Gunman's brother held

The brother of the man suspected of gunning down seven people in shootings near the French town of Toulouse has been taken to Paris for questioning at France's anti-terrorist headquarters.

Abdelkader Merah, whose brother, Mohamed, was killed in a shootout with police after a 32-hour standoff on Thursday, could face charges that he helped Mohamed carry out the attacks. A rabbi and three children were shot to death in an attack at a Jewish school on Monday, and three soldiers had been killed in two previous shootings in the Toulouse area.

Abdelkader's girlfriend is also being taken to Paris for questioning by officials. Her name has not been given. The Merahs' mother, who was at the scene of the police standoff trying to help negotiate her son's surrender, was also taken into custody but was released on Friday.

Defending police

Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon defended intelligence and security services on Friday, saying they had done a good job and that there had been no grounds to arrest the Toulouse suspect before the killings happened.

"There was absolutely no factor that would have warranted arresting Mohamed Merah," Fillon told broadcaster RTL.

"We don't have the right in a country like ours to put someone who hasn't yet committed a crime under permanent surveillance, without judicial grounds… We live under the rule of law," he added.

Fillon also emphasized in the interview that "the fact that he belonged to a Salafist organization" was not an offense in itself and that it was wrong to "mix religious fundamentalism with terrorism."

'No evidence of any network'

The head of France's DCRI domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini, told daily Le Monde that there was little more that security services could have done to predict or prevent atrocities by Merah.

During the standoff, Merah claimed to have links to al Qaeda, but Squarcini said that "there was no evidence of any network," and that he had "radicalized himself" in prison. He insisted that Merah did not fit into any "typology" of extremists and that he was irrational and violent.

He also said Merah's attack on the Jewish school had been a spur-of-the-moment decision after the gunman failed to find a soldier he planned to kill, according to his conversation with police negotiators during the siege of his home.

Stricter laws

In the aftermath of the shootings, the French government is determined to pass tough anti-terrorism measures, with Fillon as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggesting that measures could be signed into law before the presidential elections, if there was cross-party agreement.

But the communications director of presidential hopeful Francois Hollande said on Friday that "no law could be passed before the presidential elections."

Sarkozy said that if French voters "put their trust in me" it would be one of his first priorities.

mz, ng/sjt (Reuters, dpa, AFP)