Aldjia Kermiche came on Monday, answer questions from the Assize Court. Neither in ignorance nor in the denial of the Islamist drift of his son Adel, she had never considered that he would end up murdering Father Hamel on July 26, 2016.
Unlike other mothers who have testified since the beginning of the trial of the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray attack (Seine-Maritime), Aldjia Kermiche was neither in ignorance nor in denial nor in the minimization of the radicalization of his son Adel. But never, she had not considered he would end, with Abdel-Malik Petitjean, by taking a hostage in the church of his commune before murdering the priest Jacques Hamel, 85, at the foot of His altar, on July 26, 2016. The two terrorists, 19 years old, were then attached to Guy Coponet, 87 years old, a parishioner came to attend Mass with his wife, leaving him for death after four shots of knife . Once the police arrived, the two young people came out in force, doldered dummy explosives, and were killed on the field.
M me Kermiche came, Monday, February 28, answer the questions of the Assize Court specially composed of Paris on his son. Soberly dressed in a black jacket and trousers, a white blouse and a neck scarf, this 59-year-old teacher speaks in a clear and placed voice. With a remarkable franchise and courage.
This tragic morning, she was at home, just under two kilometers from St. Etienne’s Church. In the morning, she had crossed her son in the family home. When the police commissioner of the city called him on the phone to ask him if he was at home, she replied that yes. “Check!”, Insisted the commissioner. By dint of exchanging, the two women knew each other well and killed himself. Aldjia Kermiche came down on the ground floor to see the absence of his son. More and more worried, she learned around noon the death of her son and circumstances. By a journalist came ringing at his door.
“We tried to reason, we sermed it”
It was in March 2015 that Adel Kermiche began to practice Islam in a traditional Muslim family where no one went to the mosque. “We, as Muslims, we did not worry,” she says. Later, her husband will say even “proud” that his son becomes a good Muslim. But Adel Kermiche quickly radicalized, criticized for his parents not to be good Muslims and to stay the arms crossed against the massacres committed by Bachar al-Assad in Syria.
Shortly after, “My daughter discovered on his phone a plan to go to Syria, says Aldjia Kermiche. We were scared and we called the police station of Saint-Etienne-en-Rouvray by asking him to do A prohibition of territory. (…) We tried to reason, it was sermed. We told him a good part of the night. The next day he was no longer in his room. “The child, again Minor, is arrested in Munich on March 23, 2015, where he wanted to embark. His father brings him home. “We found ourselves with our son without anyone to help us,” said the mother.
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