Petitjean’s photo was distributed to police after a foreign intelligence service warned France’s counterterrorism unit on July 22 that he was “preparing to take part in an attack”.
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The Islamic State group claimed responsibility and released a video Wednesday allegedly showing Kermiche and Petitjean clasping hands and pledging allegiance to IS.
Days after 19-year-old Adel Kermiche from Northern France was identified as one of the two men who raided the Church of the Gambetta in the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray district of Normandy on Tuesday, the second assailant has also been identified as 19-year-old Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean from Eastern France.
A nun who was in the church told French TV the priest was forced to his knees before he was attacked with a knife, The Associated Press reported.
The revelation is likely to fuel growing criticism from opposition politicians that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government has failed to protect citizens from a wave of devastating terrorist attacks.
The warning – which did not include his name – went on: “He’s already in France and is preparing to act alone or with others”.
One attacker had been released from prison over the objections of prosecutors and was wearing a police issued electronic bracelet at the time of the attack. Another nun at the Mass slipped away, raised the alarm, and the attackers were killed by police as they left the church. But it did not give his name as the photograph had not been matched with his security file.
Pressure on the government has intensified after it emerged that Petitjean and Kermiche were known to security officials.
The man turned out to be Petitjean, officials said.
They believed he was in Syria, when in fact he had turned back for France on June 11.
Three members of Petitjean’s family were taken into custody for questioning, a source close to the investigation said.
After Petitjean was named, his mother, Yamina, denied he could have been the killer.
The church attack came less than two weeks after an attack by a man barreling his truck down a pedestrian zone in Nice, on the Riviera, that killed 84 people celebrating France’s national day, Bastille Day. A parishioner was also severely wounded.
A brief show of political unity at a mass attended by different faiths in Paris Wednesday quickly dissolved as Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve faced fresh calls to resign.
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“You cut off two or three heads and it’s good, it’s over”, he said in a grim warning of the brutal murder of 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel at a church in a quiet Normandy town.
