France’s main religious leaders have sent a message of unity and solidarity following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande a day after two extremists attacked a Catholic church and slit the throat of an elderly priest.
Advertisement
Said Aid Lahcen had met the slain priest in the past.
Archbishop Eamon said he was deeply moved by Archbishop Lebrun’s own words earlier today when he said that the “only weapons that we can take up” as Catholics “are prayer and fraternity among peoples” and his call for people “not to give up in the face of violence but to become apostles of the civilisation of love”.
Tuesday’s attackers arrived during morning mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class town near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where Father Hamel had been celebrating mass. They took hostages, one of whom was badly wounded during the attack. But his predecessor and potential opponent in a presidential election next year, Nicolas Sarkozy, said the government must take stronger steps to track known Islamist sympathisers. He said 2,500 people had expressed interest in joining the reserves since he called on youths to sign up in the wake of the Bastille Day attack in Nice.
It emerged that one of the two attackers shot dead by police in Normandy was wearing an electronic surveillance tag at the time of the attack, having been released from prison where he was being held after twice attempting to travel to Syria.
French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that the attackers acted in the name of ISIS, and Amaq released a statement, posted by the group’s supporters, claiming the Normandy attackers were the terror outfit’s “soldiers”.
A nun said the attackers recorded themselves during the attack and did a sort of sermon around the altar in Arabic.
Speaking during a visit to Italy, Mrs May called on European states to step up intelligence-sharing, which she said was “one of the best ways in which we can work together to ensure that we deal with this threat, to protect our citizens, but also to ensure that the terrorists do not win”.
Pope Francis said Wednesday that “the world is at war” as he addressed the slaying of a Catholic priest by radical Islamists in France, but he stressed it was not a war of religion. French media reported the assailants were armed with knives and that they slit the priest’s throat during the attack.
Mr Molins said the attackers, who claimed allegiance to Islamic State, cried “Allahu Akbar” – God is great – during the attack on the priest.
Police could not enter the building sooner because of the hostage situation, Molins said.
Kermiche was identified by his fingerprints, while the other attacker has not been named. Then he tried again via Turkey in May 2015, when he was again detained and returned to France. The attacker was associated with Maxime Hauchard, a French jihadi who appeared in an ISIS beheading video in 2014, the source said.
Denounced by his family, he was first arrested in Germany in March 2015, when he was placed under judicial supervision. Two months later he left the country for Syria using a cousin’s identification card.
Advertisement
He was released in March 2016 on condition he wore an electronic tag and remain at home, except for week hours from 08.00 to 12.30.
