Daily Times

PARIS: French police detained a Syrian asylum seeker in connection with the Normandy church attack, sources said on Friday, as security services widened their investigation into a priest’s killing by two assailants.

Three days after teenagers Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Nabir Petitjean chanted in Arabic as they slit the throat of Father Jacques Hamel, investigators are probing their network of associates from the northern Normandy region to the alpine east.

A police source said that the Syrian was arrested near a refugee centre in the rural Allier, where Petitjean lived for four years with his parents until 2012, according to the French media. A copy of the Syrian’s passport was found at Kermiche’s family home, a police source said.

A judicial source confirmed that the Syrian was being held in custody, while two more individuals – with suspected ties to the attackers – are also being interrogated by the authorities. France is reeling from two strikes by IS-loyal assailants within 12 days. A Tunisian delivery man ran his truck through a crowd in Nice on Bastille Day, killing 84 people.

The security record of President Francois Hollande and his Socialist government is under intense scrutiny following the revelation that Kermiche carried out his attack despite being under tight surveillance for two failed bids to reach Syria.