The nun can be seen running to safety in the video after Adel Kermiche and Abdelmalik Petitjean had cut Father Jacques Hamel’s throat.
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Petitjean, 19, from Saint Die des Voges, France, was identified though DNA testing, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
According to a police source speaking with the Reuters news agency, officers had opened a file on the 19-year-old in June for becoming radicalised. The government has said there are about 10,500 people with so-called “S files” related to potential jihadi activities in France.
Kermiche, who had also previously attempted to travel to Syria, was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag, despite calls from the prosecutor for him not to be released. France has been under a state of emergency since last November’s terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
Police did not have the name of the person in the photo but now have little doubt that it is Petitjean, the police sources said.
French officials have identified the second man involved in the murder of a priest in a Normandy church.
Petitjean’s mother Yamina told BFMTV that her son had never spoken about ISIS. It took a while after the Normandy attack for police to definitively link the attacker – who had been shot in the face by police – to the photograph sent from overseas and the identity card.
A youth believed to be 16 was detained after the church attack is still being held for questioning, the prosecutor’s office said.
In the case of Father Hamel the public in France, already in a sensitive state following other atrocities, are surely entitled to ask questions of their security, police, and criminal justice authorities.
The two jihadists pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, a video posted on the Islamic State group news agency Amaq showed Wednesday.
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.
Police were looking for him for several days prior to the attack, following a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service that an attack was imminent.
The two men pose with an Islamist flag often associated with Islamic extremist groups including ISIS, but the flag’s colors apparently have been inverted, turning the usually black flag white.
His tag was turned off for a few hours each morning to allow him to leave home – and it was in this time that Kermiche and Petitjean slit the 86-year-old’s throat.
With 56 remaining summer events to protect, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve stated on Wednesday that events without “optimal” security will be canceled.
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The Normandy attack came as France was on high alert after the attack in Nice earlier this month which killed 84 people and a string of deadly attacks past year claimed by ISIL.
