Teen lie ’fess in behead

Outrage in France

A 13-year-old girl in France confessed to spreading a false story about her history teacher — which set off a horrific chain of events that led to him being beheaded last year, it was revealed Tuesday.

The girl, whose name has not been released, was charged with slander after she admitted to police that she had “lied” about a classroom incident at the school west of Paris in order to please her father, the Independent reported.

She originally claimed that Samuel Paty, 47, had asked Muslim students to leave the room before he showed them cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a civics class on free speech, the outlet reported.

The girl reportedly told her father that she was then suspended for two days after she challenged the teacher for sending Muslim students into the hall while he showed the blasphemous image.

Her fib caused the father to file a legal complaint against the teacher — as well as mount a social-media campaign calling for his ouster, the BBC reported.

Backlash grew, since depictions of Muhammad are forbidden in Islam and regarded by Muslims as highly offensive.

Ten days later, the teacher was beheaded by an 18-yearold extremist, Abdullakh Anzorov, who was later shot dead by police.

Prosecutors said shortly after the gruesome slaying that there was a “direct causal link” between the online campaign against Paty and his murder.

The girl’s father was detained in the case for using social media to incite harassment against Paty over the supposed incident, officials said.

But now it has emerged that the girl was not even in class during the lesson at the center of the online campaign.

The girl apparently had been suspended the day before for failing to attend class and didn’t want her father to know about the punishment, French newspaper Le Parisien reported.

Her attorney on Monday confirmed the girl was not in class but chalked up the absence to her being out sick on that day.

“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be a spokesperson,” her lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told Agence France-Presse.

But an attorney representing the Paty family said Tuesday she was “skeptical” of the teen’s excuse.

“This explanation does not convince me,” Virginie Le Roy told French radio outlet RTL. Le Roy said that coming forward now with the truth was “weak” — claiming the girl had no choice but to fess up in the case.

“The situation of the girl was untenable. All the elements in the case prove very early on that she lied,” Le Roy said.