Imams condemn extremists in joint service with Christians

Muslims and Christians pray together in mosque.

Muslim worshippers observe a minute of silence in front of the Saint Etienne church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, France, 29 July 2016. Four days after the hostage taking in the church of SShow more

SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France // Muslims and Christians joined in Friday prayer at the mosque in the Normandy town where an elderly priest was murdered this week, with one imam chastising the extremists as non-Muslims who are “not part of civilisation” or “humanity.”

Muslims came from other parts of France to be present for the service shared with Christians.

The killing Tuesday of the 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel as he celebrated morning Mass sent shock waves around France, and deeply touched many among the nation’s 5 million Muslims. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as the attack in Nice, where 84 people were killed by a man who ploughed his lorry down a seaside promenade on Bastille Day.

The head of the main Muslim umbrella group, Anouar Kbibech, who attended Friday’s gathering, reiterated a call for Muslims to visit churches on Sunday to show solidarity with Christians as they pray. But one imam made a rare direct strike at the killers who claimed to act in the name of Allah.

“You have the wrong civilisation because you are not a part of civilisation. You have the wrong humanity because you are not a part of humanity,” said Abdelatif Hmitou. “You have the wrong idea about us (Muslims) and we won’t forgive you for this.”

“How,” he asked, addressing the extremists, “may the idea reach your mind that we might loathe those who helped us ... to pray to Allah in this town? How could you think that, mister killer? Mister criminal?”

He was referring to the help given by the church of St. Therese church adjacent to the mosque that sold the plot to the Muslims for a symbolic sum so they could build a house of worship. The St. Etienne church where the attack occurred has been sealed shut.

The two 19-year-old attackers were killed by police as they left St. Etienne church, where they had held two nuns and an elderly couple hostage as they slit the priest’s throat. A third nun escaped and gave the alert.

Three people were being held Friday for questioning in the attack, a judicial official evealed. One is a Syrian refugee who was living in a centre for asylum seekerssaid on Friday.

The Syrian was detained on Thursday in the Allier region of central France because a photo-copy of his passport was found at the home of one of the attackers, Adel Kermiche. Also being held was a cousin of Kermiche’s accomplice, Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, on suspicion he was aware of the attack plan based on information culled from social networks, the judicial official said. A 16-year-old arrested just after the attack remained in custody.

Two members of Petitjean’s family, a sister and her companion, were released after questioning, the official said.

How Kermiche, from Normandy, concocted the attack plot with Petitjean, from Aix-les-Bain in the Alpes of eastern France, remained unclear.

What is known is that he arrived in Kermiche’s town just three days earlier, apparently staying at his home, according to the judicial official.

Kermiche wore a tracking bracelet after arrests with false ID’s trying to go to Syria but had four hours a day of freedom. Petitjean had no record.

Petitjean’s identity was made public only on Thursday based on DNA tests. It became clear that anti-terrorist officials came close twice to identifying him as a threat. In one instance, four days before the attack, an alert with a photo of him went out to police with a note he may be planning an attack — but the photo had no name to match the face. He was spotted in Turkey in June but French authorities were alerted too late and he quickly returned to France.

Outside the mosque a sign read: “Mosque in mourning.”

The Rev. Pierre Belhache, in charge of relations with the Muslim community, affirmed to the Muslim and Christian faithful that “we won’t let anyone divide us.

“It is so rich to have these differences but still be together.”

The French prime minister said he would consider a temporary ban on foreign financing of mosques, urging a “new model” for relations with Islam after a spate of extremist attacks.

Manuel Valls, under fire for perceived security lapses around the attacks, also admitted a “failure” in the fact that one of the jihadists who stormed a church and killed a priest on Tuesday had been released with an electronic tag pending trial.

The prime minister also called for imams to be “trained in France, not elsewhere”. And Salafism — the deeply fundamentalist branch of Islam espoused by many jihadists -- “has no place in France,” he added..

France has just over 2,000 mosques, for one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations which numbers around five million.

Meanwhile, Austria has handed over to France two suspected members of the same Islamic State cell that massacred 130 people in Paris last November, prosecutors said Friday.

The Algerian and Pakistani men, Adel Haddadi, 29 and Mohamad Usman Gani, 35, were arrested in Austria on December 10 at a centre for refugees.

Investigators believe they travelled to the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on the same boat full of refugees with two men who took part in the November 13 attacks.

Those two, thought to be Iraqis, blew themselves up outside the Stade de France, one of a series of brazen assaults by around 10 people around the French capital.

But Haddadi and Usman were held up, detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had falsified Syrian passports.

Once released, they followed the main migrant trail and made it to Salzburg in western Austria at the end of November — after the Paris attacks.

Austrian police commandos then arrested them at a migrant centre a few hours after French authorities informed them they could be in the country.

After his arrest, Haddadi told investigators that he wanted to go to France to “carry out a mission.” A source close to the investigation said that Haddadi “was meant to take part in the Paris killings with his travelling companions.”

After France filed a European arrest warrant, a court in Salzburg approved at the beginning of July the transfer of the two men to France.

Prosecutors said on Friday that both have now “left the country”.

* Agence France Presse