Hollande also met his defense and security chiefs, who tried to find new ways to reassure a jittery population as his government comes under fire from the opposition over the repeated attacks, some nine months ahead of a presidential election.
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France’s main religious leaders have sent a message of unity and solidarity following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande (frahn-SWAH’ oh-LAWND’) after Islamic State extremists attacked a Catholic church and slit the throat of an elderly priest.
The decisions come after the truck attack on a Nice fireworks display and the killing of a French priest in a church in Normandy, events in a spate of attacks France has seen since a year ago.
The motive for the attack and the identity of the assailants are now unknown, though remarks by French President Francois Hollande suggested ISIL involvement.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to run again in a conservative primary, criticized the French left. “It has lost its bearings and is clinging to a mindset that is out of touch with reality”.
“We can not allow ourselves to be dragged into the politics of Daesh (Islamic State), which wants to set the children of the same family against each other”, the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, told journalists after the meeting at the Elysee presidential palace. France’s internal security service has confidential “S files” on some 10,500 suspected or aspiring jihadists.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected Sarkozy’s proposal, saying that to jail them would be unconstitutional and in any case could be counterproductive. “We must not get into divergences, but stay united people as we were before”, he said.
Cazeneuve later told reporters that summer festivals which do not meet tight security standards would be canceled, as the government assigned 23,500 police, soldiers and reservists to protect 56 major cultural and sports events.
Father Hamel was killed by supporters of Daesh as he and a small congregation celebrated Mass at the Church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy. The two men had held several worshippers and nuns hostage during the attack, until a police unit descended on the scene and shot the attackers as they emerged from the church.
Police combing the area after the attack detained a 16-year-old whom Molins said was the younger brother of a young man who traveled to the Syria-Iraq zone of the Islamic State group carrying the ID of Kermiche. It has prioritised targeting France, which has been bombing the group’s bases in Iraq and Syria as part of a US-led worldwide coalition. One of the assailants was identified as 19-year-old Adel Kermiche who was arrested twice for trying to join ISIS in Syria.
“Those places were selected by officials after consultation with police prefects and religious leaders at the local level, and are subject to regular review”, France 24 reported.
Afterward, he was under house arrest and made to wear an electronic tag allowing the police to trace him. Her husband was in turn slashed in four places by the attackers and is now hospitalized with serious injuries.
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In February past year, when a total of 17 people died in attacks by Islamist gunmen in Paris, including four men at a kosher supermarket, anti-terror police warned of “heightened concern” of the risks to the Jewish community.
