LONDON: The sister of a French priest killed in an Islamist terror attack has bonded with the killer’s mother.
Speaking in an interview with French press ahead of a trial for alleged co-conspirators next week, Rosaline Hamel, 81, said she had decided to get to know the mother of one of the attackers so “we could handle our pain together.”
Her brother, Father Jacques Hamel, was killed by two men, both of whom had pledged allegiance to Daesh, in a 2016 attack in the church in the commune of Saint-Etienne-de-Rouvray, near the city of Rouen.
Rosaline decided to bond with the mother of Adel Kermiche, who was shot dead by police after killing Jacques.
She said it felt “entirely natural” to contact Kermiche’s mother, whom she sees on a regular basis.
Explaining her decision to reach out, she said: “I thought, ‘What if it was my son who, despite the education I had given him, had taken the wrong path to the point of becoming an assassin? How great would my pain have been then?'”
Speaking of next week’s trial, Rosaline said: “When I give evidence (in court), there is no question of condemning the Muslim community, not at all, at all, at all.”
She, like the local church institution, has vehemently distanced herself from far-right anti-Muslim sentiment and rhetoric in the wake of the killing.
The Diocese of Rouen said it “regrets the political instrumentalization” of Jacques’ death after supporters of Eric Zemmour, the hardline pundit running for the presidency, used the priest’s picture online to back his claims that Muslims are a threat to France.