Extremist suspect upends French presidential race

[March 22, 2012]  PARIS (AP) -- French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says her anti-Islam agenda has been vindicated: The chief suspect in the country's worst killing spree in years is a French Muslim claiming ties to al-Qaida.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has borrowed from Le Pen's playbook in the campaign for the presidential election in April and expected runoff in May, with talk of halving immigration and lamenting widespread availability of halal meat. It's too soon to tell how a two-day standoff with the suspect could affect his chances for a second term.

The specter of radical Islam's grip on France worried moderate Muslims and threatened to overturn the race, in which Socialist Francois Hollande has long been the pollster's favorite to unseat the divisive Sarkozy.

Le Pen, the No. 3 candidate in polls, said France must "wipe out" the Islamist threat, saying it has been minimized by authorities.

Le Pen's far-right National Front claims that so-called Islamization is corrupting the French culture and will ineluctably change France if no one acts against the influx of Muslim immigrants and the growing demands of those born on French soil.

The revelation that the chief suspect in three attacks this month in the Toulouse region in southwest France was a Frenchman of Algerian origin who claims al-Qaida ties and traveled twice to Afghanistan resonated among candidates and put Muslims on the defensive.

The attacks killed a rabbi and three young children at a Jewish school, and three paratroopers of North African origin. Another student and another paratrooper were wounded. Fears initially emerged of a racist, anti-Semitic killer, and Le Pen stayed uncharacteristically silent and cautious.

On Wednesday, authorities identified the suspect as Mohamed Mehra, 24, a man with a long record of petty crimes.

Muslim and Jewish leaders then joined in a single voice to warn against any bid to stigmatize Islam.

The estimated 5 million Muslims in France -- the largest such population in Western Europe -- have long worked to defeat chronic and ambient discrimination within French society. Anti-Muslim sentiment tends to peak with international tensions like the Palestinian intifada or the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaida terror attacks.

"Muslims like Jews, Jews like Muslims, and condemn all confusion that might be made between the international political situation in the Middle East and the monstrous act that ... has horrified all French," the Grand Rabbi of France Gilles Bernheim said Wednesday after meeting with Muslim leaders and Sarkozy.

Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the CFCM, an umbrella group for French Muslims, said the suspect has done "is the very negation of ... Islam," on the France-2 TV network.

The powerful fundamentalist Muslim organization known as the UOIF asked all citizens "not to succumb to the panic of stigmatizing Muslims, which feeds Islamophobia."

In the case of Le Pen, it may already be too late.

"We have underestimated, I think, the rise of radical Islam in our country," Le Pen said. "We didn't want to see it, out of weakness or for electoral reasons, that recruiting is going on in our neighborhoods by political-religious groups who don't stop trying to make their mark."

Le Pen, who called national attention to the numbers of Muslims who pray in Paris streets for lack of space in prayer rooms, was among six presidential candidates present at Wednesday's solemn funeral services for the three dead paratroopers in the city of Montauban, near Toulouse.

Le Pen had stayed away from mourning prayers after the killing on Monday of the Jewish rabbi and school children.

Candidate Hollande said the fight against terrorism is "the combat of the entire nation," above all else.

Centrist candidate Francois Bayrou said the affair poses the question of "the state of French society, where there are explosive germs" and the "risk of importing conflicts" onto French soil.

Sarkozy, speaking as president at Wednesday's funeral ceremony, vowed that terrorism "won't manage to fracture our national community."

However, Sarkozy has followed the lead of Le Pen in the past, allowing her to set the agenda so he can take up her themes and go after her far-right followers.

Nicole Yardeni, who heads the regional chapter of the leading Jewish organization, CRIF, warned, "I want the politicians not to use this as a wedge. They haven't done it so far but the temptation is always there."

A young man in Toulouse who slightly knew the suspect said he was shocked and afraid.

"This person doesn't represent me," said Mehdi Nedder, 31. "What worries me is what society will say tomorrow in the bakery shops, at the butchers or at the post office."

[Associated Press; By ELAINE GANLEY]

Johanna Decorse in Toulouse and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

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