Kermiche had handed in his passport and was required to wear an electronic tracking bracelet and stay in his parents’ home for all but a few hours per day – a time window during which he was able to launch the attack.
Advertisement
Kermiche was from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where the attack took place in northwest France.
Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said the 10,000-member Sentinelle military force – deployed after an attack in January 2015 – would be spread out more in areas outside Paris.
They interrupted a church service, forced a 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest to his knees at the altar and slit his throat. They held five people hostage – the priest, two nuns and an elderly couple – before fatally slashing the priest’s throat and seriously wounding the other man. The newspaper would now give only the first name of attackers, it said. “He (the priest) fell down looking upwards, toward us”.
One of the men was wearing a fake explosives belt, the other carried a kitchen timer and a fake bomb. The official spoke anonymously because not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation.
The prosecutor’s office said Wednesday the second attacker has not been formally identified. In addition, police 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 Kermiche’s ID.
At the meeting, which included Roman Catholic, Christian Orthodox, Muslim, and Jewish leaders, Paris archbishop Cardinal André Vingt-Trois urged Catholics to “overcome hatred that comes in their heart”, telling journalists afterward, “We can not allow ourselves to be dragged into the politics of Daesh, which wants to set the children of the same family against each other”, referring to IS by it’s Arabic acronym.
He said the killing of a priest – “who is respected and protected to the letter in our religion” – was “a deed outside of Islam, a deed that all Muslims of France condemn and reject in the most definitive way”.
“I warn you in advance, three, four minutes, and when the thing comes, it will share the line”, he says, referencing “a picture or video”. “The others want war”.
The attack took place during morning mass at the Saint-Etienne parish church, south of Rouen in Normandy.
“We were saying that is not good. And he was replying that France is the land of unbelievers”, Redwan said.
Candles were placed in front of the town hall as residents called for unity. “Be we Christians, Muslims, anything, we have to be together”.
Kermiche says he was inspired by a “spiritual guide”, a sheikh, or religious leader, he met while in prison in Fleury-Merogis.
French Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur voiced his “deep grief” at the attack, which he described as a “blasphemous sacrilege which goes against all the teachings of our religion”.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Wednesday that 2,500 French people had already enlisted in the operational reserves.
Kermiche and accomplice Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean – both 19 – were killed by police as they left the church.
The attack in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray came as France was still coming to terms with the Bastille Day killings in Nice claimed by IS.
That information was gleaned as police and intelligence officials tried to track back to learn the identity of the second attacker.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, the French anti-terrorism coordinating agency UCLAT issued a photo of Petitjean July 22 to police warning that he “could be ready to participate in an attack on national territory”.
