[ad_1]
The murder was carried out, according to French police, by an 18-year-old in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on the outskirts of the French capital on Friday night. Anti-terror prosecutor Jean-François Ricard says the 18-year-old approached the students with the teacher and urged them to point him out before the murder.
Immediately after the incident, a major operation was launched and, during an intervention in Éragny municipality, near the crime scene, the designated attacker was shot dead by police. Then he had threatened the police with an object similar to a knife.
In the immediate aftermath of the brutal murder, information came in that the 47-year-old history teacher used cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in his teaching. The lesson was on freedom of expression and was conducted in connection with the high-profile trial against people with alleged links to the terrorist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.
In relation to teaching, the teacher should have said that Muslim students could leave the classroom. The incident is now seen as a possible motive for the murder.
French media also report that the professor has received threats since he showed the drawings.
“Links with terrorist organizations”
Legal sources say on Saturday that nine people have been arrested. Two of them are brothers of the alleged author. Two of his grandparents were also initially brought in for questioning.
Those detained included friends of the alleged killer as well as parents who criticized the master’s presentation of the Muhammad cartoons, police sources told Reuters.
The prosecutor’s antiterrorist unit describes the case as “a murder linked to a terrorist organization.”
At a press conference on Saturday, prosecutor Ricard also said the 18-year-old posted a photo of the victim on social media. The image was accompanied by a message from the 18-year-old in which he claimed to be the perpetrator, writes Reuters.
The alleged perpetrator, whose name appears in French media, is said to have a Chechen background and was born in the Russian capital, Moscow.
President Macron visited the crime scene on Friday night, just hours after the 17-hour rally.
“A citizen has been killed today because he was a teacher and because he taught freedom of expression,” said President Emmanuel Macron when, clearly moved, he visited Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
On Saturday, flowers were placed outside the Collège du Bois d’Aulne school, many of the teacher’s students wanted to give testimony of their work:
“He really wanted to teach us things, sometimes we had debates,” Martial, 16, told the BBC.
Muslim convictions
A student’s father writes on Twitter that his daughter “has collapsed from the violence in the murder; how can I explain the unthinkable to her?”
Prime Minister Jean Castex wrote on social media that “our teachers will continue to awaken the critical thinking of the citizens of the Republic, to keep us free from all forms of totalitarianism.”
Even the leading Muslims in France condemn the attack in the harshest terms.
– In a civilized world, you don’t kill an innocent person. Barbarism kills, says imam Tareq Oubrou in Bordeaux to France Inter.
French President Emmanuel Macron, with several ministers around, at the school where the teacher worked. Image: Abdulmonam Lassa / AP / TT
The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was founded in Paris in 1970. It originates from the satirical magazine Hara-Kiri, which was banned in 1970 after a joke about the death of former President Charles de Gaulle. It was closed in 1981 but re-emerged in 1991.
The magazine is especially known for its provocative cartoons and its secular and anti-religious stance. The targets are often religious leaders and phenomena, as well as politicians and other public figures.
During the 2000s, the magazine became famous for its operation with Islam, among other things, in 2006 controversial cartoons of Muhammad were published. Several Muslim organizations sued Charlie Hebdo for racism and defamation of Islam, but the newspaper was acquitted by the court.
In 2011, the newspaper’s premises were completely destroyed by a fire bomb. On January 7, 2015, armed men entered the newsroom and killed twelve people.
Source: Nationalencyklopedin
[ad_2]
