His murder had shocked France.

The trial of the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray attack opens Monday, February 14 in Paris, almost six years after the assassination of Father Jacques Hamel with a knife during mass, with three members of the entourage assailants in the dock and a major absentee, the alleged instigator Rachid Kassim.

The two 19-year-old jihadists, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, who claimed to belong to the Islamic State (IS) group, were killed by the police when they left the small church in the suburbs of Rouen (Seine-Maritime) , July 26, 2016.

This attack targeting for the first time in Europe a priest in a church had upset well beyond the French borders.

The three men expected in the box of the special assize court in Paris, Jean-Philippe Jean Louis, Farid Khelil and Yassine Sebaihia, are dismissed for "terrorist association of criminals".

They are suspected of having been aware of the projects of the two young men, of having shared their ideology or of having tried to reach Syria.

The fourth defendant, Rachid Kassim, presumed dead in a bombing in Iraq in February 2017, will be the main absentee from the trial.

This French propagandist of the Islamic State group is the only one to be indicted for complicity in the assassination of the priest, for having "knowingly encouraged and facilitated the passage to the act" of Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean.

Despite the absence of the main officials, the victims and their relatives want to believe that the trial, scheduled to last almost four weeks, will help to "understand" what happened.

"Understanding motivations"

Guy Coponet, who attended mass with his wife and had been seriously injured, "wants to understand, through the trial, how young people just out of adolescence came to commit such horrors", explained to the 'AFP his lawyer, Méhana Mouhou.

Despite his 92 years, he plans to attend the hearing, which he considers "a spiritual mission" "in memory of Father Hamel" and his wife, now deceased.

"Understanding who were the perpetrators of the act" and their "motivations" is also the "main expectation" of Father Hamel's two sisters, Roseline and Chantal, according to their lawyer, Me Christian Saint-Palais.

They also want to know why their brother, "a man of peace", was "designated as a target", and if there were "shortcomings in the arsenal of prevention", while one of the assassins was placed on an electronic bracelet at the time of the attack, after an aborted departure for Syria.

The Archbishop of Rouen Monsignor Dominique Lebrun, questioned by AFP, expects him "that justice be done", for the victims, but also for "Farid Khelil, Yassine Sebaihia and Jean-Philippe Jean Louis detained for five years".

“Are they guilty? Of what?” he asks.

For Béranger Tourné, lawyer for Jean-Philippe Jean Louis, the answer is clear: these three defendants are "only three lamplighters (...) who are trying to hang up" artificially on the attack.

The prosecution describes his client, now 25, as "very active in the jihadosphere", through the administration of a pro-ISIS Telegram channel and the creation of online fundraisers to support people from "the radical Islamist movement".

A few weeks before the attack, he had traveled to Turkey with Abdel-Malik Petitjean, to, according to the prosecution, join Syria.

Farid Khelil, cousin of Abdel-Malik Petitjean, is presented as fascinated by jihadist speeches.

Also in contact with Rachid Kassim on Telegram, he would have supported his cousin's desire for violent action.

This 36-year-old from Nancy "was not at all aware of his cousin's criminal project" and "denies having shared his ideology", on the contrary assures AFP his lawyer, Me Simon Clemenceau.

As for Yassine Sabaihia, 27, who had briefly joined the two terrorists in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray on July 24, before returning to Toulouse, "he did not know what was being prepared", says his lawyer, Me Katy Mira, hoping that the trial "will bring to light the non-involvement" of her client.

With AFP

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