92-year-old Guy Coponet “wants to understand how these youths, barely out of adolescence, could commit such horrors.”
The reason why they did this is quite clear. But will the French court be honest or courageous enough to state that reason plainly?
“Four go on trial in Paris over jihadist murder of French priest,” AFP, February 14, 2022:
Four alleged accomplices in the murder of an 85-year-old French priest go on trial in Paris on Monday after years of investigations into one of the most grisly jihadist attacks that have rocked France in recent years.
Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit at the foot of the altar while celebrating mass on July 26, 2016, at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class suburb of Rouen in northwest France.
The two 19-year-old assailants, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, also seriously injured one of the worshippers they took hostage before being shot and killed by police as they tried to leave the church.
They claimed in a video to be members of the Islamic State, which later called them its “soldiers” retaliating for France’s fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq….
It also raised questions about the ability of French intelligence agencies to prevent such attacks, since Kermiche was wearing an electronic bracelet at the time after anti-terrorism police learned he had twice tried to go fight in Syria.
Prosecutors say that Jean-Philippe Jean Louis, Farid Khelil and Yassine Sebaihia knew about the attackers’ plan, with Jean Louis travelling with Petitjean to Turkey just weeks before the attack in an attempt to reach Syria.
They have denied the charges of conspiracy with terrorists, with their lawyers calling them “scapegoats.”
‘Pounce on the infidels’
Rachid Kassim, a Frenchman who became a key IS recruiter and is the alleged instigator of the attack, has been charged with complicity in the killing by helping to choose the target and providing advice.
“Pounce on the infidels like a hungry lion pounces on its prey,” Kassim told them in audio and social media conversations discovered by investigators.
Police also say Kassim was behind the chilling murder of a police officer and his companion in front of their three-year-old son in Magnanville, a Paris suburb, just a few weeks before Hamel’s murder….
Despite the absence of the main culprits, Hamel’s relatives and the victims are hoping to learn how the young men came to embrace the extremist ideology that led to the attack.
Guy Coponet, who was critically injured while being held hostage in the church, “wants to understand how these youths, barely out of adolescence, could commit such horrors,” his lawyer Mehana Mouhou told AFP….
Michael Copeland says
Memo to Hamel’s relatives and the victims: “the extremist ideology that led to the attack” is Islam, ordinary basic Islam.
The killers were doing “exactly what this book says”, as Lt. Col Allen West puts it.
born saturday says
their satanic religion is the answer and it is this religion that plagues the world since its existence and either contributed to or started (and was followed) all the barbarocity there has ever been in the world since it existed….
ofcourse france did not know islamic occupation in the past, otherwise an educated french man would know that these practises of terror and pervesion and its mixture are not a thing of the present only, as the islamic expansionism has been taking place from one and a half millenia…. these practises are ancient and it is encouraging the rest to do the same….
DavidR says
Why? How? There’s an instruction manual and lectures every Friday all over the place.
Keith O says
Spot on!
gravenimage says
France: Four Muslims on trial as accomplices in murder of priest, ‘Pounce on the infidels like a hungry lion’
……………..
This is how pious Muslims regard Infidels–including peaceful aged priests.
More:
It also raised questions about the ability of French intelligence agencies to prevent such attacks, since Kermiche was wearing an electronic bracelet at the time after anti-terrorism police learned he had twice tried to go fight in Syria.
……………..
We see how well *that* worked. So often we hear with Jihad terror attacks that the perps were “known to the police”, but this does not help prevent more Jihad terror attacks in the vast majority of cases.
Shawn says
What I really don’t understand is why a thing such as a Trudeau can’t see how a regular Muslim is no different than a jihadist Muslim.Both read and follow the same book,written by a mere man.It now sickens me how people follow books that men wrote.It took over 20 years for that charleton to.write that gross book called the Quran.Thats alot of time to fabricate a ton of krap.
OLD GUY says
If you don’t know WHY by now, you must be living in a vacuum. Islam preaches and teaches the hate and murder of infidels (that’s you and me) non Islamic followers in its mosque’s and unholy book. And yes you can say it’s a mental problem, called brainwashing, it appears that for muslims brains it doesn’t take a lot of washing to get them to do violence.
ceres says
How long will it take us to face the reality that this is Islam, nothing else needed. How much will we lose before we stop them? Or will our countries become more like pakistan, afghanistan, somalia, saudi arabia, etc where ideas of freedom, equality, safety, love, dance, music, humour simply don’t exist and cannot exist…Why do we let Islam grow to threaten our children and grandchildren?