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PARIS (AFP) – A schoolgirl who unleashed a deadly online hate campaign against a French teacher after he showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to students admitted to having lied and spreading false claims about him, her lawyer said on Monday. March).
The girl had claimed that the teacher, Mr. Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by an Islamic extremist on the street in October last year, had asked Muslims to leave the class when he showed the cartoons.
Later, the girl’s father filed a legal complaint and amplified the allegations online, leading an 18-year-old Chechen refugee to locate Mr. Paty in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, southwest of Paris.
“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be a spokesperson,” her lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, said on Monday, confirming a Parisien newspaper report.
Paty showed the cartoons, which were first published in Charlie Hebdo magazine and considered offensive by many Muslims, during a civics class in which students debated free speech and blasphemy.
The schoolgirl, who had already been threatened with expulsion for disciplinary problems, was not in class.
She has since been charged with defamation, while her father and another man, an Islamist preacher and activist, have been charged with “complicity in the murder” for the murder.
Paty’s killer was shot to death by police shortly after the attack.
The Parisien newspaper reported on Monday that his last contact was with someone in Syria who is a member of a jihadist group.
A new security bill currently being debated in the French Parliament would criminalize publishing information about a public servant online, knowing that doing so could cause harm.
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