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.
Advertisement
But he was on police files since June 29 for having tried to enter Syria from Turkey, the source said. The information accompanying the photo of an unidentified man said the person pictured “could be ready to participate in an attack on national territory”.
Petitjean (19) was positively identified as one of the killers through DNA analysis.
The mother of teenage terrorist Abdel Malik Petitjean refuses to accept her son carried out the brutal murder of an 85-year-old priest in a Normandy church, saying that she “did not give birth to the devil”.
Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, the first formally identified attacker, seized six hostages in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, north France before killing an elderly priest and seriously wounding another hostage. The attack left another worshipper in critical condition and police shot dead both attackers after surrounding the church. Authentication of the video is underway.
Kermiche had been awaiting trial on terror charges and was fitted with an electronic tag which allowed him to leave the house only at specified times. However, the device was deactivated for a few hours each morning, Molins added.
The two killed 86-year-old priest Jacques Hamel by stabbing him in the chest and slitting his throat, and took three nuns and two churchgoers hostage.
Those who knew him in this Normandy town where he grew up said Kermiche appeared to think of little else other than trying to join the extremist group in Syria after the January 2015 attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
It follows another video featuring Petitjean alongside 19-year-old Adel Kermiche as the two pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Mohammed Karabila, imam of the mosque in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, said the two religious communities had close relations in the small suberb.
France, which has launched hundreds of air strikes as part of a US-led coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is reeling from two strikes by assailants loyal to ISIS in the space of 12 days.
A youth believed to be 16 was detained after the church attack is still being held for questioning, the prosecutor’s office said. Huge numbers of the country’s Christian churches have been destroyed.
“He was denied entry into Turkey on 14 May and France was informed of his deportation”.
Advertisement
France remains on high alert after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.
