The teenage terrorist who killed a French priest in front of his congregation was twice detained for trying to join ISIS in Syria — but he was released from jail despite repeatedly promising to attack a church.
Adel Kermiche, 19, and a second ISIS-inspired attacker were fatally shot by cops Tuesday after they stormed a Normandy church during a 10 a.m. mass and slit the throat of 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel, police said.
Kermiche’s friends said the “easily influenced” teen grew radical after the 2015 terror attack on satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo and frequently talked about his desire to join ISIS and then kill in the terror group’s name.
“He told me ‘I’m going to attack a church’. He said this two months ago,” one of his friends told local media, according to a translation by the Guardian. “On my mother’s life I didn’t believe him.”
Officials said Kermiche tried to enter Syria March 2015 — less than two months after the Charlie Hebdo terror attack — but German cops stopped him and sent him home to France. Two months later, while on supervised release and awaiting trial, he again tried to flee to the ISIS-occupied nation. Again, he was stopped — that time in Turkey.
Kermiche was detained in May 2015 following his second attempt to cross into the terrorists’ territory. He was released in March, despite prosecutors’ insistence that he was a threat.
“There’s a very strong chance he will do the same thing if he is released,” a prosecutor said.
A judge ordered the freed Kermiche to wear a tracking bracelet at all times and largely forbid him from leaving his home. The teenager could go outside for four hours a day, between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. On Tuesday, he used the four-hour window to attack the church.
Hamel, the priest, was celebrating Mass for three nuns and two parishioners on a quiet summer morning in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray when the attackers burst in and forced the 85-year-old church leader to his knees before slicing his throat, according to authorities and a nun who escaped. One 86-year-old parishioner was also wounded.
A statement published by the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said Tuesday’s attack was carried out by “two soldiers of the Islamic State” who acted in response to calls to target nations in the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.
Those close to Kermiche said his radicalization stremmed from his gullible nature.
“He said that [Muslims] couldn’t exercise their religion peacefully in France,” his mother said in May 2015, after his second attempt to get into Syria. “He spoke with words that didn’t belong to him. He was under a spell, like a cult.”
With News Wire Services
