The trial of the attack on the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime), during which Father Hamel was assassinated and a parishioner, Guy Coponet, seriously injured by two jihadists on July 26, 2016, is a strange legal object, full of paradoxes.
It is considered one of the most resounding attacks of the 2010s, but in the box of the specially composed Assize Court of Paris there are only three traveling companions, exempt from any role in the attack on the church. The two authors, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, were indeed killed by the police on the spot. As for the instigator, Rachid Kassim, the fourth defendant in this trial, he is presumed dead in an aerial bombardment in Iraq on February 10, 2017.
Another major paradox: the inescapable nature of this attack compared to the improvisation of its execution. This apparent contradiction ran through the entire long testimony of an investigator from the anti-terrorist sub-directorate of the judicial police (SDAT) on the murderous journey of the Kermiche-Petitjean-Kassim trio.
“We mightn’t do anything”
Kermiche and Petitjean, both 19 at the time of the incident, share the thwarted desire to join the Islamic State (IS) organization in Syria. In March 2015, Adel Kermiche, whose family lives in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, was intercepted in Germany. Charged, he is placed under judicial control. A month and a half later, he left for Switzerland, from where he embarked for Istanbul. Upon arrival, he was immediately sent back to France, where he was placed in detention.
In March 2016, he was released on parole on an electronic bracelet. Apparently, he respects the imposed conditions and leaves his home only at authorized times. A probation service report even mentions that “his discourse on religion does not demonstrate adherence to an extremist ideology”.
But on the Telegram channel he created in June 2016, Al-Haqq wal Dalil (“truth and proof”), Kermiche boasts of his “Tie” (“concealment”). During her testimony, Wednesday, February 16, Nicole Klein, prefect of Normandy at the time, had questioned the decision to release: “When we learned that the judge” had estimated “that he came out of proselytism, we didn’t believe it for a second. But we mightn’t do anything except watch his actions and gestures.”she regretted.
“Rachid Kassim was the catalyst”
Obviously, the monitoring was insufficient. On his Telegram channel, Adel Kermiche relays IS propaganda, justifies slavery, filmed beheadings, etc. He forms the project of an attack as a substitute for a departure that has become impossible. In an audio post of June 26, he assures that “the one who attacks here” East “better than one who performs hijra” (“emigration to the land of Islam”).
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