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A French history and geography teacher was assaulted and beheaded Friday afternoon near the school where he taught in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 50 kilometers northwest of Paris.
The 47-year-old teacher, identified as Samuel P, had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class several days ago.
Crime squad police responded to a call about a suspicious individual walking through the school. They saw the suspect, who was carrying a kitchen knife, before discovering the body.
Police chased the suspect for several hundred meters. They said he was aggressive and refused to drop his knife. He was shot and killed on a quiet residential street in the neighboring town of Eragny.
The murderer published an image of the victim’s head with the caption “For Macron, the leader of the infidels. I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to insult Mohamed ”on Twitter. The account was closed and authorities asked people not to relay the photo.
The assailant was reportedly a Moscow-born Chechen.
President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex went to the scene of the crime.
“A citizen has been murdered today because he was a teacher and because he taught freedom of expression,” Macron said.
“The whole country supports its teachers. Terrorists will not divide France, obscurantism will not win, ”he said.
Judgment
The murder occurred amid the trial of 14 people for aiding and inciting the murder of 17 people in Paris in January 2015. That three-day wave of violence began in the office of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper that had printed cartoons of Muhammad. , first published in Denmark by the Jyllandsposten newspaper.
It was these cartoons that the murdered teacher showed in a class on freedom of expression. He reportedly asked the Muslim students to identify themselves and leave the classroom to avoid shocking them. Some parents later complained to the school.
The attack took place shortly after five in the afternoon near the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, where the teacher worked. The victim was reportedly serious and appreciated by the students. There are 750 students enrolled in the school, which until now was considered quiet.
The level of terrorist threat has been high since the trial began on September 2. On September 25, a young Pakistani seriously injured two people with a butcher knife outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices. He said he was motivated by the magazine’s decision to republish the Muhammad cartoons on September 1.
Macron delivered a speech condemning radical Islam on October 2. He has repeatedly said that the right to blasphemy must be guaranteed. At least 258 people have been killed by Islamic extremists in France since 2015. – Additional reports Reuters
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