was as if they were investigating us and not looking for the killer. The policeman who received him told him: ’If your son is at the morgue, it’s not for nothing.’ ’I replied that my son was a soldier. He told me: ’That doesn’t prevent anything.’ I explained that I hadn’t closed my eyes all night. I asked: ’Let me go see my son.’ We were told: ’It’s well your own at the morgue. Wait until tomorrow morning.’ When I left the police station, my feet had multiplied in volume. I told my children that we had to stay strong."

A difficult period for the one who created the association "Imad for Youth and Peace" and who raises awareness among young people in colleges, high schools, shelters and prisons. "I went in, I touched my child and I saw that he was all open. It still bothers me today to know if they didn’t take anything during the autopsy. I wonder if I’m not going to end up taking his coffin out of his grave. At that moment, I experienced oblivion. We were lost and his memory was tarnished," she says. The mother of Imad recounts the last minutes of her son. "We never wanted to see (the images of the murder). I was told about it. My son arrives. Merah asks him: ’Are you Imad the soldier? You advance and you park.’ Then he asked him how long he had been a soldier. Imad answered: ’Why this question? You come to see my bike. It’s been 10 years.’ He told him: ’You are a traitor. I come to kill you. You will kneel down.’

"He says: ’Shoot, idiot, but I won’t kneel down’... At the first shot, the killer said ’Allah Akbar’, then there was the second shot," continues Latifa Ibn Ziaten. "He died with his helmet on. He died standing up." Ten years after the murder of her son, the Franco-Moroccan woman is saddened by the fact that the treatment of the victims of Mohammed Merah is "egalitarian." "For my son, it’s been ten years and never has an authority called me to pay tribute to him on March 11. If not for my son, at least for the soldier. In Toulouse, there is this miserable plaque in a parking lot, hidden by the cars. It’s unfair. I know there is a tribute organized on March 20 by the CRIF. Why is there no equality?" she wonders.