Nine arrested after teenager beheads a teacher in Paris suburb
French PM says attack bears all the hallmarks of terrorism
French police yesterday questioned nine people in custody after a teenager beheaded a school teacher in broad daylight on the street in a Paris suburb, police sources said.
Police shot the attacker dead minutes after he murdered 47- year- old history teacher Samuel Paty on Friday. The killing shocked the country and carried echoes of an attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie H eb do. Investigators were seeking to establish whether the attacker had acted alone or had accomplices. French media reported that hewas an 18- yearoldof Chechen origin.
Paty had earlier this month shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad ( PBUH) in a civics class on freedom of expression, angering many Muslim parents.
Prime Minister Jean Castex said the attack bore the hallmarks of terrorism.
“I want to share with you my total indignation. Secularism, the backbone of the French Republic, was targetted in this vile act,” Castex said. Four relatives of the attacker, including a minor, were detained in the aftermath of the attack in the suburb of ConflansSainte- Honorine.
Unleashing divisions
Five more were detained overnight, among them two parents of pupils at the College du Bois d’Aulne where the teacher was employed. A week ago, one man who said his daughter was in Paty’s class recorded a video shared on social media in which he branded the teacher a thug and appealed toot hers to“join forces and say ‘ stop, don’t touch our children’”.
Before that attack, Charlie Hebdo had published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad ( PBUH), unleashing divisions that still cast a pall over French society.
The litany of deadly attacks by Islamist militants or their sympathisers was devastating for France’s Muslim community, Tareq Oubrou, the imam of a Bordeaux mosque, said. “Every day that passes without incident we give thanks,” he told France Inter radio.