An anti-terrorism investigation has been opened in France after a history teacher was decapitated in the street near his school. The teacher, identified as Samuel Paty, had reportedly shown caricatures of Muhammad to his class as part of a lesson on freedom of expression. The parents of one pupil later made an official complaint and the teacher is said to have received death threats on social media.
The 18-year-old suspect in the murder at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a north-west-suburb of Paris, who is believed to be a Russian of Chechen origin, and who has been named as Abdoullakh Abouyezidovitch A., was later shot by police in the neighbouring town of Éragny.
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France's anti-terrorism prosecution unit the Parquet National Antiterroriste (PNAT) has taken over the case and begun an investigation for “murder linked to a terrorist enterprise” and “a terrorist criminal conspiracy”. Detectives from the police's anti-terrorist squad the Sous-direction Anti-terroriste (SDAT) and agents from the domestic intelligence agency the DGSI will be involved in the investigation.
The Élysée has announced that there will be a national homage to the teacher on Friday October 23rd.
The murder took place at around 5pm on Friday October 18th close to the Bois-d'Aulne middle school or collège in the Hautes-Roches area of the suburb. Police in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, were called over reports that a suspect individual was prowling around outside the school, according to police sources cited by the AFP news agency. When they arrived officers found the victim, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher at the middle school.
Around 200 metres away, in the neighbouring town of Éragny, officers tried to arrest the suspect who was armed with a knife and who was threatening them. They opened fire and killed him. The man reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” before being killed. A secure area was set up around the knifeman's body in case he was wearing a suicide vest.
Samuel Paty had been the subject of complaints by some parents on October 5th including one formal complaint. This followed a lesson on freedom of expression in a “moral and civil education” class in which the teacher showed caricatures of Muhammad to his class of 12 to 14-year-olds.
The parent of one child said, via a YouTube video on October 8th, that the teacher had shown his pupils a photo of a naked man and told them that it was the Prophet. “What message did he want to give to these pupils?” wrote the man at the time. “Why this hate? Why does a history teacher behave like that in front of his 13-year-old pupils?”
Soon after the killing another parent posted below the same video, in defence of the teacher. “The teacher just showed caricatures from [satirical magazine] Charlie Hebdo as part of a history lesson on freedom of expression,” the parent wrote. “He asked the Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wanted, out of respect. He was a great teacher. He tried to encourage a critical spirit in his students, always with respect and intelligence. I am sad for my daughter, but also for teachers in France. Can we continue to teach without being afraid of being killed?” The video has since been taken down.
In fact, it appears that some parents were shocked that the teacher asked Muslim pupils to leave the classroom. But one parent told independent journalist Clément Lanot: “He did that to protect the children, so as not to shock them. He explained to them: I prefer you to leave because I am going to show a caricature of the Prophet of Islam, I don't want to shock you … At no time did he show them a lack of respect … he did that out of kindness.”
Le Parisien newspaper, citing a member of the local parents association, said that the teacher “was aware of death threats on social media following his lesson on freedom of expression”.
According to the AFP news agency police arrested nine people overnight. Among them are four members of the knifeman's family, arrested at Évreux west of Paris, and two parents of pupils at the middle school, a man and a woman. A tenth person, said to be known to the intelligence services, was detained on Saturday, and an eleventh on Sunday.
The attacker, named by the authorities as Abdoullakh Abouyezidovitch A., was an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origins who according to some reports was born in Moscow in 2002 and had come to France as a child. He was unknown to the intelligence services but, according to other reports, was known to police in relation to non terrorist-related crimes.
At the time of the crime a Twitter account that has since been closed, @Tchetchene_270 - the French word for Chechen is Tchétchène – posted a photo of a decapitated head on a tarmacked road, close to a pavement. This terrible image was accompanied by the words: “From Abdullah, the servant of Allah, to Marcon (sic), the leader of the infidels, I have executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad, calm his fellow people before we inflict harsh retribution on you”. Detectives are still working to check whether these comments were made by the attacker.
Whoever was behind that Twitter account had a close interest in religion. At the start of October they had posted a video featuring a Dua, a prayer of supplication in Islam, in both Arabic and Russia.
The profile suggested by the facts so far is similar to that of the last alleged perpetrator of a terrorist attack in France. On September 25th a 25-year-old Pakistani, Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, who was also unknown to the intelligence services, attacked two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in Rue Nicolas-Appert in Paris.
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During questioning Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud said that he was “angry” having seen the “recent videos from Pakistan” about the publication and republication of caricatures of Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo on September 2nd 2020, on the eve of the opening of the trial over the attack on the magazine's offices in January 2015.
