French police have arrested over 9 people after a teacher was beheaded in a Paris award for showing caricatures of Prophet Muhammad in class.
The prime accused is 18-year-old Chechen, who had later been killed by police in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Police went to the scene after receiving a call about suspicious individual loitering near the school, a police source said. They discovered the dead man and soon spotted the suspect, armed with a blade, who threatened the officers as they tried to arrest him. The attacker had let out jihadist attack cries like Allahu Akbar upon police confrontation, following which they had encountered him.
The victim is Samuel Paty, A 47-year-old history teacher who had shown caricatures of Prophet Muhammad to his class as a part of a discussion regarding freedom of expression. This had apparently invoked complaints from parents. They had then signalled a disagreement to this display of the cartoon. The parents of the suspect were also part of this group.
The attack came as a trial is in progress over the January 2015 massacre at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which had published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that unleashed a wave of anger across the Islamic world. In a tweet, Charlie Hebdo expressed its “sense of horror and revolt” at Friday’s attack. French President Emmanuel Macron called this an Islamist terror attack in a press conference on Saturday.