Shooter apparently not part of network: Sarkozy

President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that a radical Frenchman who claimed to have gunned down Jewish children and paratroopers apparently was not part of a terrorist network, painting the violence as an isolated attack by an unhinged "monster."
Mohamed Merah said to police before being killed last week that he had links to al Qaida, travelled to Afghanistan and received weapons training in the militant-riddled Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. But authorities have questioned some of Merah's claims.
"There is no (terror) cell," Sarkozy, who is campaigning for a second term, said on France-Bleu radio Monday. "To our knowledge, there is no network." He described Merah as a "lone wolf" and expressed concern about "the processes of self-radicalization of lone individuals."
Sarkozy suggested France shouldn't draw too many conclusions from the killings, which took the lives of three children, a rabbi and three paratroopers in south-western France in just over a week. Police say Merah claimed responsibility for the killings.
French investigators are looking into whether Mohamed's brother, Abdelkader, was an accomplice to the killings, and whether anyone else might have been involved. Preliminary charges for complicity in murder and terrorism have been filed against Abdelkader, though no evidence has emerged that he took part directly in the shooting.
In recent years, French authorities have dismantled several networks of extremist Muslims sending French youth to Afghanistan and Iraq to train or fight. News emerged Monday that French police in December detained a radical preacher suspected of planning to lead dozens of young Muslims from the southern city of Nice to Afghanistan.
A French official said that Omar Diaby, a 37-year-old Senegalese man, was meeting up with two followers on December 9 when he was stopped by police for an ID check that upended his plans. The official identified him as a preacher, but he did not appear to have any formal affiliation with a mosque. The official said Diaby remains behind bars as police investigate his role in the suspected network and in trafficking in stolen car parts.