Teen fanatic who beheaded teacher had asked pupils to identify him
AN ISLAMIST fanatic who beheaded a teacher outside his school for showing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad had asked pupils to identify his target before launching the savage attack, it was revealed last night.
Aboulakh Anzorov, 18, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin, attacked Samuel Paty – who had recently given a lesson on free speech – in an affluent Paris suburb, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he struck with a kitchen knife on Friday evening.
The teenager then took a picture of the father-of-one’s severed head on the ground and posted it on Twitter, with a vile message addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron.
In the post, Anzorov said: ‘In the name of Allah, to Macron, the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad (may peace be upon him).’
Soon after posting the photo, Anzorov was surrounded by police and shot dead as he brandished what appeared to be a pellet gun.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard confirmed the attacker’s identity last night.
He said Anzorov, who lived in the town of Evreux, north- west of Paris, had received a ten- year residency permit in March. ‘ He
‘He taught the freedom to believe or not believe’
enjoyed refugee status but had hidden his radical Islamism from the security services,’ said Mr Ricard, who added that the Chechen was not previously known to the French police and security services.
Mr Ricard said Anzorov was ‘seen in front of the college in the afternoon, when he asked students to point out the teacher’.
He confirmed that nine people were in custody, who included members of Anzorov’s family, and a Muslim leader, accused of stoking up a hate campaign against the history and geography teacher.
Mr Paty, 47, was a popular figure at College du Bois d’Aulne, a middle school, in the upmarket suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris.
His murder has sent shockwaves across France, with President Macron describing it as an attack on the French Republic itself. ‘One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,’ he said.
The murder triggered chilling memories of the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo five years ago, when two fanatical brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, killed 12 people and injured 11.
Mr Paty’s death was being linked to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, which reprinted its offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad a month ago to coincide with the start of a trial of the associates of the Kouachi brothers.
The teacher showed one of the cartoons in his civics class a month ago, which depicted the Prophet with a star on his naked bottom, with the caption ‘A star is born’. It emerged that during the class – about freedom of expression – Mr Paty asked Muslim pupils if they wanted to leave the lesson before he showed the cartoon to avoid offending t hem. According to reports, all the Muslim pupils left the class except for a girl who stayed and saw the cartoon. She told her parents, which prompted her father to start a campaign to have the teacher sacked.
An extremist Muslim leader, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, joined the campaign to oust Mr Paty, issuing a video on social media calling for his dismissal. Sefrioui was last night thought to be one of the nine in custody, along with Anzorov’s grandparents and cousins. The father of the pupil, aged 13, is also believed to have been arrested.
A staff member at the school, who did not want to be named, confirmed that his colleague had been ‘ concerned for his safety’, adding: ‘Samuel had angered parents by showing a picture of a nude Prophet Muhammad to kids in his freedom of expression class, and there had been threats against him.’
French authorities said they are investigating whether Anzorov acted alone, or as part of a group.
He is one of around 30,000 ethnic Chechens in France, most of whom fled their homeland after Russian onslaughts in the 1990s and 2000s.