PARIS: The brother of the Islamist radical who shot dead seven people in southwest France in 2012, including three Jewish schoolchildren, went on trial on Monday accused of complicity in the first of a wave of attacks by homegrown jihadists.

Mohamed Merah’s attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse was the deadliest on Jews in France in three decades.

The 23-year-old Toulouse native gunned down a rabbi, two of the rabbi’s children aged three and five and an eight-year girl.

Over the course of his nine-day killing spree he also shot dead three soldiers based in the nearby garrison town of Montauban before police killed him after a 32-hour siege of his home.

The attacks, which Merah carried out in the name of Al Qaeda, were the first in a wave of jihadist assaults that continued in 2015 with the massacre at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a bloodbath at a Paris concert hall.

In the latest incident, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) stabbed two women to death at the main train station in Marseille on Sunday.

The trial of Merah’s brother Abdelkader is the first arising out of the spate of killings.

Emotions ran high in the Paris courtroom as the 35-year-old, who in 2012 had declared himself “proud” of his brother’s actions, was brought into in the dock.

“Pile of shit,” Samuel Sandler, who lost his rabbi son and two grandchildren in the school shooting, hissed repeatedly as Merah’s mother blew her son a kiss from the public gallery.

Abdelkader Merah is accused of helping to facilitate his brother’s attacks, in particular by helping him steal the scooter used in three separate shootings. His co-defendant, 34-year-old Fettah Malki, is accused of helping Mohamed Merah obtain a bulletproof jacket, Uzi submachine gun and ammunition.

Neither man denies helping the gunman obtain materials but claim they were unaware of his intentions. Abdelkader faces a possible life sentence while Malki could get 20 years in prison.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2017