Je suis Samuel!
Defiant cry as thousands take to streets of France to protest at beheading of teacher who showed pupils cartoons of Prophet
THOUSANDS took to the streets of France yesterday in a display of solidarity for a teacher beheaded for showing his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Demonstrators on Paris’s Place de la Republique held placards declaring: ‘I am a teacher’ and ‘Je suis Samuel,’ in memory of the victim, Samuel Paty.
‘I am here as a teacher, as a mother, as a Frenchwoman and as a republican,’ said a woman named only as Virginie, one of those gathered in Paris yesterday.
‘You do not scare us. We are not afraid. You will not divide us. We are France!’ tweeted Prime Minister Jean Castex, who was among those at the historic protest spot.
‘The entire educational community is affected, and beyond it society as a whole,’ teachers’ union representative Bernard Deswarte said in Toulouse, where around 5,000 were estimated to have gathered. And student Valentine Mule, 18, attending the Nice rally, said: ‘Everyone is in danger today. Things have to change.’
Some in the crowds chanted ‘I am Samuel’, echoing the ‘I am Charlie’ cry that travelled around the world after Islamist gunmen killed 12 at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in 2015.
Mr Paty’s killer, Aboulakh Anzorov, 18, was shot dead by police shortly after the beheading in a northern suburb of Paris on Friday afternoon.
While neighbours described the killer as ‘discreet’ and ‘immersed in religion’, it was revealed by French prosecutors that his halfsister had, in 2014, fled to join Islamic State in Syria.
Anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said that Mr Paty, 47, had been the target of online threats prior to his savage murder for showing the cartoons to his class earlier this month. Anzorov had travelled dozens of miles to track down his victim and waited outside the school for him to leave.
A father of one pupil at the middle school in Conflans- SainteHonorine said Mr Paty had asked any Muslim students to leave the lesson on freedom of expression because the cartoon would likely cause offence. However, one pupil accidentally stayed behind and later told her parents.
Depictions of the prophet are regarded as taboo in Islam and the girl’s angry father Brahim Chnina launched an online call for ‘mobilisation’ against Mr Paty which culminated in his murder.
Yesterday, as vigils were held, French authorities said they had detained an 11th suspect following the killing. Mr Chnina, the aggrieved Paty online known Four – his and members was Islamist parents, gave father among the militant. of grandparent school’s who them, Anzorov’s named as address was family and Mr a 17-year- being quizzed. old brother The – were Russian also embassy family had in arrived Paris said in the France suspect’s from Chechnya when he was six and requested asylum.
Locals in the Normandy town of Evreux where the attacker lived described him as low key, saying he got into fights as a child but calmed down as he became increasingly religious in recent years.
His uncle apologised for the killing and told French TV: ‘He was a child. He was only 18. If he were still alive, I would have asked him:
“Why did you do that? What was going on in your head?” ‘He must have been influenced by someone.’
A photograph of the decapitated teacher and a confession to his murder was found on the mobile phone of his killer. ‘I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Mohammed down,’ the message said.
Mr Ricard said Anzorov had been armed with a knife, an airgun and five canisters. He had to ask pupils to point out Mr Paty before he set upon him.
‘You will not divide us’