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PARIS: The French police have carried out a series of raids against extremist networks, three days after the beheading of a history teacher who had shown his students a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin promised there would be “not a minute’s respite for the enemies of the Republic,” after tens of thousands took part in demonstrations across the country on Sunday (October 18) to honor the teacher. Samuel Paty and defend freedom of expression.
A silent rally was planned for Tuesday evening, as well as a ceremony Wednesday at the Sorbonne attended by President Emmanuel Macron.
LEE: The French leader condemns the ‘Islamist terrorist attack’ against the teacher who was beheaded
Fifteen people have been arrested so far, including four students who may have helped the killer, an 18-year-old Chechen man who was killed by the police, identify the teacher in exchange for payment.
Law enforcement carried out 40 raids on Monday, mostly around Paris, with many more planned.
“We want to harass and destabilize this movement in a very determined way,” a ministry source said.
Darmanin said the government would also tighten its grip on institutions and charities with alleged links to extremist networks.
Samuel Paty was beheaded in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, by an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee, who was later shot and killed by police.
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Paty, 47, was attacked as she was returning home from the secondary school where she taught in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 40 kilometers northwest of Paris.
One witness, who only gave his first name Stephane to the LCI news channel, said he was nearby when the “barbarian” attack occurred, a refugee with his children.
“We did not know what was going on. There was only one beheaded man in front of our house,” he said, adding that he later saw the assailant take pictures.
A photo of the teacher and a message confessing his murder were found on the mobile phone of his killer, Abdullakh Anzorov, who came to France with his family from the predominantly Muslim Russian region of Chechnya more than a decade ago.
Four members of the murderer’s family were among those arrested.
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The 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.
Paty had shown her class one of the controversial images after giving Muslim children the option to leave the classroom.
However, the lesson caused a stir.
The father of one of Paty’s students launched an online campaign against the teacher and has now been arrested along with a known Islamist radical.
Darmanin accused the couple of issuing a “fatwa” against the teacher.
People gather at the Place de la Republique in Paris, to pay tribute to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France, on October 18, 2020 (Photo : REUTERS). / Charles Platiau)
Officials named two groups they would target for the shutdown: the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, which says it monitors attacks on Muslims, and BarakaCity, which describes itself as a humanitarian organization.
In a post on social media, BarakaCity accused Darmanin of “going crazy” and said he was taking advantage of a tragedy.
Darmanin also ordered the closure of a Paris mosque, accusing its imam of encouraging intimidation of the teacher and of making the school’s address known.
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.
“I CANNOT GIVE IN TO FEAR”
French teachers have long complained about tensions around religion and identity spilling over into the classroom.
An education expert warned Monday that the killing could deter teachers from tackling sensitive topics in the future.
“There is a lot of self-censorship,” said Jean-Pierre Obin, a former inspector of the French education system. “We must fear that now there is more.”
But Jonathan Renoir, a 26-year-old history teacher at a high school in Cergy, near Paris, said: “We cannot give in to fear, we must keep talking about controversial things in class.”
On Monday, emotions continued to rise outside Paty’s school, where Muslim leaders gathered to offer their condolences and distance their religion from atrocity.
“It is very important to come here to show our pain, to show that what happened here is not Islam. It was done by thugs who have nothing to do with Islam,” said Kemadou Gassama, an imam in Paris.
In Paris, government ministers joined the city’s mayor for the demonstration. (Photo: AFP / Bertrand Guay)
And the political temperature was rising as well, with Macron promising that “fear is about to change sides.”
The far-right leader of the National Rally Marine Le Pen, who will likely face Macron in the 2022 presidential election, called for “wartime legislation” and an immediate moratorium on immigration.
Paty’s beheading was the second knife attack since a trial began last month for the Charlie Hebdo murders. In the other attack, two people were injured in front of the former offices of the publication.
