Islamist beheads teacher in Paris
Print Edition
For the second time in three weeks, terror struck France, this time with the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in a street in a Paris suburb. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack” and urged the nation to stand united against extremism. The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said.
At 5:11pm on Friday, police officers in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine northwest of Paris were notified by colleagues in the nearby town of Eragny that the body of a decapitated man had been discovered on a road, according to anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard.
When police arrived at the scene, a man fired five shots from a handgun in their direction and tried to stab the officers as they closed in, Ricard said.
The man was shot by police nine times and later died of his injuries. He was armed with a knife and an air gun, and a second bloody 35-centimeter knife was discovered near the victim’s body.
Sources close to the investigation have said that the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) before the police opened fire.
The teacher was Samuel Paty, 47, who taught history and geography in a quiet suburban district of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and was on his way home from school when he was attacked.
At the beginning of October, he taught a class on freedom of expression for which he showed pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Suspected perpetrator Abdullakh Anzorov was an 18-year-old born in Moscow but originally from Russia’s southern region of Chechnya.
He had been granted refugee status in France and received a 10-year residency permit earlier this year, Ricard said.
He was not known to the intelligence services and had no convictions but had been in trouble for inflicting damage on public property and violence while still a minor, he said.
Anzorov lived in the Normandy town of Evreux, and his neighbors described him as “discreet” and “immersed in religion” for the past three years.
A message claiming the attack with a gruesome accompanying photo was published on a Twitter account confirmed to have belonged to Anzorov, in which he described Macron as “the leader of the infidels” and said he wanted revenge on those “who dared to belittle Mohammed,” said Ricard.
According to Ricard, a father of one of the pupils at the school had embarked on a campaign to have the teacher dismissed when he found out about the cartoons.
He spoke to the head of the school and published calls on social media attacking the teacher and insisting it is time to “say stop” to such behavior.
According to Ricard, initial evidence suggests the perpetrator loitered outside the school on Friday afternoon and asked pupils where he could find Paty.
There is so far no suggestion of any link between the perpetrator and the school.
A total of 11 people have been detained for questioning, including the father who complained about the teacher’s class.
Ricard said the half-sister of the father had joined Islamic State in Syria in 2014 and is already the subject of an arrest warrant.
Another man who took part in videos posted by the father calling for the dismissal of the teacher has also been detained, along with his wife. The man had accompanied the father to the school to complain about the teacher.
Four of the suspect’s relatives, his younger brother, grandfather and parents, were detained for questioning. Four people who were in contact with the attacker are also in custody.
The French government has portrayed the killing as an attack on the heart of French values.
On Saturday, hundreds of people, including pupils, parents, teachers and local residents came to express their grief and solidarity in front of the school.
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