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Today, the French gather for a public memorial service at the Place de la République in Paris to commemorate 47-year-old high school teacher Samuel Paty.
Paty was brutally beheaded as she returned home from work on Friday, in what is believed to be a militant Islamist attack.
The teacher received a series of threats before the murder, after he showed his students a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad for an hour on freedom of expression.
Asylum seeker at age six
The perpetrator, an 18-year-old of Russian and Chechen descent, was identified on Saturday by the Russian embassy in Paris as Abdullakh Anzorov.
Anzorov and his family came to France as asylum seekers when he was six years old. As recently as this year, he received a residence permit in the country.
Until his assassination, he lived in the city of Evreux in Normandy, west of Paris.
Locals describe him as a person who did not make much of himself, according to the AFP news agency.
A former teammate says Anzorov had often ended up in fights, but had calmed down a lot in the last two or three years.
– He immersed himself in religion. He participated in the prayer, most stayed home and spoke politely, the man told AFP.
Shot and killed
So far, there is no indication that Anzorov had any connection to the school where Paty worked.
An annoying parent of one of the students had called him Paty before the murder and gave him the address of the school. Earlier this week, he posted a video claiming that the school had insulted Islam and the Prophet.
The father is among 11 detained so far after the beheading.
The French counter-terrorism police will not comment on whether Anzorov acted as a result or acted on his own.
Witnesses have said that in the hours leading up to the murder, Anzorov was observed at the school asking students to point out Samuel Paty.
Later that afternoon, he attacked the teacher from a few hundred meters away and killed him.
The 18-year-old was armed with a long knife, a soft gun, and five containers. He shot the police and tried to stab them.
The police shot him nine times and later died from his injuries.
More selections
French intelligence did not have Anzorov in the binoculars before, but is now investigating whether he may be linked to a terrorist organization.
His half sister, on the other hand, joined the Islamic State in Syria in 2014, according to police.
One of the detainees is Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui.
Among other things, he is said to have participated in a call for Samuel Paty to be removed from his teaching position, writes Le Figaro.
In addition to Paris, there will be celebrations today in various other places in the country. On social media, the French condemn the murder with the hashtag #JeSuisEnseignant (I am a teacher).
Mayors across the country are urged to fly at half mast from public buildings
