Terror beheading: two children among seven facing charges over killing of teacher
TWO schoolchildren are among seven people facing possible charges over the beheading of a teacher who showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said yesterday
It came hours before the nation paid tribute to Samuel Paty – who was decapitated outside his school near Paris on Friday – in a ceremony at the Sorbonne University. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, posthumously awarded him the Legion d’honneur.
Mr Macron told the ceremony, attended by the family of Mr Paty, that he was killed “because he incarnated the Republic” and “because Islamists want our future. They will never have it.”
The killing has prompted a crackdown on Islamist militants. Jean-Francois Ricard, the prosecutor, said the suspects, including two pupils aged 14 and 15, could be charged as accomplices in a terrorist murder or for association with terrorists.
Students
He said Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, had offered the students up to €350 to point out Mr Paty before killing him.
The prosecutor said the killer knew the teacher’s name, and the school’s location from a social media campaign against Mr Paty, but had no way of identifying him at the school gates. “This identification was only possible with the help of the pupils,” he added.
Three friends of Anzorov, who was shot dead by police, also face potential charges. One, aged 19, “is suspected of having accompanied him the day before the crime to buy a knife”, Mr Ricard said. Another, aged 18, has admitted driving him to the school, Mr Ricard said. The third, also 18, “manifestly shared his radical ideology”, he said.
The other suspects are the father of a pupil at the school, and an Islamist militant. The parent, Brahim Chnina, launched the online campaign against Mr Paty. (© Daily Telegraph, London)