A history teacher was decapitated in France for showing cartoons in class about the Prophet Muhammad. The assailant, who was shot by police during the incident, later died at the hospital. His identity has not yet been confirmed. The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as police confronted him.
French anti-terror prosecutors say the murder was linked to a terrorist organisation. French President Emmanuel Macron visited the scene of the attack. The attack happened after 5pm (4pm Irish time) on the outskirts of Paris near a school in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a northwestern suburb located some 30 kilometres from the centre of the French capital.
Thousands of religious extremists have taken to the streets across France in protest of the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. They are protesting against Charlie Hebdo and the French government. Three weeks ago, a woman police officer was shot dead in the street. More than 250 people have been killed in Islamic attacks in France so far. Seventeen people were killed in the three-day attack.
Police sources said they arrived at the scene yesterday after receiving a call that a suspicious person was standing near the school. There the teacher was found murdered. And nearby sighted the suspect armed with a knife-like weapon. He threatened the police officers as they tried to arrest him. Police then opened fire. Judicial sources said the man was critically injured and later died.
Home Minister Gerald Darmanin, who was on a visit to Morocco following the incident, returned to the capital. France’s parliament suspended today’s debate after news of the decapitation. The attack comes just days after a member of the Islamic State militant group was sentenced to 28 years in prison for attacking a police officer with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Fareed Iqbal, 43, was convicted of assaulting an officer patrolling outside the cathedral on June 6, 2017, shouting, “this is for Syria.”
Police sources said the victim was a teacher at a local middle school who recently discussed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class. Meanwhile, the parent of a student at the school revealed that the teacher asked the Muslim students to leave the room before showing the cartoons. “According to my son, he was super nice, super friendly, super kind,” the parent said. “‘Leave, I don’t want it to hurt your feelings’. That’s what my son told me,” he said.
A 25-year-old Pakistani man has attacked two people with a meat cleaver in retaliation for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Two employees of a TV production agency who were seriously injured in the incident escaped by luck. Their offices were in the same block as Charlie Hebdo’s office.