Of the six women around the Merah family arrested on Tuesday in Toulouse and Albi, four were released, said the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) on Friday.
But two others will be presented Friday to an anti-terrorism judge for an indictment in a judicial investigation.
The latter was opened for “terrorist criminal association, tort, and evasion by a parent of his legal obligations compromising the health, safety, morals or education of his child”;
The preliminary investigation, entrusted to the anti-terrorism sub-directorate (Sdat), had been open since 2014. Among the women arrested on Tuesday, aged 31 to 43, some had left with their children for Syria.
The shadow of Souad Merah
According to other sources familiar with the matter, some were also suspected of having contributed to the departure in Syria in 2014 of Mohamed Merah's sister, Souad, who then went to Algeria.
Suspected for several years by the anti-terrorism justice, several of them had already been heard and then released.
But, new elements led the investigators to hear them again.
These women are part of the entourage of the Merah family but are not members of it.
In March 2012, Mohamed Merah killed seven people including three Jewish children in Toulouse and Montauban.
He was killed by the Raid.
His brother Abdelkader was definitively sentenced in 2020 to thirty years' imprisonment for complicity in his crimes.
Miscellaneous facts
Toulouse: Six women close to the Merah arrested by the police
Justice
Mohammed Merah attacks: Abdelkader Merah definitively sentenced to 30 years in prison after the rejection of his appeal
Merah case
Terrorism
Jihadism
Toulouse
Occitania
Albi
Montauban
Investigation
Justice