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By Sybille de La Hamaide and Thierry Chiarello
PARIS / CONFLANS-SAINTE-HONORINE, France (Reuters) – The teenager who beheaded a teacher outside the school in a Paris suburb where he taught approached students on the street and asked them to point to his victim, the prosecutor anti-terrorist Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday.
The 18-year-old attacker, who was born in Russia, was shot dead by police minutes after he murdered 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty in broad daylight in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday.
A photograph of the teacher’s body, accompanied by a message of responsibility posted on Twitter, was discovered on the attacker’s phone, found near his body. Ricard said the Twitter account belonged to the attacker.
The post was quickly removed by Twitter, which said it had suspended the account because it violated company policy.
Ricard quoted the message as saying: “In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most merciful … to (President Emmanuel) Macron, leader of the infidels, I have executed one of your hounds of hell who dared to despise (Prophet) Muhammad “.
Earlier this month, Paty had shown her students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression, which angered several Muslim parents. Muslims believe that any representation of the Prophet is blasphemous.
The attacker, of Chechen origin, had been living in the city of Evreux, northwest of Paris, and was previously unknown to intelligence services, Ricard said at a news conference.
The murder shocked the country and echoed an attack five years ago at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Prime Minister Jean Castex said it had the characteristics of Islamist terrorism.
“I want to share with you my utter indignation. Secularism, the backbone of the French Republic, was the target of this vile act,” said Castex.
Trade unions, anti-racist groups and Charlie Hebdo are organizing a meeting in central Paris on Sunday to commemorate the murdered teacher.
A national tribute will be organized for Wednesday, Macron’s office said.
‘BETWEEN HAMMER AND YCO’
Four close relatives of the attacker were arrested shortly after the attack. Five more were detained overnight, including the father of a student from Paty’s school, College du Bois d’Aulne, and an acquaintance of the student’s father known to intelligence services, the anti-terror prosecutor said.
A 10th person was taken into custody in connection with the attack later Saturday, BFM TV said, citing judicial sources.
In the days after the lesson on freedom of expression, the student’s father recorded several videos in which he called the teacher a bully and called for his dismissal. In one, he urged others to “join forces and say ‘stop, don’t touch our children.’
The videos were shared on social media.
The stepsister of the student’s father had joined the Islamic State in Syria in 2014, the prosecutor said. It was not immediately clear whether the teenage attacker knew the student’s father or the father’s acquaintance.
The parents of the students placed flowers at the door of the school. Some said their children were distraught.
“(My daughter) is in pieces, terrified by the violence of such an act. How am I going to explain the unthinkable to her?” a father wrote on Twitter.
In a torrent of pain, the hashtag #JeSuisSamuel (I am Samuel) was a trend on social networks, as the call #JeSuisCharlie to solidarity after the attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
Before that attack, Charlie Hebdo had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, unleashing divisions that still shadow French society.
Muslim leaders condemned Friday’s murder, which many public figures perceived as an attack on the essence of the French state and its values of secularism, freedom of worship and freedom of expression.
The deadly attacks by Islamist militants or their sympathizers were devastating for France’s Muslim community, said Tareq Oubrou, the imam of a Bordeaux mosque.
“We are between the hammer and the anvil,” he told France Inter radio. “It attacks the Republic, society, peace and the very essence of religion, which is about union.”
(Report by Sybille de La Hamaide, Tangi Salaun, Caroline Pailliez and Geert de Clercq; written by Richard Lough; edited by Kirsten Donovan, Frances Kerry and Pravin Char)
