The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video Wednesday allegedly showing Kermiche and his accomplice clasping hands and pledging allegiance to the group. For French President Francois Hollande and his beleaguered Socialist government, coming on the heels of the recent Nice attack, the Paris Bataclan massacre and the earlier Charlie Hebdo assault, the new attack couldn’t be worse.
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Donald Trump responded to the murder of an elderly French priest, the latest in a string of jihadist attacks to rock the country, by saying Wednesday that “France is no longer France”.
The mother of one of the Islamic State fanatics who butchered a French priest at the altar of a church told police hunting the terrorist before the attack: “He’s a good Frenchman”.
“He said it wasn’t possible to live peacefully in France”. “He spoke with words that didn’t belong to him”. He was returned to France where he was detained on March 23 that year for “criminal association in connection with terrorism” and preparing a terrorist act.
“Luckily he was caught in time twice”, she told the Tribunal de Geneve newspaper. A tracking bracelet was ordered to be attached to him.
On Tuesday morning, the pair entered a small Catholic church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray morning as Father Jacques Hamel was celebrating Mass. The attackers seized the man and forced him to kneel before slitting his throat.
Six weeks later, Kermiche fled the family home once again and was ultimately traced to Turkey where he was detained on May 13, 2015. As part of his parole conditions, he was allowed out for a four-hour period from 8.30am each day.
In the case of Father Hamel the public in France, already in a sensitive state following other atrocities, are surely entitled to ask questions of their security, police, and criminal justice authorities.
Sister Danielle said that even though the other nun and the faithful present were shouting to the terrorists to stop, they went ahead.
The teenager named “Mathis”, told Le Telegramme: “I woke up around 10am by the noise and the voices of the security forces. He was inventing things”, the young man said.
The tip-off came from an unnamed foreign intelligence agency and included a picture of 19-year-old Abdel Malik Petitjean in conjunction with an upcoming attack.
“The parents did everything to avoid this.
They gave them everything in material terms, in terms of love”, said Annie Geslin, who worked with Kermiche’s mother in a family association. “That’s something that may happen to others, on the other side of the Atlantic”, Hollande added in an allusion to Trump.
He was allowed him to leave his house on weekdays between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm, Molins said.
Pope Francis said “the world is at war” but argued that religion was not the cause.
Paris: Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, the man identified Thursday as the second assailant in this week’s attack on a French church that left an octogenarian priest dead, is purported to appear in an Islamic State video calling for more violence.
The rector of the main Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, said France’s Muslims must push for better training of Muslim clerics and urged that reforming French Muslim institutions be put on the agenda. He did not elaborate.
With the attack threat for the country ranked extremely high, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said France was working to protect 56 upcoming summer events and may consider cancelling some.
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Police sources said the warning about Petitjean was received by Uclat, their counterterrorism coordination unit.
