People stand in front of a makeshift memorial in front of the Saint-Etienne du Rouvray church on July 27, after the priest Jacques Hamel was killed on July 26 in his church during a hostage-taking claimed by ISIS.
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A friend of one of the two men who killed a French priest in Normandy was detained only days before the attack took place, reports say.
Police have identified the man as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean from a town in eastern France on the border with Germany, a judicial source told Reuters.
A security official confirmed that he was the unidentified man pictured on a photo distributed to French police on July 22 with a warning that he could be planning an attack.
A foreign intelligence agency informed French intelligence services that a person was about to participate in an attack on national territory, they added.
The attackers stormed into a Catholic church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in the northwest region of Normandy, France, during their morning mass. The attackers took hostages in the church and slit the throat of the 85-year-old priest, Rev. Jacques Hamel. The attackers were shot by police as they walked out of the church. Authentication of the video is underway.
Otherwise, he had no record of conviction or arrest for terrorist activities.
One attacker, Adel Kermiche, had been flagged as a radicalized Islamist and was under house arrest at the time of the attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Meanwhile sources close to the investigation said Petitjean “strongly resembles” a man hunted by anti-terrorism police in the days before the attack over fears he was about to carry out an act of terror.
Security fears meant a march for the Nice victims planned on Sunday, as well as another in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray due to be held on Thursday were canceled.
Kermiche had twice attempted to reach Syria to join Isis when he appeared before an investigating judge earlier this year, it emerged on Wednesday. The government has said there are about 10,500 people with so-called “S files” related to potential jihadi activities in France. “Attack them. Kill them en masse”.
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, but without elaborating.
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