The attackers who stormed a Catholic church in France forced one of the congregants to take pictures and video showing the body of the murdered priest to memorialize the atrocity, a hostage revealed on Wednesday.
(FOX)- The attackers, linked to the Islamic State terror group, took hostages at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in France’s northwest region, during morning Mass. After Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, was killed, both attackers were killed by police outside the church. The exact timeline of the attack is still unclear.
One attacker was identified as 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, who investigators said tried to travel to Syria twice last year using family members’ identity documents. He was detained outside France, sent home and ordered to wear a tracking bracelet.
Under his bail conditions, he could turn off the bracelet for four hours each morning — a period that matched the time of the attack, according to investigators.
The two attackers had knives and fake explosives — one a phony suicide belt covered in tin foil, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
An 86-year-old woman, one of five held hostage, said the attackers had handed her husband Guy a cellphone and demanded that he take photos or video of the priest after he was killed. Her husband was in turn slashed in four places by the attackers and is now hospitalized with serious injuries.
[The priest] “fell down looking upwards, toward us,” said Jeanine, the ex-hostage. “The terrorists held me with a revolver at my neck,” she said, adding it was not clear to her now whether the weapon was real or fake.