Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins on Tuesday said one of the church attackers was known to intelligence services and tried to join radical insurgents in Syria twice in 2015. He was ordered to wear an electronic tag and could only leave his home between the hours of 8.30am and 12.30am on weekdays.
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“Everyone knows that this kid was a ticking time bomb”, a resident of the area identified as Foued, a pseudonym, told Le Parisien after the attack.
The two men stormed into a church in the northern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning mass Tuesday and slit the 86-year-old priest’s throat at the altar before being gunned down by police.
He said an Algerian-born 17 year old had been taken into custody – the younger brother of a suspect “wanted under an global arrest warrant for having left for the Iraq-Syria zone”.
A French police source told CNN that one of the church attackers had tried to go to fight in Syria a year ago but had been stopped in Turkey by authorities there.
The two men shot dead by police had fake explosives and used nuns as human shields, he added.
The hostage stand-off occurred at the Saint-Etienne parish church, when the two beared men with knives entered the church through a back door and took five people hostage – including a Catholic priest, two nuns and two other worshippers – for at least an hour.
A nun identified as Sister Danielle, who witnessed the killing first hand, told French TV: ‘They forced him to his knees.
The attackers also wounded an elderly parishioner who remains in a serious condition. “He wanted to defend himself, and that’s when the tragedy happened”, she told French media.
While France is still recovering from the Nice attack that left 84 people killed, the country is again being tested after another terror attack hit Normandy, which targeted churchgoers, including an old priest.
Over the past 19 months, France has been the target of two other major terrorist attacks.
Speaking to reporters, Hollande said: “Daesh has declared war on us”.
She said of her dead colleague: “He was an extraordinary priest. We have shared values and those values will win through and the terrorists will not win”.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has expressed his horror at what he says is a “barbaric attack on a church”.
“If we abandon constitutional principles to protect that which we hold most dear – our liberty – we will be giving a victory to the terrorists”.
Hollande said Tuesday that the attackers acted in the name of ISIS, and the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq released a statement, posted by the group’s supporters, claiming the Normandy attackers were the terror outfit’s “soldiers”.
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“It should not be possible for someone awaiting trial on charges of having links to terrorism to be released”, Frederic Lagache, deputy chief of France’s police union said.
