Killer was tagged and on terror watch list
Security services under intense scrutiny after attacker revealed to have tried to travel to Syria
By Ben Farmer, David Chazan in Paris and Matthew Holehouse in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray ONE of the terrorists who cut the throat of a village priest in an attack claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Isil) had been turned back from Syria and was under police supervision, wearing an electronic tag.
French police and intelligence services were last night under intense scrutiny, after it emerged that one of the killers, Adel Kermiche, was known to have been radicalised and on a watch list as a potential threat to national security.
It was also last night reported that the church had been on a “hit list” found on a 24-year-old Algerian jihadist who had planned attacks last year in a Parisian suburb. Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a computer sciences student, was arrested by French police who are investigating whether he was directed to carry out attacks on churches by Isil.
The country’s security services have been accused of a series of failings after attacks by Islamist jihadists in the past 18 months.
Kermiche, 19, began making contact with radicals on the internet after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermar- ket attacks in January 2015 and came to authorities’ attention when he tried to help a teenager from Saint-Etienne-duRouvray join Isil.
He also twice attempted to go to Syria himself, but was arrested once in Munich and later sent back from Turkey to Geneva, where he was charged with “criminal association in connection with terrorism”.
He was returned to France and held in custody for 10 months. In March this year, he was released and tagged, after the public prosecutor appealed unsuccessfully against his release.
A French security source said Kermiche was known to be in contact with Maxime Hauchard, a French jihadist who came from the region and was identified as an Isil executioner.
Neighbours told The Daily Telegraph last night that Kermiche did not attend the local mosque. His uncle Akin Dendani was last night tearful and shaking as hesaid his son had been “manipulated” by “extremists.”
He said he had become “serene” before the attack. “I don’t know who they are. But when I find out I will go and find them myself. With any luck,” he said, stood near the family dormer bungalow in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
“He was normal. He was good. He went to school, he was like you and me. He had friends, male and female,” he said. “He was manipulated by extremists, they told him rubbish: this person is good, this person is bad”. “He was 19, just emerging from adolescence.” He confirmed he had been tagged with an electronic bracelet after being held in custody and had to report to the police station twice a week.
Mr Dendani said he had seen the boy about three days ago. But in the weeks up to the attack his mood had changed. “There was a serenity,” he said. “He was calm. We had a dialogue with him – about Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism. We had a dialogue.”
He added: “It is reprehensible, barbarism, what happened on Paris, and here to that man.”
His mother told a Swiss newspaper in May last year that his transformation into a radical happened very rapidly. Previously he was a “happy kid who liked music and going out with girls”. But he quickly became a recluse, only going out to the mosque.
“It was as if he was under a spell, in a sect,” said his mother, a teacher.
His family and his brothers and sisters tried to reason with him and keep an eye on him. Security sources said his Facebook posts show how he made little effort to hide his new sympathies. Mohammed Karabila, of the Regional Council of the Muslim Faith for Haute- Normandie, said: “The person who committed this odious act is known and he has been followed by the police for at least one and a half years.”
Right-wing opposition parties have accused the ruling Socialist government of not doing enough to prevent recent attacks. The former centre-Right president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been intensely critical of the government’s response to terrorism in the wake of the Nice massacre on July 14, urged it “to immediately implement the recommendations of the Right”.Among the measures Mr Sarkozy wants introduced are the deportation of foreigners who break the law, even if the crimes are relatively minor, and tagging of anyone suspected of radicalisation.
François Hollande, the president, rejected the criticisms, saying: “Restricting our freedoms, granting exceptions from our constitutional rules would not bring efficiency to our fight against terrorism and would weaken the necessary cohesion of our nation.”
He said France’s state of emergency, in place since the Paris attacks last November, would be strengthened, vowing: “We will win this war.”
Police in Nice are holding an internal investigation into their preparations for the city’s Bastille Day event amid accusations it was woefully unprotected ahead of the lorry attack which killed 84 people. A French parliamentary investigation into the 2015 Paris attacks identified a “global failure” of the country’s security agencies.