France yesterday was seeking to understand how a man awaiting trial on terror charges could attack a small-town church in broad daylight, killing a priest in the latest atrocity claimed by the Islamic State group.
Adel Kermiche was one of two attackers who stormed the church in the northern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning mass, slitting the throat of an 86-year-old priest and leaving a worshiper with serious injuries.
The attack came less than two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel plowed a truck into a crowd in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring more than 300.
Photo: AFP
The third major strike on France in 18 months prompted a bitter political spat over alleged security failings and revelations over the church attack were likely to raise further questions.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Kermiche first came to the attention of antiterror officials when a family member in March last year reported that he was missing.
German officials arrested him and discovered that he was using his brother’s identity in a bid to travel to Syria.
He was released under judicial supervision, but in May fled to Turkey, where he was again arrested and returned to France. He was then held in custody until March this year.
Kermiche was fitted with an electronic bracelet and released, with conditions that he was allowed to leave his house on weekdays between 8am and 12:30pm, Molins said.
Tuesday’s attack prompted renewed calls to bolster France’s antiterrorism legislation.
French President Francois Hollande rejected them, saying: “Restricting our freedoms will not make the fight against terrorism more effective.”
Changes made to legislation last year and the extension of a state of emergency in the wake of the Nice attack already gave authorities sufficient “capacity to act,” he said.
French police union deputy chief Frederic Lagache said: “It should not be possible for someone awaiting trial on charges of having links to terrorism to be released” on house arrest.
Mohammed Karabila, who heads the regional council of Muslim worship for Haute Normandie, where the church attack took place, asked: “How could a person wearing an electronic bracelet carry out an attack? Where are the police?”
Kermiche and another assailant entered the centuries-old stone church of Saint Etienne, taking hostage the priest, Jacques Hamel, three nuns and two worshipers.
One of the nuns escaped and called police, who tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers.
The nun, Sister Danielle, told local radio RMC that the men were speaking Arabic and shouting, and had “recorded” the attack.
Three hostages were lined up in front of the church door, meaning police could not launch an attack, Molins said.
Two nuns and one worshiper exited the church followed by the two attackers, one carrying a handgun, who charged at police shouting “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great).
Police gunned him down.
Joanna Torrent, a 22-year-old store employee, was stunned to see terror hit her small working-class town of 30,000 people, far from bustling tourist hubs like Paris and Nice.
“I thought it would only be in big cities, that it couldn’t reach here,” she said.
Saint Etienne’s stone-and-brick town hall, a short distance from the church, became a communal grieving place as residents signed a condolence book and left candles and flowers. A silent march today is to start at the town hall.
Outside Saint Etienne’s Yahya Mosque — which sits on land donated by the adjacent Sainte Therese church — Karabila said his community had “never had problems with the authorities or the neighbors.”
He added: “Here we don’t preach hatred or we would be shut down.”
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