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The man suspected of beheading a French teacher who showed his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was an 18-year-old Chechen, a source said on Saturday, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an “Islamist terrorist attack.”
The attack took place on Friday afternoon near the high school where the teacher worked in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a northwestern suburb about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from central Paris.
The attacker was shot by the police and later died of his injuries.
Police said the victim was a history teacher who recently showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a class discussion on freedom of expression that had prompted complaints from some parents.
A judicial source told AFP on Saturday that five more people had been arrested for the murder, including the parents of a child at the school where the teacher worked, bringing the total number currently arrested to nine.
According to the source, who asked not to be identified, the two detained parents had expressed their disagreement with the teacher’s decision to show the cartoons.
The other three new people detained for questioning are members of the suspect’s social circle. The four previously detained are all relatives.
The attack came as a trial for the January 2015 massacre was underway at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the prophet that sparked a wave of anger across the Islamic world.
The magazine had defiantly republished the cartoons in the run-up to the trial’s opening in September, and last month a young Pakistani wounded two people with a butcher knife outside the magazine’s former offices.
In a tweet, Charlie Hebdo expressed his “sense of horror and revolt” at the attack on Friday.
– ‘Won’t win’ –
Identification documents found on the suspect showed that he was an 18-year-old born in Moscow but from the southern Russian region of Chechnya.
The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”) when the police confronted him, a scream often heard in jihadist attacks, a police source said.
French counterterrorism prosecutors said they were treating the assault as “a murder linked to a terrorist organization.”
Police said they were investigating a tweet posted from an account that featured a photo of the teacher’s head and which has since been closed.
It was unclear whether the attacker had posted the message, which contained a threat against Macron, describing him as “the leader of the infidels,” they said.
The killing bore the stamp of “an Islamist terrorist attack,” Macron said while visiting the scene.
Visibly moved, the president said that “the entire nation” was ready to defend the teachers and that “obscurantism will not win.”
The head of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed her condolences to the professor’s family and the French people.
“My thoughts are also with the teachers, in France and throughout Europe. Without them, there are no citizens. Without them, there is no democracy, ”he tweeted in French.
– ‘Super friendly and kind’ –
At school, parents and teachers paid tribute to the victim, who has not been officially named.
“According to my son, he was super nice, super nice, super nice,” a mother, Nordine Chaouadi, told AFP.
“I saw him (the teacher) today, he came to my class to see our teacher. It’s shocking that I won’t see him again, ”said Tiago, a sixth grader.
The teacher “simply said to the Muslim children, ‘Go away, I don’t want to hurt your feelings.’ That’s what my son told me, ”said the father.
Police arrived at the scene after receiving a call about a suspicious individual loitering near the school, a police source said.
They discovered the dead man and soon saw the suspect, armed with a sword, who threatened the officers as they tried to arrest him.
They opened fire, seriously wounded him, and then he died from the wounds.
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