The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
French priest’s killer had been detained, released
PARIS — One of the two young men who killed an 85-yearold Catholic priest in a town in Normandy on Tuesday had been detained for nearly 10 months after twice trying to travel to Syria, but he was released in March over the objection of prosecutors, according to French officials.
Adel Kermiche, 19, was born in Mont-St.-Aignan, a town about 5 miles from St.Étienne-du-Rouvray, where he killed the priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, at the end of morning Mass. Kermiche and the other attacker, who has not been identified, were shot dead by police.
Five other people — three nuns and two parishioners — were held hostage at the church; one of the nuns escaped, but one of the parishioners, an 86-year-old man, was critically injured. The Islamic State called the attackers “soldiers.”
The news that Kermiche was known to authorities was announced Tuesday evening by Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, who oversees terrorism investigations. It immediately raised new concerns about the government’s ability to prevent radicalized young people from traveling to Syria and committing acts of terrorism.
On Wednesday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president who is expected to be a candidate in the 2017 presidential elections, seized on the news to criticize President Francois Hollande’s government. “All this violence and barbarism has paralyzed the French left since January 2015,” Sarkozy told the newspaper Le Monde. “It has lost its bearings and is clinging to a mindset that is out of touch with reality.” Sarkozy has called for the detention or electronic monitoring of those suspected of being Islamist militants, even if they have committed no crime.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected Sarkozy’s proposal, saying that jailing people without convictions would be not only unconstitutional but also ineffective.
“This would be utterly inefficient,” he told the Europe 1 radio station. Covert surveillance “allows intelligence agencies to act without these individuals knowing it, to dismantle networks and neutralize these individuals after we have brought them to court,” he said.
The French parliament recently adopted a law that would give prosecutors powers that are normally reserved for investigative judges. The law has not yet taken effect.
As the investigation into the church attack continued, details that have emerged of Kermiche’s life depict a man who desperately wanted to get to Syria.
On March 23, 2015, a relative reported that he had disappeared. The same day, German authorities detained him as he tried to use identification papers belonging to his brother to travel to Syria. The next day, he was returned to France and placed under detention. On March 28, 2015, he was charged with attempting a criminal act and placed under judicial supervision. He was ordered not to leave the Seine-Maritime department, where he is from, and was required to report once a week to his local police station.
Kermiche was not deterred, however, from his goal of becoming a jihadi. Just over a month later, he left home. An international arrest warrant was issued for him, and on May 13, 2015, he was arrested after flying to Turkey from Geneva — this time using his cousin’s national identity card. Turkish authorities sent him back to Switzerland, and on May 22, 2015, Swiss authorities sent him back to France.
There he faced new charges for violating judicial orders by trying to go to Syria. He was detained until March 18 of this year, when a counterterrorism judge allowed him to go home, but under house arrest, with electronic monitoring. He was permitted to leave his house from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends and holidays. Authorities confiscated his national identity card and his passport.
The Paris prosecutor’s office appealed the decision to let Kermiche go home, but on March 25, an appellate court upheld the judge’s decision to release him under house arrest.