French PM mulls ban on foreign funding of mosques

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he is “open” to the idea of imposing a temporary ban on the foreign financing of the construction of mosques in the country.

In an interview with Le Monde, Valls said that France needs to “invent a new relationship with Islam” and that imans should be trained locally, not elsewhere.

He also admitted to a failure by the authorities after it was revealed that one of the jihadis who stormed a church and killed a priest on Tuesday had been released with an electronic tag pending a trial. He said that the incident proved that judges needed to take a “different, case-by-case, approach”.

Adel Kermiche, 19, had been released from prison while awaiting trial on terror charges after his second attempt to travel to Syria.

He was allowed out of his home on weekday mornings, which enabled him and a colleague to storm a church in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray and slit the throat of 86-year-old priest Jacques Hamel.

Kermiche’s accomplice, Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean, also 19, was on the security watchlist since trying to reach Syria from Turkey.

On Thursday evening, the Islamic State’s official news agency, Amaq, released a video allegedly made by Petitjean before the Normandy attack, urging fellow IS followers to carry out further attacks.

In the video, he warns Valls and French president Francois Hollande: “The times have changed. You will suffer what our brothers and sisters and suffering. We are young and determined…we will destroy your country.”