Chechen teen asked pupils to identify French teacher before beheading him, 9 detained

The teenager who beheaded a teacher outside the school in a Paris suburb where he taught had approached pupils in the street and asked them to point out his victim, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday. Police shot dead the 18-year-old attacker, who was born in Russia, minutes after he murdered 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty in broad daylight in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday.
A photograph of the teacher’s body, accompanied by a message claiming responsibility posted on Twitter, was discovered on the assailant’s phone, found near his body. Ricard said the Twitter account belonged to the attacker. The post was removed swiftly by Twitter, which said it had suspended the account because it violated the company’s policy.
Ricard quoted the message as saying: “In the name of Allah the most gracious, the most merciful, ... to (President) Macron, leader of the infidels, I have executed one of your hell-hounds who dared to belittle (Prophet) Muhammad.” Earlier this month Paty had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering a number of Muslim parents. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous. The attacker, of Chechen origin, was not previously known to the intelligence services, Ricard told a news conference.
The anti-terrorism prosecutor confirmed police were holding nine people in custody in connection with the attack. The killing shocked the country and carried echoes of an attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. PM Jean Castex said it bore the hallmarks of Islamist terrorism. “Secularism, the backbone of the French Republic, was targeted in this vile act,” Castex said.
Four relatives of the attacker were detained soon after the attack. Five more were detained overnight, including the father of a pupil at Paty’s school and an acquaintance of the pupil’s father known to the intelligence services. In the days after the lesson on freedom of expression, the pupil’s father recorded several videos in which he branded the teacher a thug and called for him to be fired. In one, he urged others to “join forces and say ‘stop, don’t touch our kids’”. The half-sister of the pupil’s father had joined Islamic State in Syria in 2014, the prosecutor said. It was not clear if the teen attacker knew either of them.