Priest’s killer ‘wanted to settle down’
Anger has mounted over the murder of a French priest after it emerged that one of the killers had duped a judge into believing he had abandoned radical Islam, and that the second jihadist was also a known terrorism suspect.
Isis released a video yesterday of the two killers pledging allegiance to the group.
French President Francois Hollande has come under further pressure to toughen France’s antiterrorism measures in response to the death of Father Jacques Hamel, 85, who was forced to kneel at the altar of his church in SaintEtienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, before the two jihadists cut his throat.
The latest act of Islamist barbarity provoked fresh revulsion in a country still reeling from the Bastille Day attack in Nice in which 84 people died, and the November shootings which left 130 dead in Paris.
An 87-year-old parishioner, one of only five worshippers who was in the church for morning mass at the time of the attack, is being treated in hospital for stab wounds. His 86-year-old wife, who was also present, said he had been forced to film the priest’s body on a mobile phone belonging to the killers.
She said her husband, who was marking his 87th birthday on the day of the attack, was stabbed four times in the neck, arm and back, and pretended to be dead to avoid further injury.
One of the terrorists was named as Adel Kermiche, 19, who was released from custody in March despite having made two attempts to join Isis in Syria the previous year.
He told a judge that he wanted to settle down and get a job. ‘‘I am a Muslim based on the values of mercy and goodwill. I am not an extremist,’’ he said at the time. ‘‘I want to take up my life again, see my friends and get married.’’
Kermiche’s parents said they thought he should remain prison, but the judge ordered his release on the grounds that he had been suicidal and had seen the error of his ways.
Youths in Saint-Etienne-duRouvray, where Kermiche lived with his parents, said he had often talked about his determination to commit an act of terror, citing churches as a target.
He was one of 13 convicted or suspected Islamists given an electronic tag, but the device was turned off between 8.30am and 12.30pm on weekdays to allow him to go out of the house. The church attack occurred at 9.25am.
Court documents leaked to the French press show that Kermiche had a troubled past, spending time in hospital with psychiatric problems as a child.
French media said police believed the second killer to be Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19, from Aix-les-Bains in the Savoy region, eastern France. He, too, was reported to have been identified as a potential terrorist by intelligence services after trying to reach Syria.
Hollande attended a ceremony at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in memory of Hamel yesterday.