French ID 2nd church attacker; police had warning

PARIS — French officials on Thursday identified the second man responsible for attacking a Catholic church in Normandy as a 19-year-old who was spotted last month in Turkey as he supposedly headed to Syria — but returned to France instead.

The prosecutor’s office identified him as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean following DNA tests on his corpse. A security official confirmed that he was the unidentified man pictured in a photo distributed to French police July 22 with a warning that he could be planning an attack.

Four days later, Petitjean and a 19-year-old local man, Adel Kermiche, stormed the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning Mass. They held five people hostage — the priest, two nuns and an elderly couple — before fatally slashing the priest’s throat and seriously wounding the other man. Another nun at the Mass slipped away and raised the alarm.

Police shot to death both attackers as they left the church.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility and released a video Wednesday allegedly showing Kermiche and Petitjean clasping hands and pledging allegiance to Islamic State.

Prosecutors said Petitjean was born in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, eastern France, but most recently lived in the Alpine town of Aix-les-Bains where his mother lives. Kermiche was from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.

A youth aged about 16 who was detained after the attack was still being questioned Thursday, the prosecutor’s office said.

Thursday’s revelations showed that anti-terrorist authorities came close twice to identifying Petitjean as a threat — but couldn’t put his name to his picture as part of two disconnected intelligence tipoffs.

Intelligence officials worked Thursday to try to explain how Petitjean, a young man without a police record, ended up in the Normandy church with Kermiche, while the people of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray paid homage to the Rev. Jacques Hamel at a gathering. The priest was to be buried Tuesday at the Cathedral of Rouen.

Muslims, too, planned homages in the coming days. An umbrella organization for Muslims, the French Council for the Muslim Faith, asked Muslims to visit churches Sunday “to express anew solidarity and compassion.”