TERRORIST ALERT AFTER BEHEADING OF TEACHER IN FRANCE
▶ Police call bomb squad to scene after assailant shot dead in Paris
A teacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to pupils was beheaded outside a school in France on Friday.
The assailant, whose identity has not been established, was shot by police who tried to arrest him. He died of his injuries. The victim has been named as 47-year-old Samuel Paty.
Prosecutors said they were treating the assault as “a murder linked to a terrorist organisation”.
The attack took place near the middle school where Mr Paty worked in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, a north-western suburb of Paris about 30 kilometres from the city centre.
The killing bore the hallmarks of “an Islamist terrorist attack”, President Emmanuel Macron said as he visited the scene.
“One of our fellow citizens was assassinated today because he was teaching. He was teaching pupils about freedom of expression. Our compatriot was flagrantly attacked, was the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack,” he said.
Mr Macron said the killing was an attack on French values.
“The whole country stands behind its teachers. Terrorists will not divide France. Obscurantism will not win.
“I want to tell all of France’s teachers that we are with them, that the whole nation will be here on their side today and tomorrow to protect them, defend them, allow them to do their job – the most beautiful job of raising free citizens. It’s not a coincidence if tonight a teacher was struck,” the president said.
Four people, including a minor, were arrested, a judicial source said yesterday. All were related to the assailant.
The victim was a history teacher who recently showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as part of a class discussion on freedom of expression, police said.
A parent of a pupil at the school said the teacher might have stirred controversy by asking Muslim pupils to leave the room before showing the cartoons.
“According to my son, he was super nice, super friendly, super kind,” the parent, Nordine Chaouadi, said.
The teacher “simply said to the Muslim children: ‘Leave, I don’t want it to hurt your feelings.’ That’s what my son told me,” the parent said.
According to a judicial source, an identity card found on the assailant indicated that he was born in Moscow in 2002, although investigators were waiting for formal identification.
Police said they were investigating a tweet posted from an account, which has since been shut, that showed a picture of the teacher’s head.
It was not known whether the message, which contained a threat against Mr Macron – described as “the leader of the infidels” – was posted by the attacker, they said.
Police arrived at the scene after receiving a call about a suspicious person loitering near the school, a source said.
They discovered the body and saw the suspect, armed with a blade, who threatened them as they attempted to arrest him.
The suspect was about 600 metres from a police patrol, carrying a knife and a gun that fires plastic pellets.
Officers opened fire, fatally wounding the suspect, a judicial source said.
The scene was cordoned off and a bomb disposal unit called because of the suspected presence of an explosive vest, police said.
Friday’s killing took place amid high security for the trial of suspected accomplices of those who attacked the office of the magazine in Paris in 2015.