Kermiche’s father reportedly told police he was a religious fanatic, while his sister said that it “took two months (for him to become radicalised) and he was no longer my little brother”.
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The makeshift memorial of the Saint-Etienne du Rouvray church where the priest Jacques Hamel was killed during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group.
The assailant has been named as 19-year-old Abdel Malik Petitjean, who was listed in June on France’s “Fiche S” system of people posing a potential threat to national security after he tried to reach Syria from Turkey.
The authorities have carried out DNA tests on the body of the second attacker.
Sources close to the investigation said Petitjean “strongly resembles” a man hunted by anti-terrorism police in the days before the church killing over fears he was about to carry out an act of terror.
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.
Security services had in June opened a special file on Petitjean for becoming radicalised, a police source said separately.
NEWS BRIEF French authorities have identified the second man involved in the deadly attack on a church in Normandy.
The recording, made before the attack at the church in Normandy, is said by AMAQ to feature Abdel-Malik Nabir Petitjean.
Pope Francis said the slaying of a priest and a string of attacks in Europe in past weeks were proof the “world was at war”, stressing this was not a war of religion but rather one of domination of peoples and economic interests.
President Francois Hollande met interfaith leaders in an effort to promote national unity.
Hollande said on Thursday he had chose to form the national guard based on existing operational reserve forces, with the aim of creating a body “in the service of the protection of the French”. An elderly man among the five people in the congregation was seriously wounded by knife slashes. According to media reports, the police was notified of the latter four days earlier with a warning that he could be planning an attack.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack, too, as well as two attacks that followed in Germany.
Petitjean and his accomplice Adel Kermiche, also 19, were previously purported to have appeared in another video pledging their allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. That video could also not be independently verified. “We are here to attack the the allies of the Coalition countries”, Petitjean said.
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Kermiche was not only known to security services but wore an electronic bracelet and was awaiting trial for alleged membership of a terrorist organization having been released on bail.
