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A man who beheaded a history teacher on the outskirts of Paris last week had been in contact with a father who was leading an online campaign against the professor, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.
The 18-year-old killer had exchanged messages on WhatsApp with the man, who wanted Samuel Paty fired after his daughter told him how the teacher had shown him cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a lesson on freedom of expression.
The father is one of 16 people arrested for the murder that has shocked France five years after jihadists massacred 12 people in the satirical magazine that published the cartoons.
Chechen-born Abdullakh Anzorov launched the attack as Paty was returning home Friday from the high school where she taught in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Paris.
Police sources did not say how Anzorov had come into contact with the father, who had led a fierce campaign against Paty for displaying the cartoons that many Muslims considered offensive.
But the father had put his phone number in a Facebook post with a video call to protest against Paty.
The father, whose daughter was Paty’s student but was not in class at the time of the lesson according to police sources, accused the teacher of “pornography” for showing a nude cartoon of Muhammad.
The school said that Paty had given Muslim students the option to leave the classroom before he showed the images.
Subsequently, the father published a second video in which he attacked the teacher, in which he appeared together with a well-known Islamist radical, who is now also in police custody.
Five school children are also detained on suspicion of helping Anzorov identify his victim in exchange for money.
Anzorov was shot and killed by police shortly after the attack.
