France backtracks on identification of second Frenchman in Islamic State video

PARIS, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Authorities appear to be backtracking from their identification of French citizen Michaël Dos Santos as one of the unmasked Islamic State militants who appeared in a recently released execution video.

Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, told CNN Thursday "We stated yesterday on precise and concurring clues about his identity. We never talked about formal identity. The investigation is still ongoing."

On Wednesday, authorities announced they had identified dos Santos as a second Frenchman who appeared unmasked in the 16-minute propaganda video that purportedly showed the two men, dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard, taking part in a mass execution of eight Syrian Air Force pilots.

Dos Santos converted to Islam and was well-known to anti-terror officials in France even before the release of the video. An arrest warrant was issued in October 2013 in connection with an investigation into French foreign fighters traveling to Syria to join IS.

During police interviews this week, Ana dos Santos, Michaël's mother, expressed her own doubts to authorities that the man in the video was her son.

"They asked me 'Are you sure?' I had to keep repeating myself so many times, that after a while I began to have doubts. So I said, 'I don't know if he's my son'," she told BFMTV, adding "The more I watch the video, the more tell myself it's not him."

Michaël dos Santos, writing under the now-suspended Twitter handle @about_uthman_6, took to the social media site on Thursday to deny he appeared in the infamous beheading video.

"J'annonce clairement que ce n'est pas moi présent dans la vidéo" — عبد الودود الفرنسي (@abou_uthman_6) 20 Novembre 2014