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A history professor was beheaded in a Paris suburb on Friday in a knife attack that was treated by police as an act of Islamist terror.
The teacher had recently shown satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his high school class in a debate on freedom of expression at a school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of the capital, according to police sources cited by French media.
Police said the alleged assailant, who was still carrying his weapon, was shot dead on a nearby street. It was reported that he was an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin who had shouted “Allahu akbar!” (God is great) before he died.
President Emmanuel Macron, who has vowed to crack down on Islamist extremism and “separatism” in the French suburbs, traveled to the site of the attack on Friday night.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of Education, condemned what he called the “shameful” murder of a teacher. “It is the republic that has been attacked,” he said. “Our unity and steadfastness are the only answers to the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism. We will face it. “French politicians from the left and right condemned the” barbarism “of the assassination.
The murder on Friday, around 5 p.m., appeared to be related to the ongoing trial in Paris of 14 people accused of participating in a terrorist attack at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.
They are accused of aiding two extremists who killed 12 people when they stormed the newsroom to take revenge on the cartoons he had published about Mohammed. It was the beginning of a bleak year for terrorism in France in which 149 people were killed in shootings and suicide bombings.
After the start of the trial last month, two employees of a news agency were injured in an attack with a butcher knife outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo. Zaher Hassan Mahmoud, a Pakistani man, was charged with attempted terrorist murder.
The far-right anti-immigrant Rassemblement National party immediately condemned the latest attack and said force should be used to crush Islamists.
“A teacher beheaded for showing the cartoons of #CharlieHebdo”, leader of the Marine Le Pen party said on Twitter. “We have reached this unbearable level of barbarism. Islamism is bringing us war: we must expel it from our country by force ”.
In a speech earlier this month in Yvelines, the department where Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is located, Macron announced plans to curb the spread of radical Islam with new strict controls on religious, cultural and sports associations and a ban on education. In the home.
He said the security services had thwarted 32 terrorist attacks since the start of his presidency three years ago. Macron also noted that in Yvelines alone, 172 people were being monitored on suspicion of violent radicalization, while 70 young people had left the department for Syria as jihadists.
The Macron government is finalizing a bill designed to reimpose French secular Republican values in districts densely populated by Arab immigrants and African Muslims considered vulnerable to the influence of Islamists.
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