France Widens Probe of Latest Terrorist Attack but Admits to Mistakes Investigators look for other Islamic State followers who may have been involved in priest’s killing By Matthew Dalton and Inti Landauro
http://www.wsj.com/articles/french-prime-minister-acknowledges-failings-of-judicial-system-after-church-attack-1469777613
PARIS—French authorities have detained a Syrian refugee and are investigating whether he conspired with Islamist radicals who killed a French priest in a Normandy church this past week, officials said Friday.
Also Friday, authorities placed a 19-year-old under formal investigation on preliminary charges of terrorist conspiracy in the attack. He had been detained on Monday, the day before the priest’s slaying, after authorities discovered a video in the suspect’s home showing one of the two killers, Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, threatening France. Security services were unable to locate Petitjean before he mounted his attack.
Authorities didn’t release any other details about that suspect.
The investigator’s latest moves raise the possibility that other Islamic State followers were involved in the priest’s killing, and renews concerns that the terror group has exploited refugee flows to strike in Europe.
Police found a copy of the Syrian man’s passport at the home of Adel Kermiche, one of the two killers shot dead by police, officials said. But they said it is still unclear if he was involved in the plot. In past attacks, extremists have stolen documents to sneak operatives across borders.
Authorities took the Syrian into custody at a refugee center in Allier, in the center of France, hundreds of miles from the Normandy town where the priest was killed, officials said.
European security officials have been trying to find Islamic State operatives who may have entered Europe amid the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving from the Middle East. On Sunday, a Syrian asylum-seeker who declared allegiance to the group blew himself up in Ansbach, Germany. Last year, some Islamic State operatives behind the attacks in Paris and Brussels posed as Syrian refugees to slip into Europe.
French Prime Minister Manual Valls admitted missteps in tracking the two Islamic radicals. Kermiche, a 19-year-old Frenchman, had served 10 months in a French prison for twice trying to travel to the battlefields of Syria, but was released in March on condition he wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.
Four months later, Kermiche and Petitjean, another Frenchman, stormed Saint-Etienne-Du-Rouvray, a 16th-century church, and killed the Rev. Jacques Hamel, as the 85-year-old auxiliary priest celebrated Mass.
“It is a failure, we have to recognize that,” said Mr. Valls in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde published Friday.
Days before the Normandy attack, French authorities had received a photo of Petitjean from a foreign intelligence service that warned the man had threatened to carry out an attack on France, according to officials familiar with the investigation. But France failed to make the link between the man in the photo and Petitjean. CONTINUE AT SITE
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