Toulouse killer Mohammed Merah was raised to be anti-Semite, brother writes

Frame grab of Mohamed Merah from a video broadcast March 21 by France 2 .Photo by REUTERS/France 2 Television/Handout

Mohammed Merah was raised to be an anti-Semite long before he killed four Jews in Toulouse, Merah's brother wrote.

“My young brother was certainly a Salafist, but before he turned into one he grew up in this detestable atmosphere that accommodates anti-Semitism,” Abdelghani Merah reportedly wrote in a new book about his brother that is set to appear this week.

Mohammed Merah gunned down three children and a rabbi on March 19 at a Jewish school. Earlier in the same month he killed three French soldiers.

Merah was killed in a police raid on his home as he tried to jump out the bathroom window.

The Merahs grew up with a "cultural anti-Semitism” and “despised the Jews,” Abdelghani Merah wrote in his book, according to a report in the French magazine Le Point.

Souad and Kader Merah, two siblings of Mohammed and Abdelghani Merah, “hated the infidels and particularly the Jews, without any distinctions,” Abdelghani Merah reportedly wrote.

Merah and his brother spent their summer vacations in Algeria, their parents’ land of origin.

"The vast majority of our paternal family were supporters of FIs and GIA,” two militant Islamist groups, Abdelghani Merah wrote.