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CRIME

French schools pay tribute to murdered teacher Samuel Paty

France on Monday honoured the teacher beheaded near his school by a suspected Islamist radical as millions of students returned to class after a spate of attacks that have put the country on edge.

Published: 2 November 2020 15:36 CET
French schools pay tribute to murdered teacher Samuel Paty
Schools held a minute's silence in memory of the slain teacher. Photo: AFP

Schoolchildren across France observed a minute of silence at 11am to remember Samuel Paty, who was killed in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris, on October 16th.

Paty had shown his class cartoons of the prophet Mohammed for a lesson on freedom of expression, sparking an online campaign against him.

His killing heightened tensions as President Emmanuel Macron spearheads a campaign against Islamist radicalism.

Last Thursday, three people were killed by a knife-wielding man at a church in the southern city of Nice in the latest attack to be labelled an act of “Islamist” terror by the government.

Schoolchildren – wearing masks because of the coronavirus pandemic – stood behind their desks or in schoolyards for the minute of silence.

The gesture was matched at schools in Germany and Greece in a show of solidarity.

“I know your emotion after the terrorist attacks, including one in front of a school against a teacher,” Macron said in a message to pupils on his Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook social media channels.

“Today, in class, you will pay homage to Samuel Paty. We will all think of him, you and your teachers,” he said, adding: “The plan of terrorism is to manufacture hatred.”

Classes in France resumed after the holidays with the country on maximum terror alert and armed gendarmes stationed outside some schools.

Teachers had previously held their own tribute to their murdered colleague. Photo: AFP

“I hope that they (the pupils) will have understood the essential idea that in France there is freedom of expression and when you are not happy with an opinion, you go to a judge. You never take justice into your own hands,” teacher Paul Airiau told AFP at the Grange aux Belles college in Paris.

Prime Minister Jean Castex travelled to Conflans-Sainte-Honorine to pay his respects to Paty, saying he had “taught every child of the Republic to be a free citizen.”

“For him, for our country, we will continue. It is our honour and our duty,” Castex tweeted.

Macron has vowed to defend the right to freedom of speech after the furore created in many Muslim countries by the republication of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in September by satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

It did so to mark the start of the trial of suspected accomplices in the 2015 massacre of its staff by Islamist gunmen.

The trial has been postponed for at least a week after three defendants tested positive for coronavirus.

Following angry protests in the Muslim world over his defence of the right to publish cartoons, Macron told Al-Jazeera television over the weekend that he understood the caricatures could be shocking for some.

In the latest protest against France, at least 50,000 gathered in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka on Monday for a rally which started at its biggest mosque but was prevented from approaching the French embassy, police said.

Prosecutors say Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen man, Abdullakh Anzorov, who was spurred to act by a social media campaign started by one parent at the school who was angry that children were shown the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Anzorov was killed by police.

Last week's stabbing rampage in Nice is suspected to have been carried out by Brahim Issaoui, a 21-year-old who arrived illegally in Europe from Tunisia in September.

He remains in a serious condition in hospital after being shot by police, but his life is no longer in danger, said a source close to the investigation.

Police initially detained six people suspected of links with Anzorov.

Two are still being held, including a fellow Tunisian aboard the boat that brought Issaoui to the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, added the source who asked not to be named.

France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said he would travel to Tunisia and Algeria this week to discuss the fight against terror, and would also soon visit Russia.

Adding to tensions, a Greek Orthodox priest is in a serious condition after being shot by an unknown assailant armed with a sawn-off shotgun in Lyon on Saturday.

However an individual arrested over the shooting was released on Sunday and the authorities have not handed the case to anti-terror prosecutors.

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TERRORISM

Chechen arrested over Paris Olympics attack plot: ministry

French security services have arrested a Chechen teenager suspected of plotting an "Islamist-inspired" attack on a football game during the Paris Olympic Games in July and August, the interior ministry said Friday.

Published: 1 June 2024 09:06 CEST
Chechen arrested over Paris Olympics attack plot: ministry

The DGSI domestic intelligence agency “arrested a 18-year-old of Chechen origin in Saint-Etienne” in southeast France on May 22, the ministry said, calling it the “first foiled attack against the Olympic Games”.

France is on its highest alert level for attacks ahead of the Paris Games, when around 10 million visitors and 10,000 athletes are expected.

The sport is set to take place mostly in the capital, but other towns and cities around France will also host some disciplines as well as individual games.

The arrested Chechen was suspected of “actively preparing an attack against the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium [in Saint-Etienne] during the football games that will take place there,” the interior ministry said.

“He intended to attack spectators but also security forces and die as a martyr,” the statement added.

He was charged on Sunday with terrorist conspiracy and is in pre-trial detention, the national anti-terror prosecutor’s office said in a statement to AFP.

The suspected plot could set nerves jangling in France, where organisers have faced persistent questions about the risk of an attack that would seriously tarnish the world’s biggest sporting event.

An offshoot of the Islamic State group, believed to be behind a vicious attack on a Moscow concert hall in March, is known to have threatened attacks in France.

“We applaud the efficiency of the (law enforcement) services and their exceptional mobilisation to ensure the security of the Games,” the Paris organising committee said in a statement. “Security is the number one priority for Paris 2024.”

Six football games are set to take place in Saint-Etienne, an industrial town of roughly 200,000 people about an hour’s drive west of Lyon.

They begin on July 24 with Argentina versus Morocco in the men’s competition, and include a game between the French women’s team and Canada on July 28.

France as target

Concerns about the Paris Games have focused on the opening ceremony on July 26 that will take place over a six-kilometre (four-mile) stretch of the river Seine, the first time a summer Olympics has begun outside the athletics stadium.

Policing such a vast area of the capital will be a huge challenge, with 45,000 officers set to be on duty and large swathes of the centre out of bounds for everyone except ticket holders and local residents.

France has been repeatedly targeted by Islamist attackers over the past decade, often by individuals inspired by Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group. Three terror plots have been prevented since the start of the year and 50 since 2017, according to the interior ministry.

Lucas Webber, co-founder of the Militant Wire research network, told AFP that the Islamic State (IS) group, including its Khorasan offshoot in Afghanistan and Pakistan (ISKP), had “launched a new propaganda campaign to threaten and incite direct attacks against sporting events in Europe”.

“ISKP has led these efforts and called upon followers to carry out violent acts against the Olympics in France and the UEFA European Championship in Germany,” he said

Last October, a radicalised 20-year-old Chechen who had sworn allegiance to IS killed a teacher in the northern French town of Arras.

In October 2020, another teenage Chechen extremist, who had come to France as a refugee, beheaded a teacher in a suburb northwest of Paris, shocking the country.

The traditional Olympic torch relay is currently underway in France, with the flame on a 12,000-kilometre trip surrounded by a “security bubble” of 100 officers including anti-drone specialists and anti-terror police.

A total of 78 people were arrested for trying to disrupt the relay and 30 suspect drones were intercepted during the first three weeks, according to the interior ministry.

The Olympics have been attacked in the past — most infamously in 1972 in Munich and in 1996 in Atlanta — with the thousands of athletes, huge crowds and live global television audience making it a target.

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