[ad_1]
PARIS – A man beheaded a high school teacher in a suburb of the French capital on Friday afternoon, a murder that authorities were investigating as a possible terrorist attack.
Police shot and killed the alleged assailant after he attacked the teacher with a knife in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a western suburb of Paris. The attack occurred near the school where the teacher worked, police said.
Authorities detained four people who are known to the alleged attacker, a judicial official said.
Officials did not reveal the identity of the suspect. They said the teacher was attacked for the content of one of his lessons. On a visit to the scene of the attack, President Emmanuel Macron said that the teacher was the victim of an Islamist terrorist act.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Friday’s attack as an Islamist terrorist act.
Photo:
pool / Reuters
“One of our fellow citizens was killed today because he was teaching. Because I was teaching the students freedom of expression, the freedom to believe and not believe, ”Macron said.
The assault comes as France is plagued with tensions stemming from the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo that massacred the newsroom of the satirical publication and marked the national psyche of France. That attack sparked great solidarity around the world when Charlie Hebdo became a symbol of the tensions between free speech and Islamic teachings that prohibit depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. In the following years, France suffered a series of attacks that killed hundreds.
Last month, France opened a trial of suspected accomplices in the attack on Charlie Hebdo and a deadly assault days later at a kosher grocery store. Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons and described them as evidence at trial.
The scene of Friday’s attack in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
Photo:
charles platiau / Reuters
Weeks later, a man attacked two people with a butcher knife in front of Charlie Hebdo’s old office, seriously injuring them. The suspect, a Pakistani immigrant, later told police that he was avenging Prophet Muhammad after the magazine republished the cartoons, according to France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor.
The Macron government has recently moved to ban what it called “Islamic separatism” in communities where it said religious laws take precedence over civil laws. Macron said the law, if passed, would empower authorities to close associations and schools that it said indoctrinate children and monitor foreign investment in religious organizations in France.
By targeting a teacher, Friday’s attack is likely to amplify calls for a crackdown on religious extremism.
“It is the Republic that has been attacked with this ignoble murder of one of its servants, a teacher,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer wrote on Twitter..
“Unity and determination are the only way to respond to the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism.”
Write to Matthew Dalton at [email protected] and Sam Schechner at [email protected]
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
