Rome Newsroom, Jul 7, 2021 / 14:00 pm
A investigation into the murder of French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel documents messages exchanged between the attackers and a senior ISIS operative based in Syria.
Nearly five years after Fr. Hamel was killed on July 26, 2016, while offering Mass, the investigation gives details into the week leading up to the attack, when two armed men stormed Hamel’s parish in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy, northern France.
The French weekly La Vie published documents on July 6 that it said came from information from the French intelligence agency, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI).
The documents include transcripts of conversations on the encrypted chat application Telegram between Hamel’s attackers and Rachid Kassim, an Islamic State leader responsible for recruiting French-speaking militants.