[ad_1]
October 17, 2020 – 2:50 pm
AFP Agency
Ten people have been arrested in France in recent hours, after a teacher who had shown his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was beheaded on Friday outside Paris by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin.
The crime, quickly branded an “Islamist attack” by the authorities, has shocked France, which since 2015 has suffered a series of jihadist attacks that have left more than 250 dead.
On Wednesday a national tribute will be paid to this teacher, the Elysee announced on Saturday. Several associations and unions have already called rallies for Sunday at 15:00 local in Paris and other cities.
Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old History and Geography teacher who was motivated and close to his students, according to those who knew him, was beheaded in the middle of the street, on Friday afternoon, near the school where he worked, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a small town of 35,000 inhabitants located 30 km from Paris.
Immediately after the attack, the police tried to detain a man armed with a knife in the area who threatened them, which caused the officers to open fire and the alleged assailant died.
His identity was confirmed this Saturday. Abdullakh A. was 18 years old, he was born in Russia but was Chechen and had no criminal record, although he had committed a minor offense.
He came to France twelve years ago with his parents, who obtained refugee status ten years ago. The security services had not registered a possible radicalization of the suspect.
The Russian embassy in France claimed the man had no relationship with Russia since 2008.
So far, four relatives of the aggressor (his parents, his grandfather and his minor brother) and six other people have been arrested. Among them, a very active Islamist militant, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, as well as the father of a student at the institute where the victim worked, with whom he had had a discussion after showing the Muhammad cartoons in a class focused on freedom of freedom. expression.
The national antiterrorist prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for “murder linked to a terrorist company” and “terrorist criminal association”.
“They will not pass”: Macron
President Emmanuel Macron immediately went to the scene of the assassination and called on “the whole nation” to rally around the teachers to “protect and defend them.” “They will not pass. The obscurantism and the violence that accompanies it will not win,” said the president.
This Saturday, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, sent a message of solidarity on Twitter to all teachers “in France and in Europe.”
“Without them, there are no citizens, without them there is no democracy,” said the official.
“We must protect freedom of expression,” reacted Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, while the Jordanian government “denounces this terrorist crime and all forms of violence and terrorism.”
Rodrigo Arenas, co-president of the FCPE, the largest French association of parents of pupils, confirmed that he received a report a few days ago from “an extremely angry father” because a cartoon of Muhammad had been shown in class in his daughter’s class.
According to Arenas, to avoid hurting the sensitivity of some, the teacher would have “invited Muslim students to leave the classroom” before showing the image of the prophet crouched, with a star drawn on his buttocks, and the inscription “a star is born” .
“Avenge Muhammad
The police are also investigating a message that could have been posted on Twitter by the attacker, showing a photo of the victim’s head. The author also sends a message to Macron calling him a “leader of the infidels.”
In January 2015, the newsroom of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which had published controversial cartoons of Muhammad, was attacked by two jihadists and 12 people were killed. On November 13 of that same year, Paris was the scene of several simultaneous jihadist attacks that caused 130 deaths and 350 injuries.
“The fundamental values of the Republic are affected: first the freedom of the press with Charlie Hebdo and now the freedom to teach,” said French Prime Minister Jean Castex.
The attack came exactly three weeks after a knife attack by a 25-year-old Pakistani near the former Charlie Hebdo offices, in which two people were injured. The author of that Islamist attack had told investigators that he wanted to avenge the rebroadcasting of the cartoons in September for this publication.
On Friday, Charlie Hebdo expressed on Twitter his “horror and outrage after a practicing professor was killed by a religious fanatic.”
This Saturday morning, several roses were deposited at the entrance of the educational center where the crime was committed.
[ad_2]
