Personal Angst Powered Killer's Arsenal in France TOULOUSE - During the more than 30-hour standoff that ultimately ended his life, a boastful Mohammed Merah told law enforcement officials that he had been trained by Al Qaeda. He described how he had been motivated to kill his seven victims in a shooting rampage that terrorized this city by his resentment over the fate of the Palestinians, the French military presence in Afghanistan and France's ban on the full veil in public places. Little more than a week later, however, the French authorities say they have grown doubtful of many of his claims to terrorist ties and training, even as questions remain about how an unemployed 23-year-old acquired a large cache of arms and €20,000, or $26,000, in cash. Instead, their early investigations - and the impressions of many here - suggest that Mr. Merah's personal angst was at least as important to his evolution into a self-styled jihadist as any terrorist network that might have been available to him, either here in the gritty, working-class neighborhoods of this picturesque red-bricked city or in jail, where he spent time for purse snatching and other petty crimes. In interviews, childhood friends who knew him best could not fathom the idea that the smiling, skinny youth who loved fast cars and nightclubs and gave out sweets to neighborhood kids had transformed into a Qaeda operative. But they could easily relate to his visceral rage born of the frustration among many second- and third-generation immigrants here, whose joblessness and alienation from French society once again looms as a threat. Like many youths of North African origin, Mr. Merah identified more with his religion, Islam, than his country of birth, said a 23-year-old former friend from school, Faoud, who declined to give his last name for fear of being hounded by the police. "Our passports may say that we are French, but we don't feel French because we are never accepted here," Faoud said as he stood among a group of young people in front of a corner store in the dilapidated neighborhood of Les Izards, where Mr. Merah lived. No one can excuse what he did, but he is a product of French society, of the feeling that he had no hope, and nothing to lose. "It was not Al Qaeda who created Mohammed Merah," he added. It was France. France's failure to fully integrate its immigrants and provide them with a sense of belonging and opportunity has been conspicuously absent from the country's current presidential campaign, even as some candidates have intensified their calls to limit immigration and to root out home-grown terrorism since the killings in Toulouse. Mr. Merah's murders, which included three children, have given the nation pause for still more soul-searching. But not every thwarted youth carries out a murderous plot, and investigators and others here have been left to puzzle over Mr. Merah's motivations as well as the mechanisms that allowed him to act on his anger. While clearly determined and driven at least in part by political grievances, Mr. Merah may have exaggerated his claims to terrorist training, and certainly did not receive a thorough one if he had any at all, investigators and intelligence experts say. His support network, too, if he had any, seems tenuous or highly personal, they said. "All signs indicate that Merah was an isolated lone wolf and was not part of an organized terrorist network," Pierre-Henry Brandet, the French Interior Ministry spokesman, said in an interview Thursday. We believe that he was radicalized by his older brother Abdelkader, who had links to Salafist extremists. But Mohammed Merah appears to have been largely self-taught. Most of the weapons he used, including three Colt 45s, a Sten and a shotgun were outmoded weapons dating from World War II that were probably bought illegally on the street. Organized terrorist networks typically use explosives, experts said. Mr. Merah's amateurism was also indicated by the fact that he used weapons with different calibers; a trained terrorist would have used guns with the same caliber to avoid having to change bullets during an attack, they noted. That does not necessarily mean Mr. Merah acted completely alone. Video footage of the killings, apparently filmed by Mr. Merah himself, was sent to Al-Jazeera, post-dated March 21, the day before Mr. Merah was killed. But the video had been edited and manipulated, according to Al-Jazeera, with religious songs and recitations of Koranic verses laid over the footage. It is still unclear who sent it, and whether Mr. Merah knew how to edit video.