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UPDATE: What we know about the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty

Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class, is to be awarded a posthumous Legion d'honneur. As France prepares for memorials to him, here is what we know about the police investigation so far.

Published: 17 October 2020 17:53 CEST
Updated: 20 October 2020 09:35 CEST

UPDATE: What we know about the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty

A placard reading "I teach so I am" and a portrait of history teacher Samuel Paty in the crowd of thousands of people who gathered on Place de la Republique in Paris on October 18th, two days after he

Who was the victim?

The teacher was Samuel Paty, 47, who taught history and geography in the quiet suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, about 20km outside Paris, and was on his way home from school when he was attacked.

At the beginning of October, he taught a class on freedom of expression during which he showed pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

The killing has drawn parallels with the 2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, where 12 people, including cartoonists, were gunned down for publishing cartoons of Mohammed.

Teachers and pupils have praised his skills as a teacher.

A silent rally to mourn Paty, who had a five-year-old son, took place in his hometown on Tuesday evening.

President Emmanuel Macron will attend national memorial on Wednesday at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where Paty will be awarded the Legion d'honneur posthumously.

Who was the perpetrator?

Paty's killer Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot and fatally injured by police after the incident, was an 18-year-old born in Moscow, originally from Russia's southern and largely Muslim-dominated region of Chechnya.

Anzorov arrived in France with his family more than a decade ago.

According to anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard, he had been granted refugee status in France and received a 10-year residency permit earlier this year.

Anzorov was not known to the intelligence services and had no convictions but had been in trouble for inflicting damage on public property and violence while still a minor, Ricard told French media during a press conference on Saturday.

Why was the teacher targeted?

Anzorov did not go to the school where Paty taught and investigators are currently trying to establish why an 18-year-old would travel some 80 kilometres from his home in Normandy to hunt down a man with whom he currently seemed to have no prior connection.

According to Ricard, initial evidence suggests the perpetrator loitered outside the school on Friday afternoon and asked pupils where he could find Paty.

Four pupils who may have helped Anzorov to identify the teacher in return for payment were on Monday detained by the police.

According to the anti-terror prosecutor, a father of one of the pupils at the school had embarked on a campaign to have the teacher dismissed when he found out about the cartoons.

Paty warned his pupils before showing the caricatures, saying that those who might take offence and were free to look away. He did not, as previously reported, say that the pupils of Muslim faith could leave the class, according to a police report obtained by French media.

The father spoke to the headteacher of the school and published calls on social media attacking the teacher and insisting it is time to “say stop” to such behaviour, accusing Paty of showing pornographic material to his class.

The French interior minister accused the father of having, along with another known Islamist radical who is now in police custody, issued a “fatwa” against Paty, effectively putting a price on his head.

Police are investigating the role played by social media in the attack.

According to French media, Anzorov was highly active on the platform in the weeks preceding the attack, publishing more than 400 tweets, some of which included extracts from the Quran, others featuring comments on political news.

A message claiming the attack with a gruesome accompanying photo was published on a Twitter account confirmed to have belonged to Anzorov.

Who has been arrested?

By Monday, a total of 15 people had been detained for questioning, including the four children and the father who complained about the teacher's class.

Another man who took part in videos posted by the father calling for the dismissal of the teacher has also been detained, along with his wife. This man, who had accompanied the father to the school to complain about Paty, has turned out to be a known radical Islamist.

Anti-terror prosecutor Ricard said the half-sister of the father had joined Islamic State jihadists in Syria in 2014 and was already the subject of an arrest warrant.

Four of the suspect's relatives – his younger brother, grandfather and parents – were also detained for questioning.

What is the government doing more broadly?

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Monday vowed there would be “not a minute's respite for enemies of the Republic,” as law enforcement carried out 40 raids, mostly around Paris, with many more planned.

Darmanin said the government would also tighten its grip on institutions and charities with suspected links to Islamist networks.

Officials named two groups they would target for closure – the Collective Against Islamophobia in France which claims to monitor attacks against Muslims and BarakaCity, which describes itself as a humanitarian organisation.

In a social media post, BarakaCity accused Darmanin of “going mad” and said he was taking advantage of a tragedy.

Darmanin also ordered the closure of a mosque in the Parisian suburb of Pantin, accusing its imam of encouraging intimidation of the teacher and publicising the address of the school.

Meanwhile Paris prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into a French neo-Nazi website hosted abroad that republished the photo of Paty's decapitated corpse posted to Twitter by the killer.

Member comments

Anonymous - 19 October 2020 at 21:19 CEST

I really can’t understand how these people come here to France, and not accept the Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite, Laic law.
They come here, hate it, and try and change it. Why bother coming in the first place? And why not just leave, if you can’t accept it?
France has freedom of speech. Like it or leave….
Anonymous - 19 October 2020 at 21:23 CEST

I’m terribly sorry to hear about the beheading of the teacher. RIP Prof Paty. My condolences to the family & friends. ??

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.