Local police intelligence officers became aware of the growing threatening online messages of one of the two jihadists who killed Catholic priest Father Jacques Hamel in Normandy in July 2016 five days before the attack, but the information was not passed on to the national French intelligence agency, Mediapart can reveal. When the police intelligence unit later discovered this delay they doctored the files in a bid to make it look as if their original discovery was only made on the day of the attack itself. The French prosecution services have now opened an investigation into the affair. As Matthieu Suc reports, this claim of a blunder and attempted cover-up will raise fresh questions over the effectiveness of France's counter-terrorism operations.
A 17-year-old who tried to reach Syria last year with one of two men who attacked a church in Normandy was detained in Geneva and deported to France, reports say.
Adel Kermiche, one of two men who attacked a church in Normandy on Tuesday morning and committed the horrific murder of an 86-year-old Catholic priest in the name of the Islamic State group, was at the time on conditional release from preventive detention. The revelation that he was wearing an electronic tag with permission to leave his home near to the church on weekday mornings has caused a storm of controversy in France, and fierce criticism of the judges who decided his release from prison in March, despite the objections of the public prosecutor's office. Mathilde Goanec hears from fellow magistrates of what they describe as a fine line in assessing the true danger individuals like Kermiche represent.
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