Adel Kermiche

Algerian born young French terrorist, one of the two Normandy church knifemen has been formally identified as Adel Kermiche, according to the Paris prosecutor leading the investigation.

Kermiche “grew up in a housing project in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray” and has a sister who is a doctor and a professor mother.

Francois Molins told reporters 19-year-old Kermiche was known to the French intelligence services having twice been arrested on his way to Syria.

Kermiche was under house arrest and wearing an electronic monitoring tag at the time of the attack.

After being placed under house arrest, wearing a surveillance bracelet, he was allowed out for four hours each day. During that time, the tracking device was deactivated and he was permitted to go anywhere in the region as long as he returned home by the appointed hour, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

He was not the first person to leave this corner of Normandy headed for Syria, nor the most notorious.

Maxime Hauchard, a Muslim convert who appeared in a November 2014 ISIS video slitting the throat of a Syrian soldier, grew up in a village just a few miles away, and was among a microcell of four or five local jihadi recruits.