'Pak Taliban trained me, my hitlist included Indian ambassador'

Paris: France's TF1 television has broadcast extracts of a conversation between gunman Mohamed Merah and police shortly before he died in a police assault in March after he killed seven people.

He details his attack on a Jewish school after missing his original target, his training in Pakistan, French intelligence's failures, making money as a driver for gangsters and his plans had he not been identified and besieged.

Herewith extracts translated from the French:

"I missed my target... and from then on I got back on the scooter and I drove past (the Jewish school) like that. It was not premeditated, well, I was going to do it, but when I woke up that morning it wasn't my objective."

"My aim with these attacks was to kill first of all soldiers, because these soldiers fought in Afghanistan.

"Yes, believe me that I chose you (the intelligence agent interviewing him) as a target... My idea was to call you, get you to come and see me, and you'd have got a bullet in the head.

"I work for Al-Qaeda, I have superiors, I'm not alone... I'm alone in France, I work alone here, but I was sent by Al-Qaeda, I was trained by the Pakistani Taliban, there's an entire organisation behind this.

"They asked me to make bombs, I didn't want to... I told them 'train me in using a gun.'

In the Islamist training camp "there are French, Chinese, Tajiks, Afghans, Pakistanis, Americans, Germans, Spanish, all sorts."

"I took me around 10 days to find the brothers (Taliban). Because when I arrived, I wasn't allowed out, I stayed in one room, I had to wait. They didn't know who I was, where I came from. Not just anyone gets into Al-Qaeda. Praise be to God, I won their trust, I bought my gun, I was equipped.

"They offered me attacks in America, Canada, etc. And I said as I'm French, it's easier for me to attack France.

His targets included "known people, killing some diplomats, like the Indian ambassador, or press bosses in some countries."

"You think that I went to Pakistan and Afghanistan for tourism? Who is a tourist over there? 'Al harb khoudaa', you know what that means? It means 'War is deception.'"

"When you called me in for questioning (in 2011), when I was at your office, I was in contact with them (Taliban), I had found them... I think that's one of the biggest mistakes of your career!"

"Yeah, I go to nightclubs... I dressed in a certain way, that shows that I don't have the profile of someone who's part of Al-Qaeda... I had a fashionable haircut, with a Mohican, long hair at the back... I did all that, I was blonde."

"I'm quite a good driver, and I was paid to go from one place to another... so I was paid by gangsters, driving them here and there." If the police came across them, Merah's job "was quickly to shake them off."

"I checked they (his guns) fired, that the bullet came out, I checked there was a bullet impact... Later I found a place where I could shoot without any problems just next to my place."

"I knew there would be roadblocks, all that, and then as soon as I'd completed the operations, I'd have the guts, I'd have gone into police stations, killed the policeman at the reception, I'd have killed people in the street, military police driving around, stopped at traffic lights, I'd have laid in wait."