https://www.ouest-france.fr/societe...-menaces-757d1830-7ade-11ec-9c59-cf797ef5ccae
With each attack, these two questions come up. What did the intelligence services know? Could the attack have been avoided? At the ongoing trial on the attacks of November 13, 2015, the former head of the DGSI (General Directorate of Internal Security), Patrick Calvar, acknowledged that our words will never console the pain of the victims. Zero risk, unfortunately, will never exist. But victims must never doubt our total commitment.
Concerning Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray and the assassination of Father Hamel, what did the various intelligence services operating in France know? And how do you spot two terrorists who only contacted each other for the first time four days before taking action?
In this case, we say to ourselves that it took little for the worst to be avoided. A few days before the attack, Abdel Malik Petitjean, 19, one of the two assailants, broadcast two videos by email. One of them, a little over a minute long, was spotted by the DGSI, which did not, however, know the name of the author. Abdel Malik Petitjean pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and announces a devastating attack, an attack that would upset the hearts of the disbelievers […] “If you continue to strike our lands, then our attacks will multiply, your days will turn into nightmare…”
On July 22, 2016, a national broadcast of this video was made within the police services in order to identify its author. The individual was already present in France and could act alone or with other individuals. “The date, target and modus operandi of these actions were at that time unknown,” specifies the sheet transmitted and revealed by Le Monde. In vain. No one identified Abdel Malik Petitjean as the man in the video, which was nevertheless the subject of an S file.
The case of the second assailant, Adel Kermiche, aged 19 in 2016, raises more questions. Residing in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, he had tried to reach the Iraqi-Syrian zone twice in 2015: in March and in May. At the end of his second attempt, he was imprisoned for ten months (until March 2016), then placed under judicial control and under electronic surveillance (with a bracelet). The person concerned then had to submit to a weekly meeting with agents of the SPIP (prison service for integration and probation).
To the latter, he showed the face of someone more peaceful, less radicalized. In a report dated July 26, 2016 – the day of the attack – the SPIP indicated that it had signs suggesting that Mr. Kermiche was “still a practicing Muslim,“ but that his “speech on religion did not demonstrate an extremist ideology.”
The subsequent investigation would demonstrate the opposite: Despite this security measure, it was established that Adel Kermiche had “continued to be very active in the jihadosphere,” noted the investigators.
Calls to commit attacks
In particular on his Telegram channel, called “Haqq-Wad’Dalil,” which he created on June 11, 2016. A few days before the attack, on July 21, an agent of the DRPP (the Intelligence Directorate of the prefecture Paris police) came upon Adel Kermiche’s channel, on which the latter had posted 118 photos, three videos, 89 voice messages… To the question of an Internet user, he had replied: “You take a knife, you go to a church, you make a bloodbath, you even cut off two or three heads, it’s good, it’s over […] If I personally had the opportunity to carry out an assassination, i.e. weapons, the whole shebang, the whole shebang, to be honest, you have to catch such an opportunity immediately…” We are then at July 19th. The next day, Kermiche launched a new appeal to his coreligionists in Rouen, telling them to give lessons in French and Arabic in a mosque in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.
The DRPP agent, taking note of these messages, then writes a note, as Mediapart revealed in 2018, which must have been sent to the DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security), the DRPP only being competent in Ile-de-France. However, for reasons still obscure, this note would never reach the DGSI….