IS priest killer worked as baggage handler at airport
PRESSURE grew on French president Francois Hollande yesterday as it emerged one of the Islamic State priest killers was cleared to work as an airport baggage handler.
Abdelmalik Petitjean, 19, “easily” passed security checks to work at Chambery Airport near his home in Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps.
He worked there from December last year until April after getting his high school baccalaureate.
The airport handles 250,000 passengers a year, many of them Britons heading for the ski slopes.
His job gave him access to the luggage of thousands of travellers.
In spring he quit his job and in June was caught by Turkish intelligence trying to join IS in Syria.
Earlier this week he and fellow IS fanatic Adel Kermiche, also 19, stormed into a church near Rouen and slit the throat of 86-year-old priest Father Jacques Hamel before being gunned down by police.
It is the latest security lapse to hit France which was already reeling from a spate of IS attacks.
Both fanatics were already known to the security services.
Kermiche had been released early from jail after twice trying to join IS in Syria. He was electronically tagged and supposed to be living under curfew with his parents.
And last week Petitjean’s photograph was circulated with a warning he was ready to strike.
A source close to the investigation said: “Officers were trying to find him, but he evaded capture.”
The French Government has also been accused of inadequate security in Nice on Bastille Day when an IS fanatic murdered 84 people by driving into crowds in a lorry.
And after November’s IS attack on Paris in which 130 were murdered, one of the perpetrators slipped through police roadblocks.
Yesterday sources close to the Rouen investigation said Petitjean had no difficulty passing security vetting for his job at Chambery.
A source said: “He was considered to be a hardworking, friendly young man who did not pose any danger to passengers or others using the airport. He got through the police investigation easily.”
IS yesterday released a second video in which Petitjean called for more attacks on France.
Wearing a white and green top, he spoke to the camera in French with Arabic subtitles.
In a message to his “brothers” he said: “Go out with a knife, whatever is needed. Attack them, kill them en masse.”
Earlier this week IS had released a video of Petitjean and Kermiche pledging allegiance to the group.
French prime minister Manuel Valls, who is now under pressure to resign, said the judges who let Kermiche out of prison early with the tag should not be blamed.
But he admitted the decision to free Kermiche under such weak bail conditions was “a failure”.
Meanwhile, three people are now in custody over alleged links to Fr Jacques’ murder.
They are a Syrian asylum seeker, a 30-year-old Frenchman with family links to Petitjean and a 16-yearold boy whose brother was a friend of Kermiche and had gone to Syria.
Petitjean’s sister and a friend have been released by police.