Attacker nurtured jihad in quiet town
Associated Press
SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France
Adel Kermiche nursed his obsession with jihad in this quiet French town alongside the Seine River, and his twice-thwarted attempt to join Islamic State extremists in Syria ended with an attack on an elderly priest celebrating Mass in its sturdy stone church.
New details emerged Wednesday about the 19-year-old, one of two assailants who took five hostages Tuesday at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, slitting the throat of the 85-year-priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, before being shot to death by police.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video Wednesday purportedly showing Kermiche and his accomplice clasping hands, and pledging allegiance to the group.
In it, Kermiche identifies himself by the nom de guerre Abul Jaleel al-Hanafi, and says his compatriot, who has not been identified by French authorities, is called Ibn Omar. Wearing a camouflage jacket and speaking in broken Arabic, Kermiche recites: “We pledge allegiance and obedience to Emir of the faithful Abu Bakr al-Baghdady in hardship and in ease.”
Those who knew him in this Normandy town where he grew up said Kermiche appeared to think of little else other than trying to join the extremist group in Syria after the January 2015 attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
“He said it wasn’t possible to live peacefully in France. He spoke with words that did not belong to him. He was mesmerized, like in a sect,” his mother said in an interview last year after her son was detained and returned to France after trying to make it to Syria.
She said the family, who had flagged him to authorities, did not know where to turn.
“Luckily he was caught in time twice,” she told the Tribunal de Geneve newspaper. “If he had made it to Syria, I would have had to write him off.”
Initially Kermiche was jailed, but a judge later ordered him released – over prosecutor objections – and placed him under limited house arrest with an electronic surveillance bracelet.
He was not the first person to leave this corner of Normandy headed for Syria, nor the most notorious.
Maxime Hauchard, a Muslim convert who appeared in a November 2014 Islamic State video slitting the throat of a Syrian soldier, grew up in a village just a few miles away, and was among a microcell of four or five local jihadi recruits.