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An eleventh person has been arrested in France while authorities are investigating the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty. The 47-year-old was beheaded on Friday near the school where he taught in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of central Paris.
Police have named the suspect as Abdoulakh A, an 18-year-old Moscow-born man of Chechen origin. No details have been released about the last person detained by French authorities.
Four close relatives of the suspect were arrested shortly after the murder. Six more were arrested on Saturday, including the father of a student at the school and a preacher described by French media as a radical Islamist.
President Emmanuel Macron said that the attack had all the characteristics of an “Islamist terrorist attack” and that the teacher had been killed because he “taught freedom of expression.”
The murder has horrified France. Demonstrations are planned across the country on Sunday to denounce the attack, and a national tribute to Paty will be paid on Wednesday.
“A civilization does not kill an innocent person, barbarism does,” Tareq Oubrou, imam of a mosque in Bordeaux, told France Inter on Saturday.
And Laurent Nuñez, head of France’s anti-terrorist task force, told France Info radio: “A threshold has been crossed,” citing the attack on “the freedom to teach” and “the barbarism of the act.”
What happened on Friday?
Counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard told reporters that the suspect lived in the Norman town of Évreux, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the crime scene.
The man went to school on Friday afternoon and asked the students to point him to the teacher. He had no apparent connection to the teacher or the school.
She then followed Mr. Paty as he walked home from work. The suspect used a knife to attack the teacher on the head and then beheaded him.
Witnesses are said to have heard the attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” or “God is the greatest.”
When the police approached him, he shot them with a compressed air pistol. The officers returned fire and beat him nine times. Nearby was found a sheet 30 cm long (12 inches).
Authorities said the man had appeared in court, but only for minor offenses.
What’s the latest in research?
Ricard said that Paty had been the target of threats since she showed the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a class on freedom of expression, in connection with the Charlie Hebdo case.
The French satirical magazine came under a deadly attack in 2015 after publishing the cartoons. A trial is currently underway for that attack.
As he had done in similar lessons in recent years, Mr. Paty, a history and geography teacher, advised Muslim students to look away if they thought they might be offended.
One of the parents of one of the students reacted angrily and went to the school to complain. He and another man accompanying him, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a preacher and activist, made videos calling Mr. Paty a “voyou” (bully) and demanding his suspension.
The French intelligence services have reportedly known Sefrioui for years. Both he and the father are now in custody.
