[ad_1]
The investigation into the murder of a French teacher for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class headed to Syria on Thursday, where the killer was reportedly in contact with a Russian-speaking fighter there.
Seven people, including two teenagers who helped the killer identify his victim, have been charged with being accomplices in a “terrorist murder” after 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov from Chechen beheaded Samuel Paty outside Paris on Friday.
Counterterrorism investigators established that Anzorov, who moved to France with his family from the Russian republic as a child, had been in contact with a fighter in Syria, a source close to the case said.
The identity of the Russian-speaking fighter was not yet known, the source added.
France paid tribute to Paty on Wednesday and President Emmanuel Macron said the history and geography professor had been assassinated by “cowards” for representing the secular democratic values of the French Republic.
“Islamists want to take over our future,” Macron said. “They will never have it.”
Tracked to Idlib
Le Parisien newspaper reported on Thursday that Anzorov’s alleged contact had been traced via an IP address dating back to Idlib, a rebel location in northwestern Syria.
Idlib is controlled by the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, but it has also become the haven of various dissident groups.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported the presence of thousands of foreign nationals, including French, British and Chechen fighters in the region.
“The Chechens in Idlib have their own independent factions, but they have allied themselves with Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham,” said the director of the Syrian Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman.
In an audio message in Russian immediately after Paty’s murder, Anzorov said that he “avenged the prophet” whom the teacher had shown “in an insulting way.”
In the recording, which contains various references to the Quran and the armed group ISIL (ISIS), he also said: “Brothers, pray that Allah will accept me as a martyr.”
The message was posted on social media in a video, accompanied by two tweets, one showing the severed head of the victim and another in which Anzorov confessed to the murder.
Moments later, the police shot him dead.
‘Killed for his teachings’
Tensions between the state and Muslims in France, Europe’s largest Muslim minority, have deepened. They were already on a downward trend after Macron launched a plan on Oct. 2 against what he called “Islamist separatism” and said Islam was “in crisis” around the world.
Muslims fear that Paty’s death is already being used as a weapon to promote a government policy that they worry that it will confuse Islam with “terrorism.”
Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on freedom of expression.
Muslims believe that any representation of the prophet is blasphemous, as he is deeply revered and any type of visual image is prohibited. The cartoons were perceived to link him to terrorism.
Paty, 47, became the target of an online hate campaign for her choice of lesson material – the same images that triggered a bloody assault by gunmen at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.
Police have carried out dozens of raids since the crime, while the government ordered the closure of a mosque on the outskirts of Paris for six months and dissolved the Sheikh Yassin Collective, a group they said supported Hamas.
Paty’s beheading was the second knife attack in the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s revenge since a trial of suspected accomplices in the Charlie Hebdo attack began last month.
The murder has sparked a torrent of emotion in France, with tens of thousands of people taking part in demonstrations across the country in defense of freedom of expression and the right to make fun of religion.
“We will not give up on cartoons,” Macron promised at Wednesday’s ceremony at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
An opinion poll conducted Thursday by the Ifop institute found that nearly 80 percent of respondents said it was appropriate for teachers to use cartoons mocking religion in the classroom.
The crackdown has echoes of France’s response to the deadly November 2015 attacks in Paris by ISIL. Human rights groups criticized those measures, which saw mass arrests and raids under the state of emergency, saying they yielded little results and left Muslims feeling like second-class citizens.
The president of the Conference of Imams in France on Thursday condemned last week’s beheading. “My heart, soul and religion ache to see barbarians, criminals killing someone, a teacher, just for a cartoon. It’s a shame, ”Hassen Chalghoumi said.
[ad_2]
