French probe alleges police failure in 2016 attack on priest
PARIS: The French prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation into allegations made by an online publication that a police intelligence note had been post-dated to cover up a failure to act against an extremist who, along with a cohort, ultimately slit the throat of a Normandy priest in 2016.
The probe concerns charges of forgery and alteration of documents, a judicial official said.
He added that the decision to investigate was triggered by a complaint filed by civil parties in the case surrounding the murder of the priest during Mass in the village of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
The official wasn’t authorised to speak publicly and could not be named.
The opening of a probe on Friday follows a report a day earlier by the online investigative publication Mediapart revealing the existence of the intelligence note on Adel Kermiche, alleging it was post-dated once the deadly attack on the 85-year-old Reverend Jacques Hamel took place and suggesting the murder might have been avoided.
The Mediapart article tackles the bureaucracy that allegedly kept the note about Kermiche from going up the command chain – and into the hands of the main intelligence service handling terrorism cases.
Based on months of interviews with police officers close to the intelligence operation, it cited low staffing on summer holidays, poor work conditions and, above all, the need for members of the hierarchy to sign off on intelligence documents submitted by the rank and file.
“Because what we write is classified as a defence secret, there are too many controls, too much re-reading, too many chiefs who want to correct the notes, put their stamp on it ...,” Mediapart quoted an unnamed officer in the intelligence unit as saying.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The two 19-year-old attackers were killed by police as they left the St Etienne church.
A statement by the Paris police chief ’s office, where the intelligence note originated, denied the Mediapart allegations, saying the note evoked neither an imminent act nor “the targeting of a precise place”.