Macron: ‘We will not give up cartoons’
Two teenagers accused of pointing out French teacher Samuel Paty to the man who beheaded him have been charged with complicity in terrorist murder.
“We will not give up cartoons,” President Emmanuel Macron told a solemn ceremony at the Sorbonne university in Paris attended by the family of Mr Paty, who was targeted for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed in a class discussion on free speech early this month.
The president gave France’s highest civilian award, the Legion of Honour, to Mr Paty and said he had been slain by “cowards” for representing the country’s secular, democratic values. “He was killed because Islamists want our future. They will never have it,” he said.
Earlier, anti-terror prosecutor JeanFrancois Ricard said the two teenagers, aged 14 and 15, had been in a group of pupils who shared 300-350 euros (11,100-12,900 baht) offered by the killer to help find Paty.
The two waited for Paty with Chechnya-born 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov for more than two hours, even after he told them he wanted to “humiliate and strike” him over the Mohamed caricatures, seen as offensive by many Muslims, Mr Ricard said.
Mr Anzorov then killed Paty as he made his way home on foot from the junior high school where he taught in the suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine outside Paris.
The pair are among seven people authorities have charged over the killing.
The parent of one of Paty’s pupils, who started the social media campaign against the teacher even though his daughter was not in class when the cartoons were shown, was also charged with the same offence as the two teenagers, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said.
Also charged was a known Islamist radical who helped the father.
Paty, 47, became the target of an online hate campaign for showing the same images which unleashed a bloody assault by Islamist gunmen on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.