Trial of the assassination of Father Hamel: one of the accused minimizes his participation

Océane Théard, edited by Solène Leroux with AFP 7:44 p.m., February 14, 2022, modified at 7:44 p.m., February 14, 2022

At the trial for the assassination of Father Hamel in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, which opened on Monday in Paris, one of the defendants feared that he would be made to wear "a suit that was too big" for him, while the victims and their relatives said they wanted to "understand" what led to this attack.

The two young jihadists who killed the priest on July 26, 2016, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, were killed by the police when they left the small church in the suburbs of Rouen (Seine-Maritime).

The three men in the box of the special assize court of Paris, Jean-Philippe Jean Louis, Farid Khelil and Yassine Sebaihia, are members of the attackers' entourage.

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They appear for "terrorist criminal association", suspected of having been aware of their projects, of having shared their ideology or tried to join Syria.

The fourth defendant, Rachid Kassim, will be tried in his absence.

This French propagandist for the Islamic State organization probably died in Iraq in 2017. He is the only one to be indicted for complicity in the assassination of the priest and the attempted assassination of a parishioner, accused of having " knowingly encouraged and facilitated the passage to the act" of the two jihadists.

Farid Khelil disputes the facts

First to answer questions from the court, Farid Khelil, 36 today, assured to have "a lot of trouble" with the facts of which he is accused, which he "contests".

"This costume, it's too big for me," he said.

Asked about his career, he spoke with a smile on his lips of his "many girlfriends", his consumption of cannabis ("I've been in withdrawal for 24 years") or his trips to the Netherlands and Germany "for homes- closed".

Long hair tied in a ponytail, small glasses and a gray sweater, he also recounted the "lack of affection" felt in his childhood, after his parents' divorce, his "French" education by a daughter of harkis and the "unfairness"

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If he went to the mosque for a while to reconnect with his father, then visited his cousin Abdel-Malik Petitjean, who introduced him to prayer and showed him propaganda videos to "raise awareness" of the fate of the Syrians, he claims to have "never had" a religious commitment and to have "never practiced".

In pre-trial detention for five years, he faces thirty years of criminal imprisonment.

"To understand"

This first personality interrogation may have brought some answers to Guy Coponet, a parishioner seriously injured by the jihadists, who on Monday hoped that the trial would allow "that it ends in a good way".

Now 92 years old, he "wants to understand (...) how young people just out of adolescence have come to commit such horrors", explained to AFP his lawyer, Me Méhana Mouhou.

On the other hand, the three nuns also present in the church sent a medical certificate attesting that they were not in condition to testify.

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"We are waiting for the truth to be told about the lack of resources that could not be given to the public forces to avoid this massacre on my brother's body," said one of Father Jacques Hamel's sisters, Roseline, on Monday.

One of the assassins, Adel Kermiche, was placed under an electronic bracelet at the time of the attack, after an aborted departure for Syria.

The intelligence directorate of the Paris police prefecture (DRPP) had also been implicated because, according to an article published in 2018 in Mediapart, its investigators had had access a week before the assassination to messages from the young man on the encrypted Telegram messaging where he mentioned an attack in a church.

But of the five agents of this service cited to testify by a lawyer for the civil parties, four are "not psychologically fit to be heard during the trial", according to medical certificates cited by the president of the court.

The director of intelligence offered to come and testify in their place, saying for some of them "psychologically broken" by this affair as well as by the attack which occurred in 2019 on the premises of the Paris police headquarters.

Christian Saint-Palais, Roseline Hamel's lawyer, stressed that "the excuse offered" was "very difficult to hear for the civil parties, who also experienced the tragedy of an attack".

The court will decide later whether to waive their hearing.