Alvise Armellini reporting for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur said that anti-terror experts believe the French/Algerian serial-killer suspect who died after a 32-hour stand-off with French police was one of about 400 al-Qaida trained extremists in the European Union.
"It is a phenomenon of 'lone wolves,' as we call them," EU top Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told the German news agency dpa. "We can estimate that they are in the 400s all across Europe."
Like Merah — who also had a criminal record — all such individuals "are obviously monitored" by European intelligence services, de Kerchove said. Most are in "Germany, France, Britain, maybe also Belgium, and in all other EU countries to a much lesser extent," he indicated.
Commenting on appropriate countermeasures, de Kerchove suggested extending across the EU legislation already enforced in Germany and Austria that criminalizes anyone who travels abroad to attend terrorist indoctrination camps.
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