Ten years after the murder of Jacques Hamel, France commemorates the priest

Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray – 26.07.2026: Ten years after the murder of Catholic priest Jacques Hamel, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen is commemorating the Islamist attack of July 26, 2016. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and former President François Hollande are taking part in the memorial ceremony this Sunday. Mayor Joachim Moyse described their presence as an important sign of national solidarity. At the same time, he warned that the city must not let its memory stop at the crime. The commemoration must also serve fraternity and cohesion.

Hamel was killed during a morning Mass at Saint-Étienne Church by Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean. The two attackers took several people hostage. Parishioner Guy Coponet was seriously injured; a nun managed to escape and alert the police. Officers from Rouen’s Brigade de recherche et d’intervention shot the perpetrators as they left the church.

The murder struck France at a time of heightened terrorist threat. Just twelve days earlier, an attacker had killed 86 people in Nice. Hollande, then president, traveled to Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray on the day of the attack. He described the murder as an assault on the freedom of religion and conscience guaranteed by the Republic. The Islamic State terrorist militia claimed responsibility for the act; both perpetrators had pledged allegiance to the organization.

The criminal investigation focused on the circle around the slain attackers. In 2022, a special court in Paris sentenced three defendants to prison terms of eight, ten and thirteen years for involvement in a terrorist organization. Rachid Kassim, an Islamic State propagandist and suspected instigator, received a life sentence in absentia. The trial examined what support and ideological guidance had enabled the attack, even though the direct perpetrators could no longer be brought to trial.

In Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, remembrance has been firmly established in public space for years. As early as 2017, the city unveiled a stele in Hamel’s honor. Since then, the memorial ceremonies have combined remembrance of the priest with meetings between religious communities. Moyse’s appeal not to remain stuck in the past is addressed to a municipality resisting a lasting reduction to the site of the crime.

With Lecornu and Hollande, the sitting head of government and the president from the year of the attack are coming together. Their participation links the state’s remembrance of the 2016 wave of terror with the experience of the local community. On July 26, 2025, the Interior Ministry posthumously awarded Hamel and Janine Coponet, who died in 2021, the National Medal of Recognition for Victims of Terrorism.