Coverup alleged in killer jihadi case
The French prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations made by an online publication that a police intelligence note was post-dated to cover up a failure to act against an Islamist extremist who, along with a cohort, ultimately slit the throat of a Normandy priest in 2016.
The probe involved charges of forgery and alteration of documents, a judicial official said yesterday.
He said 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 SaintEtienne-du-Rouvray.
The investigation follows a report by online investigative publication Mediapart revealing the existence of the intelligence note about Adel Kermiche. The report alleges the note was post-dated once the deadly attack on the Rev Jacques Hamel took place, and suggests the murder might have been avoided.
Based on months of interviews with police officers close to the intelligence operation, the article cited low staffing during summer holidays, poor work conditions and, above all, the need for members of France’s intelligence hierarchy to sign off on documents submitted by the rank and file.
‘‘There are too many controls, too much rereading, too many chiefs who want to correct the notes, put their stamp on it,’’ Mediapart quoted an unnamed intelligence officer as saying.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the church attack, as well as an attack in Nice earlier that month in which 84 people were killed by a man who drove a truck down a seaside promenade.
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’’.
Once the attack occurred, the intelligence officer who wrote the note – based on his intercepts on the encrypted Telegram messaging service – ‘‘immediately made the link with the individual he had identified’’, the statement said.
Then, ‘‘without delay’’ the Paris police intelligence arm informed investigators and wrote a new note, dated July 26, 2016 – the day of the attack. Police headquarters dated the initial note July 22, four days before the attack, while Mediapart dated it July 21.
Mediapart claimed that Kermiche, who had been arrested while trying to travel to Syria, said in a seven-minute-plus conversation on Telegram that because going to Syria was difficult, it was best to carry out attacks on home soil, and cited churches as a target.