French authorities said Tuesday they would close a mosque in Paris in a crackdown on radical Islam that has led to more than a dozen arrests following the beheading of a teacher who had shown his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The mosque in a densely populated suburb northeast of Paris had posted a video on its Facebook page days before Friday’s gruesome murder, criticizing teacher Samuel Paty’s choice of material for a class discussion on freedom of expression, said one source close to the investigation.
The Interior Ministry said the mosque in Pantin, which has about 1,500 worshipers, will be closed Wednesday night for six months.
The Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, has promised that “there will not be a minute of respite for the enemies of the Republic.”
The order came after police on Monday launched a series of raids on Islamist networks, mainly in the Paris region.
Paty, 47, was attacked while returning home from the high school where she taught in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the capital.
A photo of the teacher and a message confessing to his murder were found on the mobile phone of his killer, 18-year-old Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov, who also posted images of the beheaded body on Twitter.
Anzorov was shot and killed by the police.
Online campaign
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said Tuesday that Paty would be posthumously awarded France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honor, for having been “martyred” due to his profession.
The murder was preceded by a fierce online campaign against Paty and the school, led by the father of a schoolgirl who accused the teacher of spreading “pornography” for showing a cartoon of the naked prophet.
The school said that Paty had given Muslim students the option to leave the classroom.
The father who posted the video shared by the Pantin Mosque is among 15 people arrested after the murder, along with a known Islamist radical and four members of Anzorov’s family.
Darmanin accused the father and the radical of having issued a “fatwa” against the teacher.
On Tuesday, the head of the Pantin mosque, M’hammed Henniche, said he shared the video not to “validate” the complaint about the cartoons, but out of fear that Muslim children would be singled out in class.
Four students suspected of accepting payment for pointing out Paty about her killer were also arrested Monday.
‘Performed by thugs’
Interior Minister Marlene Schiappa will meet with French social media bosses on Tuesday to discuss how to strengthen the “fight against cyber-Islamism.”
Paty’s murder has drawn parallels to the 2015 massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where 12 people, including cartoonists, were shot dead for publishing cartoons of Muhammad.
Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations across the country on Sunday to honor Paty and defend freedom of expression, while Muslim leaders gathered at her school on Monday to offer their condolences and distance their religion from atrocity.
French President Emmanuel Macron threatened that “fear is about to change sides” in the new anti-Islamist campaign.
Paty’s beheading was the second knife attack since a trial began last month for the Charlie Hebdo murders.
In the September attack, two people were injured in front of the former offices of the publication.
A silent march is scheduled for Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Tuesday evening in tribute to Paty, while parliament will observe a minute of silence in the afternoon.
Macron will attend an official tribute with Paty’s family on Wednesday at the Sorbonne University.
Blanquer added that schools across the country will observe a minute of silence for Paty when students return from fall break, and a special lesson on recent events will be taught in all classes.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti denied Tuesday that there had been any failure by the intelligence services.
“This is an insidious war,” he told France Inter. “There is organized terrorism that is monitored by our services, and then there is an 18-year-old who was not on the intelligence services radar and who committed this abominable act in the name of a wrong religion.”
Meanwhile, prosecutors in Paris said they had opened an investigation into a foreign-hosted French neo-Nazi website that reposted the photo of Paty’s beheaded corpse posted on Twitter by the killer.
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