Officials: Suspect stalked school to behead teacher

PARIS — The suspect in the beheading of a history teacher in a Paris suburb was an 18-year-old immigrant of Chechen descent who was angered by the classroom display of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, French officials said Saturday.

The suspect, identified by authorities as Abdoulakh A., stalked the area outside the school Friday afternoon before following the teacher, whom he stabbed and decapitated with a knife, Jean-François Ricard, the top anti-terrorism prosecutor, said at a news conference.

“The individual was in front of the college in the afternoon and asked students to indicate the future victim to him,” Ricard said, referring to the middle school where the teacher, Samuel Paty, 47, had taught. The suspect was fatally shot by police in a confrontation soon after the killing.

Investigators found a message planning the attack on the suspect’s cellphone, written a few hours before, Ricard said. Then, shortly before he was killed by police, the suspect uploaded a photograph of the victim to Twitter.

The gruesome killing appeared to be the culmination of a couple of weeks of tension at the school. Muslim parents upset over the classroom display of two caricatures published by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had contacted school and police officials, but videos uploaded on social media by one father widened the dispute to an outside audience.

Investigators were still trying to piece together how the suspect spent his days before the attack, Ricard said. But the suspect did not appear to have any direct ties to the school or to have been previously involved in the dispute.

Born in Moscow, the suspect lived in France with the status of a refugee, Ricard said, adding that he was not previously known to anti-terrorism officials.

The killing was the second violent episode within weeks to be linked to the caricatures published by Charlie Hebdo, which had led to deadly attacks in Paris in 2015.