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Flowers and candles are laid at the entrance of a school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, after a teacher was decapitated. Photo: AFP

French teacher’s attacker ‘posted photo of severed head on Twitter’, prosecutor says

  • French prosecutors reveal more details about brutal murder and decapitation of history teacher in Paris
  • Nine people were in police custody, including members of the alleged perpetrator’s family
A suspect shot dead by police after the beheading of a history teacher near Paris was an 18-year-old Chechen refugee unknown to intelligence services who posted a grisly claim of responsibility on social media minutes after the attack, officials said.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said authorities investigating the killing of Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday arrested nine suspects, including the teen’s grandfather, parents and 17-year-old brother.

Paty had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad with his class, leading to threats, police officials said. Islam prohibits images of the prophet, asserting that they lead to idolatry.

French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive had been opened.

The Russian embassy in Paris said the suspect was Abdullakh Anzorov, whose family had arrived in France when he was six and requested asylum.

Ricard said the suspect was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun, which fires plastic pellets.

His half-sister joined Islamic State in Syria in 2014, Ricard said. He did not give her name, and it is not clear where she was.

The prosecutor said a text claiming responsibility and a photograph of the victim were found on the suspect’s phone. He also confirmed that a Twitter account under the name Abdoulakh A belonged to the suspect. It posted a photo of the decapitated head minutes after the attack along with the message: “I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down”.

Two journalists stabbed near former Charlie Hebdo office in Paris

Ricard said the suspect had been seen at the school asking students about the teacher, and the headmaster had received several threatening phone calls.

A police official said the suspect was shot dead about 600 metres from where Paty died. Police opened fire after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms and acted in a threatening manner.

French President Emmanuel Macron went to the school on Friday night to denounce what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack”. He urged the nation to stand united against extremism.

Locals in the Normandy town of Evreux, where the attacker lived in the Madeleine district, described him as low key.

French police outside the school. Photo: AFP

One who had been to school with him said he had become noticeably religious in recent years.

“Before, he got involved in fights but for the last two or three years he had calmed down” and had been “ immersed in religion”, he said.

“He said his prayers, he wasn’t out, he spoke politely,” he added.

Friday’s attack was the second such incident since a trial started last month into the January 2015 massacre at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which had published caricatures of the prophet that unleashed a wave of anger across the Islamic world.

The magazine republished the cartoons in the run-up to the trial, and last month a young Pakistani man wounded two people with a meat cleaver outside Charlie Hebdo’s former Paris offices.

Charlie Hebdo expressed its feelings of “horror and revolt” on Twitter over the teacher’s death.

Ricard said Paty’s murder illustrated “the very high level terrorist threat” France still faces.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and DPA

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Suspect in beheading a Chechen refugee
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