French raids target Islamist extremists

Teacher killed, beheaded in daytime attack

PARIS • French police on Monday raided Islamic associations and foreigners suspected of extremist religious beliefs, police sources said, three days after a suspected Islamist beheaded a school teacher.

History teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered on Friday outside his school in a Paris suburb by an 18-yearold of Chechen origin. Police shot the attacker dead.

The teenage assassin sought to avenge his victim's use of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression to 13-year-olds. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.

Public figures called the killing an attack on the Republic and on French values.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said there were some 80 investigations being conducted into online hate and that he was looking into whether to disband about 50 associations within the Muslim community.

“Police operations have taken place and more will follow, concerning tens of individuals,” the minister told Europe 1.

A police source on Sunday said France was preparing to deport 213 foreigners who were on a government watchlist and suspected of holding extreme religious beliefs, among whom about 150 are serving jail sentences.

The deportations were already being worked on before Friday’s attack, a security source said.

Police detained 10 people in connection with the attack in the 24 hours that followed Paty's killing. Among them, prosecutors said, were the father of a student at Paty's school and another person on the radar of intelligence services, who they said had used social media to campaign against the teacher.

A judicial source told Reuters the man known to the intelligence agencies was Moroccan- born Abdelhakim Sefriuoi. Sefriuoi has for years used social media to put pressure on the government over its treatment of Muslims. Sefriuoi has been on the French intelligence services watchlist for more than 15 years, security sources told Reuters.

Meanwhile, a French imam said the teacher was a martyr for freedom of speech, and he called on mosques in France to pray for Paty.

Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Paris suburb of Drancy's mosque, warned against Islamist extremists and called on parents not to foster a hatred of France.

Laying flowers outside the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school where the teacher was killed, Chalghoumi, accompanied by other Muslim leaders, told reporters it was time for the Muslim community to wake up to the dangers of Islamist extremism.

“(The teacher) is a martyr for freedom of expression, and a wise man who has taught tolerance, civilization and respect for others,” said Chalghoumi, who as president of the Imams of France Conference has regularly called for interfaith tolerance.