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Police operations are underway against dozens of people who allegedly issued messages of support for the attacker after the beheading of a history professor near Paris, says the French interior minister.
Gerald Darmanin said on French radio Europe 1 that at least 80 cases of hate speech have been reported since the attack on Friday (local time).
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.
Police officers said Paty had discussed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam with her class, prompting threats.
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French President Emmanuel Macron held a defense council on Sunday at the Elysee presidential palace. The government will tighten security at schools when classes resume on November 2 after a two-week vacation, Macron’s office said.
Macron met with Paty’s family on Monday morning, the French presidency said.
Macron will also meet with members of France’s main Muslim organization, the French Muslim Council, or CFCM, later in the day.
Michel Euler / AP
Demonstrations have been called in France in support of freedom of expression and to pay tribute to the French history professor who was beheaded near Paris after discussing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam with his class.
A national tribute will be held for Paty on Wednesday.
The players, coaches and referees of this weekend’s high-level soccer matches will wear a black armband in tribute to Paty. The French league said in a statement that a minute’s silence will be observed before kick-off in all professional matches in Leagues 1 and 2.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered across France on Sunday in support of freedom of expression and in memory of the murdered 47-year-old teacher.
French authorities said they detained 11 people after the murder.
Darmanin said they include a student’s father and an Islamist activist who both “obviously launched a fatwa,” or religious ruling, against the teacher.
Michel Euler / AP
A protester shows on his back a portrait of the murdered teacher Samuel Paty during a demonstration.
A man who said he was the father of a student posted a video on social media claiming that Paty had shown a picture of a naked man and told the students that he was “the prophet of the Muslims.” He called other angry parents to contact him and get the message across.
Darmanin said authorities were also investigating some 50 associations suspected of promoting hate speech. Some will dissolve, he said.
The president of the Conference of Imams in France, Hassen Chalghoumi, said on the French news station BFM TV: “We are wounded, we are condemning this act of barbarism.” “Samuel is a martyr for freedom.”
“Barbarism has no place in schools or in any other part of France,” he said.
Chalghoumi, who is an imam in Drancy, a northeast Paris suburb, said he had received death threats and insults on social media from radical Islamists in recent days.
The judicial authorities opened an investigation for murder with an alleged terrorist motive. At least four of the detainees are relatives of the attacker, who had been granted 10-year residence in France as a refugee in March. He was armed with a knife and an airsoft pistol, which shoots plastic pellets.
The anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said that a text affirming responsibility and a photograph of the victim were found on the attacker’s phone.
