One of the two young men who killed an 85-year-old Catholic priest in a town in Normandy on Tuesday had been detained for almost 10 months after twice trying to travel to Syria, but he was released in March over the objection of prosecutors, according to French officials. He was stopped and questioned by profilers on his arrival at Istanbul’s worldwide airport on June 10 before he was allowed to continue on his way, a Turkish official said.
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“We must lead this war with all our means”, he said, adding that he was calling a meeting on Wednesday of representatives of all religions.
He also said more of the country’s 10,000-strong Operation Sentinel anti-terror forces would be deployed to areas outside Paris following the lorry attack in Nice and the killing in Normandy.
Police had earlier identified the first attacker as 19-year-old Adel Kermiche. They were shot dead by police.
Here are five facts about the murderer Adel Kermiche and the bad tragedy in which a French priest was killed in a hostage attack claimed by ISIS.
Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, said the leaders “deeply desire that our places of worship are the subject of greater [security] focus, a sustained focus”, as even “the most humble place of worship” could be subject to an attack.
They named him as Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19, who was killed by police in the attack along with Adel Kermiche, also 19, who had been awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag despite calls from the prosecutor for him not to be released.
The day after the attack, she sent him a final message: “Malik, it’s mum, I don’t know where you are. The others want war”.
Malik P.is believed to be from the town Aix-les-Bains in the Alps, while Kermiche is from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy where the attack took place. Prosecutors appealed against his release but he convinced a judge to free him, saying: “I am a Muslim grounded in the values of mercy and goodness – I am not an extremist”.
Said Aid Lahcen had met the 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel, the slain priest, in the past.
He had been harder than Kermiche to identify because his body was badly disfigured in the police shooting, but officers found an ID card belonging to him in Kermiche’s home and confirmed his identity in a DNA match with his mother.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned against vilifying all Muslims after the attack, saying the goal of the terrorists is to “set the French people against each other, attack religion in order to start a war of religions”.
However, Petitjean never went to Syria but instead returned nearly immediately to France, the security official said, and was back inside the country long before his name was added June 29 to France’s watch list.
DNA identification of the second attacker is still in progress, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Wednesday, according to French media.
They had no name to go on, but the police sources said there was now little doubt that the photo was of Petitjean.
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A statement issue by ISIS said “two soldiers of the Islamic State” carried out the attack. “Following the Nice attack, we have chose to no longer publish photographs of the killers, to eradicate the effects of posthumous glorification”, the paper said in an editorial Wednesday called “Resisting the strategy of hate”.
