French presidential candidate says murder of Jewish students was part of a conspiracy

• Date: 08 June 2021
• Published date: 08 June 2021
• Author: Cnaan Liphshitz/JTA
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

"You'll see that on the last week of the presidential campaign, we'll have a serious incident or a murder," Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Unsubmissive France movement, said Sunday in Toulouse during an interview with the France Inter radio station. "In 2012 it was Merah, last week it was Champs-Elysee."

Mohammed Merah, a former combatant for jihadists in Syria, murdered three Jewish children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012. He was killed in a police siege days later.

On April 20, a police officer was gunned down on the Champs-Elysee avenue in Paris. A 37-year-old Muslim man is on trial for the shooting.

"All of this has been planned in advance," said Melenchon, who has declared as a presidential candidate for '22. "We get all kinds of people pulled out of nowhere at a very serious event which, once more, allows to point fingers at Muslims and to invent a civil war. It's...