A beheaded history teacher in a Paris suburb on Friday had been threatened online for showing students cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in class, France’s counterterrorism prosecutor said on Saturday.
The father of a schoolgirl had requested the dismissal of teacher Samuel Paty, 47, and launched an online call for “mobilization” against him after the lesson on freedom of expression, Jean-Francois Ricard told a conference of televised press.
Paty was beheaded in front of his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of the capital, and the murderer was fatally wounded by the police.
The Russian embassy in Paris said the suspect was Abdullakh Anzorov, whose family had arrived in France when he was six years old and had applied for asylum.
The 18-year-old had received a residence permit this year, according to the embassy, and had no ties to Russia.
The schoolgirl’s father and a known Islamist militant are among the 10 people arrested. Ricard said the school received threats after class in early October, which featured the controversial cartoons, one of the naked prophet, with the girl’s father accusing Paty of spreading “pornography.”
The girl and her father filed a criminal complaint against the teacher, who in turn filed a defamation complaint, Ricard said.
The aggrieved father called Paty and gave the school’s address in a social media post a few days before the beheading that President Emmanuel Macron has called an Islamist terror attack.
And earlier this week, he posted a video claiming that Islam and the prophet had been “insulted” at school.
‘Immersed in religion’
Ricard did not say if the attacker had any ties to the school, students or parents, or if he had acted independently in response to the online campaign.
Witnesses said they saw him at school Friday afternoon asking students where he could find Paty.
A photograph of Paty and a message in which she confessed to her murder were found on the attacker’s mobile phone.
The prosecutor said that the attacker was armed with a knife, a compressed air pistol and five cartridges. He had shot the police and tried to stab them when they approached him. In turn, they shot him nine times, Ricard said.
Locals in the Norman town of Evreux, where the attacker lived in the Madeleine district, described him as low-key.
One who had gone to school with him said that he had become remarkably religious in recent years.
“He used to get into fights but for the last two or three years he had calmed down” and had been “steeped in religion,” he said.
“He said his prayers, he did not come out, he spoke politely,” he added.
Friday’s attack was the second such incident since a trial began last month for the January 2015 massacre at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the prophet that sparked a wave of anger throughout. the Islamic world.
The magazine republished the cartoons in the run-up to the trial, and last month a young Pakistani wounded two people with a butcher knife outside Charlie Hebdo’s former Paris offices.
Ricard said that Paty’s murder illustrates “the very high-level terrorist threat” that France still faces. Those arrested included four close relatives of the suspect, the prosecutor said.
The police also arrested a friend of the schoolgirl’s father who had accompanied him to see the principal to demand the dismissal of Paty.
The friend, a known Islamist militant, was already on the radar of the French intelligence services.
There is an arrest warrant for the father’s stepsister, who has joined the Islamic State group fighters in Syria.
Macron’s threat
The attacker himself was not known to French intelligence services, the prosecutor said.
A “murder linked to a terrorist organization” is under investigation.
The investigation will also analyze a tweet from an account opened by the attacker, and since it was closed, that showed a picture of Paty’s head and described Macron as “the leader of the infidels.”
Macron’s office said a national tribute for Paty would be held on Wednesday.
On Saturday, hundreds of students, teachers and parents came to Paty’s school to deposit white roses.
Some carried banners that read: “I am a teacher” and “I am Samuel”, echoing the cry of “I am Charlie” that traveled the world after the Charlie Hebdo murders in 2015.
‘Horror and revolt’
Martial, a 16-year-old student, said that Paty had loved her job: “She really wanted to teach us things.”
According to parents and teachers, Paty gave Muslim children the option of leaving the classroom before he showed the cartoons, saying she did not want to hurt their feelings.
Virginie, 15, said Paty showed the cartoons every year as part of a discussion about freedom after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
.
