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An 18-year-old Chechen man accused of beheading a teacher near his school in a Paris suburb received asylum in France and had no ties to Russia, a Russian diplomat said Saturday.
“This crime has no relation to Russia because this person had lived in France for the past 12 years,” Sergei Parinov, spokesman for the Russian embassy in Paris, told the state news agency TASS.
READ | Police arrest 9 after teacher beheaded
Identifying the suspect, who was mortally wounded by police, as Abdullakh Anzorov, Parinov said his family came to France when Anzorov was 6 years old and applied for asylum.
The young man received a residence permit this year, he added.
“He had no contacts with the (Russian) embassy,” Parinov said.
READ | Master beheaded in France after showing Muhammad cartoons
He said it was “important, not a person’s birthplace” but when and why he embraced “terrorist ideology.”
On Friday, 47-year-old teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in front of his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of the French capital.
The attacker was shot by the police while trying to arrest him and later died from his injuries.
The teacher had been threatened online for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
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