Turkish secret services warned
their French counterparts about Normandy church attacker Abdel
Malik Petitjean but their alert arrived too late to stop him
killing a priest, France Info radio reported on Thursday.
According to the radio channel, the attacker was added to a
blacklist on June 29. The procedure would have led to an alarm
being raised upon his return to France, but he had already come
back into the country on June 11.
French intelligence assumed he was still in Syria or
Turkey. But in fact he was back in France and able to carry out
the assault on the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in which
Father Jacques Hamel, 86, was knifed to death.
Separately on Thursday, the weekly magazine L'Express
published some audio messages sent by Telegram by the second
attacker, 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, in which he encourages
other people to take similar action to him.
"Take a knife, go to a church and create a bloodbath. Cut
off two or three heads, and then it's finished," the magazine
quoted Kermiche as saying in the audio message.
Islamic State (IS) has released a video that it says shows
the two men pledging allegiance to the radical Islamist group.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
