Second French church attacker was known to police

One of the attackers, 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, was a local man who was known to intelligence services after his failed bids to reach Syria to wage jihad.

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

He and another man, Adel Kermiche, also 19, forced the elderly priest in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray to his knees before slitting his throat with a blade and allowing him to bleed to death as they recorded themselves chanting slogans in Arabic. Police killed Petitjean and Kermiche outside the church.

The video claimed the two men were the church attackers and showed them pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s leader. “The two executors of the attack on a church in Normandy, France, were soldiers of the Islamic State”, the news agency quoted the Islamic State.

But he was on police files since June 29 for having tried to enter Syria from Turkey, the source said.

The French intelligence services claimed the Turkish authorities, who picked up Petitjean on his way to Syria on June 10th, did not inform them of his arrest for 15 days.

Petitjean’s photo was distributed to the police four days prior to Tuesday’s hostage-taking and killing, and the caption to the picture read that he “could be ready to participate in an attack on national territory”.

Petitjean was listed on France’s “Fiche S” system of people posing a potential threat to national security.

The attackers arrived during morning Mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class town near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where Father Hamel had been celebrating mass. But the photo warning came without any name of the person depicted.

Three of Petitjean’s relatives were being questioned by police and the family home has been searched.

Kemiche was identified shortly the attack, while Petitjean was identified earlier on Thursday.

His mother, Yamina Boukessoula, refused to believe her son was involved when she spoke to AFP just hours before the official confirmation. He was then held in custody until March this year.

Hollande and his ministers were already under fire from conservative opponents over the policing of Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice in which 84 people died when a delivery man drove a heavy truck at revellers.

Opposition politicians have responded to the attacks with strong criticism of the government’s security record, unlike past 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.

The French government has extended a drastic series of security measures unveiled after the mid-July attacks in Nice, including a state of emergency that invests it with broad powers to detain and search people, electronics and residences without a judge’s approval. He has called for tougher surveillance of mosques and warned that radical Muslims were “trying to take over our children”.