The method of attack in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, meanwhile, just has one precedent in France. On June 26th 2015 Yassin Salhi decapitated his boss Hervé Cornara at a factory near Lyon in eastern France and suspended his head from a fence by a chain. On either side were two flags on which was written the Shahadah, the profession of faith in Islam: “Allah is the only God, and Muhammad is his prophet”.
On Friday evening President Emmanuel Macron visited the scene of the murder and declared: “One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught. He taught his students about freedom of expression, freedom to believe or not believe. Our compatriot was cowardly attacked, the victim of a terrorist Islamist attack,” Macron said.
“This evening my thoughts are with all those close to him, with his family, with his colleagues at the college where we have seen the head teacher show courage in the last week. In the face of pressure [from parents], she did her job with remarkable duty.
“This evening I want to say to teachers all over France, we are with them, the whole nation is with them today and tomorrow, to protect them, defend them, allow them to do their job which is the finest there is: to produce free citizens.
“It is no accident if this evening this terrorist has killed a terrorist because he wanted to kill the Republic and its values … They shall not pass. Obscurantism and the violence that goes with it will not win. They will not divide us. That's what they are seeking to do and we must all stand together.”
'Nothing can justify this murder'
The interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who was on a visit to Morocco at the time, cut short his trip and returned to Paris on Friday. Before he left, he spoke with President Macron and France's prime minister Jean Castex from Rabat.
Meanwhile the education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said on Twitter: “This evening, it was the Republic that was attacked with this sickening killing of one of its servants, a teacher. Our unity and our firmness are the only responses faced with the monstrosity of Islamic terrorism. We will confront it.”
Teaching organisations were also appalled. “The very heart of the school has come under attack: its missions of learning and liberation,” said one of the main teaching unions, the SNES-FSU, about the “appalling” attack. “This horrible act was apparently linked to the use in a lesson of caricatures of Muhammad as part of a lesson in EMC [editor's note, moral and civil education],” the union said in a statement. The organisation said it maintained an “unswerving attachment to freedom of expression” which was an “imperative which must not yield and will never yield to terrorism”.
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There was also widespread disgust in France's Muslim community over the murder. “To those who are looking for a reason for this despicable crime by evoking the caricatures of Islam's Prophet, we reaffirm that nothing, absolutely nothing, could justify the murder of a man,” said Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the leading Muslim body in France the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM), which called for a demonstration of support. The website Saphirnews reported that the group Great Mosque in Strasbourg had condemned what it called a “barbaric, monstrous and inhuman” act, while the Musulmans de France federation restated its “attachment to the freedom of expression even when it comes up against certain sensibilities or convictions”.
The political world also expressed its outrage at Samuel Paty's murder. “Despicable crime at Conflans! In fact the murderer believes himself to be the god that he claims to believe in. He sullies religion. And he inflicts on us the hell of having to live with murderers like him,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the radical left La France Insoumise ('Unbowed France'). In a statement the party itself said: “Through this murder of atrocious barbarity it's the turn of the Republic's schools to be the target of an Islamic terrorist. This crime committed in the name of god harms the millions of our fellow citizens who refuse to see their religion linked with such atrocities.”
It continued: “More than ever the necessary human and material resources must be deployed to apply the laws clamping down on crime, to fight against obscurantism from wherever it comes and to stop other murders. This combat can only be won if we are all unfailingly united. The worst thing would be to succumb to the divisions that the terrorists want to create.”
Julien Bayou, national secretary of the green EELV party, Tweeted: “Decapitated in the middle of the street for having given a lesson on freedom of expression and having shown caricatures of Muhammad. Sickened by the limitless horror of fanatical jihadism.” The first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) Olivier Faure himself Tweeted: “We must be totally uncompromising against the fanatical barbarism that wants to impose its order on us. I want to express my support for our teachers. The school is the main Republican bulwark against separatism.”
In a recent speech President Macron proposed a new law against Islamic “separatism”, and after Friday's attack some figures on the Right were quick to demand action.
“Will our country respond with firmness and determination?” asked Christian Jacob, president of the rightwing Les Républicains (LR). “Big speeches must give way to big decisions against Islamic terrorism.” And the LR Member of Parliament Éric Ciotti said: “The parents of pupils who reject [the idea] that the school teaches about the Holocaust, the Enlightenment, equality or the freedom of expression are free to leave France. They don't have a place in our society.”
Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Rassemblement National, also singled out the stance of some parents. “The teacher who was decapitated … had received death threats and some unacceptable pressure on the part of some parents. They made him a target. Their moral and legal responsibility must be brought to bear. Terrorism is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Her niece and political rival Marion Maréchal Le Pen meanwhile asked: “Is the president going to put as much energy into defending our civilisation, our security and our freedom of expression as he has put into restricting our freedoms for months without any democratic consultation?”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version and additional reporting by Michael Streeter