Teacher ‘ beheaded by terrorist for showing his class Charlie Hebdo cartoons’
Killer shot by police after new Paris horror
A TEACHER was beheaded in the street in France yesterday after showing pupils controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a lesson on free speech.
The images were reportedly those published by Charlie Hebdo that led to a terrorist attack on the satirical magazine’s offices in Paris in 2015 in which 12 died.
The terrorist who carried out yesterday’s murder was shot dead by police, who found a knife and a pellet gun next to his body.
A source told the newspaper Le Parisien: ‘The victim had recently given a lesson to his students on freedom of expression and had shown the caricatures.’
This led to the attacker waiting for the history teacher as he finished school in Conflans Sainte-Honorine, a suburban town north-west of Paris, before attacking him with a kitchen knife.
Reports last night said the knifeman had posted his intentions on social media beforehand.
One police source said the victim had his throat slit, while another said he had been decapitated. Witnesses heard the killer shout ‘ Allahu Akbar’, or God is greater, as he stabbed the victim, according to reports.
‘The body of a decapitated man was found at around 5.30pm [4.30pm GMT],’ said an investigating source.
‘When police arrived, the person thought to be responsible was still present and threatened them with his weapons.’
The killer fled to the nearby town of Eragny- sur- Oise, around two miles away, where he refused to surrender. ‘He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,’ said the source. ‘This is when he was shot dead by police. Around ten shots were heard.’
Anti-terrorist prosecutors were leading the investigation last night. Last month, bosses at Charlie Hebdo decided to republish the depiction of Muhammad – blasphemous under Islam – as those suspected of aiding the attack on its former offices went on trial. A man who emigrated to France from Pakistan then used a meat cleaver to attack and wound two outside the magazine’s old headquarters in an act of vengeance.
Neither victim had any association with the magazine and the attacker, Hassan Ali, 18, said he did not realise it had moved.
Islamic State and Al Qaeda operatives in France have carried out a series of bomb, gun and knife attacks since the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The deadliest terrorist attacks ever in the country came on November 13, 2015 when 130 were killed across Paris.
A police source said officers arrived at the scene yesterday after receiving a call about a suspicious individual loitering near the school.
They found the dead teacher, who was named by locals last night as ‘Samuel P’, and saw the knife-wielding killer nearby.
The terrorist – reported to be an 18-year-old Chechen – was said to have posted a photograph of the victim on Twitter, saying he ‘executed’ the teacher for ‘daring to belittle Muhammad’.
Sources said formal complaints had been made to the school about the teacher’s use of the cartoons, including by one parent who posted a video on YouTube expressing his anger.
In the Charlie Hebdo trial yesterday, the main suspect caused an uproar when he threatened a policewoman during testimony.
‘You will pay for this,’ shouted Ali Riza Polat, who is believed to have been the right-hand man of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a police officer in January 2015 and the next day shot four dead at a Jewish supermarket before being killed by police.
The officer, a member of the antiterror unit, was giving the court her account of Polat’s conversion to radical Islamism and rows with his mother about religion.
President Macron was due to visit the crime scene last night.
‘He threatened the police’