A man arrested in Corsica as part of the investigation into the murder of Father Hamel

The individual was arrested in Ghisonaccia, a commune on the eastern plain of Corsica, late Monday morning. The operation conducted by police officers of the anti-terrorist department (SDAT), on rogatory commission of an anti-terrorist judge, proceeded smoothly.

Aged 30, this man was not S but was known for his practice of a rigorous Islam, according to a source close to the file. He was taken to the police station in Bastia where he was placed in police custody.

He was placed under surveillance in the framework of an investigation opened by the national antiterrorist prosecutor's office, on the attack of the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in 2016. Born in August 1987 in Morocco, he arrived in Corsica shortly after the events, where he was a self-employed entrepreneur in the electricity sector, according to another source .

The individual is suspected of having been in contact with one of the two Islamists who killed the priest in the church of St Etienne-du-Rouvray July 26, 2016, said this source.

The two men aged 19, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, each of whom was the subject of a card S information, had been shot by the police of the Research and Intervention Brigade.

Member of the "second circle" of the entourage of Abdel-Malik Petitjean, according to another source, he is questioned to determine if he could play a role in the pbadage to the act or in the radicalization of two alleged killers of the priest Jacques Hamel in his church of Seine-Maritime on July 26, 2016.

His name appeared in the investigation because he had paid a Blablacar trip to Abdel-Malik Petitjean a few days before the attack, the July 14, according to a close relative of the file