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PARIS: Demonstrations were expected in dozens of French cities on Sunday (October 18) in a show of solidarity and defiance following the beheading of a teacher outside his school for showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The beheading of history professor Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb on Friday has sparked outrage in France and memories of a wave of violence in 2015 sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
“It is absolutely important to show our mobilization and our solidarity, our national cohesion,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told France 2, asking “everyone to support the teachers.”
A rally was scheduled at the Place de la Republique in Paris, a traditional protest venue where around 1.5 million people demonstrated in 2015 following a deadly attack on Charle Hebdo’s office by gunmen.
Rallies were also expected in Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux.
Paty had been the target of threats online for showing the cartoons, and the father of a schoolgirl launched an online call for “mobilization” against him, said French anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard.
The 18-year-old suspect, named Abdullakh A, was shot and killed by police shortly after the attack.
The Russian embassy in Paris said on Saturday that the suspect’s family had arrived in France from Chechnya when he was six years old and had applied for asylum.
The schoolgirl’s father and a known militant are among the 10 people arrested.
Ricard said the school received threats after class in early October, which featured the controversial cartoons, one of the naked prophet, with the girl’s father accusing Paty of spreading “pornography.”
The aggrieved father called Paty and gave the school’s address in a social media post a few days before the beheading, which President Emmanuel Macron has called an “Islamist terrorist attack.”
“IMMERSED IN RELIGION”
Ricard did not say if the attacker had any ties to the school, students or parents, or if he had acted independently in response to the online campaign.
Witnesses said they saw him at school Friday afternoon asking students where he could find Paty.
A photograph of Paty and a message in which she confessed to her murder were found on the attacker’s mobile phone.
The prosecutor said that the attacker was armed with a knife, a compressed air pistol and five cartridges. He had shot the police and tried to stab them when they approached him.
In turn, they shot him nine times, Ricard said.
Locals in the Norman town of Evreux, where the attacker lived in the Madeleine district, described him as low-key.
One who had gone to school with him said that he had become remarkably religious in recent years.
“He used to get into fights but for the last two or three years he had calmed down” and had been “steeped in religion,” he said.
Friday’s attack was the second such incident since a trial began last month for the January 2015 massacre at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the prophet that sparked a wave of anger throughout. the Islamic world.
The magazine republished the cartoons in the run-up to the trial, and last month a young Pakistani wounded two people with a butcher knife outside Charlie Hebdo’s former Paris offices.
Ricard said that Paty’s murder illustrates “the very high-level terrorist threat” that France still faces.
MACRON THREAT
The attacker himself was not known to French intelligence services, the prosecutor said.
A “murder linked to a terrorist organization” is under investigation.
The investigation will also analyze a tweet from an account opened by the attacker, and since it was closed, that showed a picture of Paty’s head and described Macron as “the leader of the infidels.”
Macron’s office said a national tribute for Paty would be held on Wednesday.
On Saturday, hundreds of students, teachers and parents came to Paty’s school to deposit white roses.
Some carried banners that read: “I am a teacher” and “I am Samuel”, echoing the cry of “I am Charlie” that traveled the world after the Charlie Hebdo murders in 2015.
Martial, a 16-year-old student, said that Paty had loved her job: “She really wanted to teach us things.”
According to parents and teachers, Paty gave Muslim children the option of leaving the classroom before he showed the cartoons, saying she did not want to hurt their feelings.
Virginie, 15, said Paty showed the cartoons every year as part of a discussion about freedom after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
