Second church attacker known to police

Calls mount for resignations

PARIS/SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France, July 28, (Agencies): The second teenager involved in the killing of a priest in a church in France this week was a 19-year-old who was known to security services as a potential Islamist militant, police and judicial sources said on Thursday.

The man also appears to be a suspect that police were looking for in recent days after a tipoff from a foreign intelligence service that he was planning an attack, the police sources said.

The revelations are likely to fuel criticism by opposition politicians that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government did not do enough to stop the pair given that they were already under police surveillance.

They interrupted a church service, forced a 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest to his knees at the altar and slit his throat. They were both shot and killed by police.

Police have identified the second man as Abdelmalik Nabil Petitjean from a town in eastern France on the border with Germany, a judicial source told Reuters.

Security services had on June 29 opened a special file on Petitjean for becoming radicalised, a police source said separately. The government has said there are about 10,500 people with so-called ‘S files’ related to potential jihadi activities in France.

His accomplice, Adel Kermiche, had already been identified by police. He was known to intelligence services after failed bids to reach Syria to wage jihad.

Kermiche, also 19, wore an electronic bracelet and was awaiting trial for alleged membership of a terrorist organisation having been released on bail.

Acting on a tipoff from a foreign intelligence agency France’s intelligence services sent a photo to various security forces, but did not have a name, sources close to the investigation said.

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.

The person in the photo appears to be one of two people who can be seen in in a video posted on Wednesday by Islamic State’s news agency, they said. The video claimed the two men were the church attackers pledging allegiance to the group’s leader.

Petitjean’s mother Yamina told BFM TV that her son had never spoken about Islamic State. Three people close to Petitjean have been detained in police custody, a judicial source said. A 16-year-old, being held since Tuesday in connection with the attack, is still in custody.

Tuesday’s attack came less than two weeks after another suspected Islamist drove a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing 84 people.

Opposition politicians have responded to the attacks with strong criticism of the government’s security record, unlike last year, when they made a show of unity after gunmen and bombers killed 130 people at Paris entertainment venues in November and attacked a satirical newspaper in January.

Hollande’s predecessor and potential opponent in a presidential election next year, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said the government must take stronger steps to track known Islamist sympathisers.

He has called for the detention or elec-

tronic tagging of all suspected Islamist militants, even if they have committed no offence.

Kermiche’s tag did not send an alarm because the attack took place during the four hour period when he was allowed out.

According to the justice ministry, there are just 13 terrorism suspects and people convicted of terrorist links wearing tags such as the one worn by Kermiche. Seven are on pre-trial bail. The other six have been convicted but wear the electronic bracelet instead of serving a full jail term.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected Sarkozy’s proposal, saying that to jail them would be unconstitutional and counterproductive.

The attack came as the government was already facing a firestorm of criticism over alleged security failings after the Bastille Day truck massacre that left 84 dead two weeks ago.

A brief show of political unity at a mass attended by different faiths in Paris Wednesday quickly dissolved as Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Cazeneuve faced fresh calls to resign.

“If the government is not responsible for the wave of terrorism, it is guilty of not having done everything to stop it,” said Laurent Wauqiez, the deputy leader of the right-wing Republicans party in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper.

“Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve must go because they refuse to take vital measures to fight Islamism. We need a new government, determined to act.”

The French government has assured the country that everything possible is being done to protect citizens, while warning that more terror attacks are inevitable, after three major strikes and several smaller attacks in the past 18 months.

Adel Kermiche nursed his obsession with jihad in this quiet French town alongside the Seine River, and his twice thwarted attempt to join Islamic State extremists in Syria ended with an attack on an elderly priest celebrating Mass in its sturdy stone church.

New details emerged Wednesday about the 19-year-old, one of two assailants who took five hostages Tuesday at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, slitting the throat of the 85-year-old priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, before being shot to death by police.