French murders film kept off air

A video showing the deadly attacks on soldiers and a Jewish school in France and sent to Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera will not be broadcast, the company said.

Its response came after French president Nicolas Sarkozy, other officials and family of the victims had asked for it not to be shown.

The television station received the coverage on a USB memory stick sent with a letter to its Paris office.

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It appeared to have been taken during the shootings by 23-year-old Frenchman Mohamed Merah who was killed last week after a more than 30-hour stand-off with police at his flat.

Merah filmed all of his murders, which began on March 11 with the shooting of a French soldier. Before the rampage ended, two more soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi were killed.

Al-Jazeera’s Paris bureau chief Zied Tarrouche said the letter, written in poor French with errors of spelling and grammar, claimed the shootings were carried out in the name of al-Qaida.

Mr Tarrouche said the images appear to have been taken from the point of view of the killer, perhaps from a camera hung around his neck. He said they were a bit shaky but of a high technical quality.

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The video had clearly been edited with religious songs and recitations of Koranic verses laid over the footage, he said.

Gunshots, cries of the victims and the voice of the killer could be heard, he said.

Earlier Mr Sarkozy had asked that the images not be broadcast.

“I ask the managers of all television stations that might have these images not to broadcast them in any circumstances, out of respect for the victims – out of respect for the Republic,” he said.

There was no indication that other stations had the images.

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Mr Tarrouche said: “We are not a sensationalist channel. We’re not looking to broadcast images without weighing the risks and the consequences.”

The decision not to broadcast the images was made a few hours later after a management meeting at the company’s headquarters in Qatar.

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