Suspect in the beheading of a teacher in France was a Chechen teenager

A suspect shot to death by police after the beheading of a history teacher near Paris was an 18-year-old Chechen refugee unknown to intelligence services who posted a grisly claim of responsibility on social media minutes after the attack, they said. authorities on Saturday.

France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office said authorities investigating Samuel Paty’s murder in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday arrested nine suspects, including the teenager’s grandfather, parents and 17-year-old brother.

Paty had discussed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam with her class, prompting threats, police officers said. Islam prohibits images of the prophet, stating that they lead to idolatry. The officials could not be named because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigations.

French counter-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said a murder investigation had been opened on an alleged terrorist motive.

Ricard told reporters that the Moscow-born suspect, who had been granted a 10-year residence in France as a refugee in March, was armed with a knife and an airsoft pistol, which fires plastic pellets.

His half sister joined the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014, Ricard said. He did not give his name and it is unclear where he is now.

The prosecutor said that a text affirming responsibility and a photograph of the victim were found on the suspect’s phone. He also confirmed that a Twitter account by the name of Abdoulakh A belonged to the suspect. He posted a photo of the decapitated head minutes after the attack along with the message “I have executed one of the hellhounds who dared to bring down Muhammad.”

Ricard said the suspect had been seen at the school asking students about the teacher and the principal had received several threatening phone calls.

Mourners marched near the school in solidarity on Saturday, holding signs that read “I am a teacher.” “We will recover together, thanks to our spirit of solidarity,” said Laurent Brosse, Mayor of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

A police officer said the suspect was shot and killed about 600 meters (yards) from where Paty died. Police opened fire after he did not respond to orders to lower his weapons and acted threateningly. The official could not be identified due to ongoing investigations.

French President Emmanuel Macron went to the school Friday night to denounce what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack.” He urged the nation to stand united against extremism.

“One of our compatriots was killed today because he taught … freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not to believe,” Macron said.

The Presidential Elysee Palace announced that there will be a national ceremony at a future date in honor of Paty.

In a video recently posted on Twitter, a man who described himself as the father of a student claimed that Paty had shown a picture of a naked man and told students that he was “the prophet of the Muslims.

Before showing the pictures, the teacher asked the Muslim children to raise their hands and leave the room because he planned to show something shocking, the man said. “What was the message you wanted to send to these children? What is this hatred?” asked the man. The AP has not been able to independently confirm these claims.

Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus. Two wars in the 1990s triggered a wave of emigration, with many Chechens heading to Western Europe. France has offered asylum to many Chechens since the Russian military waged war against Islamist separatists in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Chechnya’s regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has used massive federal subsidies to rebuild the province and quelled any resistance with his feared security forces, condemned the killing of the teacher but also warned against insulting the sentiments of Muslims.

“We condemn this act of terror and offer our condolences to the relatives of the man who was killed,” Kadyrov said on his blog. “While I speak out categorically against any manifestation of terrorism, I also urge not to provoke believers, not to offend their religious feelings.”

He continued to criticize French society for what he described as “provocative” displays of disrespect for Islamic values. “When France has a proper state institution for inter-ethnic and interreligious relations, then the country will have a healthy society.”
Kadyrov noted that the Chechen suspect only visited the region once when he was 2 years old.

This is the second time in three weeks that terror has attacked France linked to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Last month, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after attacking two people with a butcher knife in front of the former Charlie Hebdo offices.

The weekly was the target of a deadly attack in the newsroom in 2015, and this month it re-published cartoons of the prophet to underscore the right to freedom of information when a trial linked to that attack was opened.

Friday’s terror attack came as the Macron government is working on a bill to tackle Islamic radicals, who, according to authorities, are creating a parallel society outside the values ​​of the French Republic.

– AP