This Monday, February 14, The trial began in France for the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, on Monday. The French priest who is in the process of beatification who was slit at the age of 86 by Islamic State terrorists in 2016 when he was celebrating Mass.
The murder occurred on the morning of July 26, 2016 and was perpetrated by Abdel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, jihadists who were shot dead by the police as they left the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in the Archdiocese of Rouen.
Those who are now on trial, reports AFP, are Jean-Philippe Jean Louis, Farid Khelil and Yassine Sebaihia, accused of “association with terrorist criminals”, who would have known about the attack and who would share the extremist positions of the murderers.
The alleged instigator Rachid Kassim, who would have “encouraged and facilitated” the attack, and who would have died in a bombing in Iraq in 2017, will not be on trial.
Msgr. Dominique Lebrun, Archbishop of Rouen, told Vatican News in French that he hopes “justice will be done” for the accused and the victims in this process that would last about a month.
The Prelate also said that he hopes there is “light on what happened, as well as its causes, to generate a path to live better together” and thus avoid “this type of tragedies.”