In France, a teacher was murdered in the street on Friday after showing Mohamed cartoons in a lesson on faith. The perpetrator was shot by the police. It is a tragedy for France, two weeks after President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would tighten control of Islam extremism.
–
Agents made the gruesome discovery on Friday evening in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a town near Paris with about 30,000 inhabitants. Close to a school a man lay dead in the street. His throat was cut.
Shortly after the murder, someone on Twitter named Al Ansar had shared a photo from the scene of the crime with the message: “To marcon (sic), the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad. ” That account was taken offline not much later and is said to have belonged to an 18-year-old, the perpetrator who called himself ‘Chechen’ and was born in Moscow.
Immediately after the discovery, the police gave chase to the perpetrator, who was shot dead in neighboring Eragny. The man threatened the officers with a (fire) weapon. Later in the evening, four people, including a minor, were also arrested. The four are related to the killed offender.
The victim was a history and geography teacher who took a lesson about it two weeks ago secularism loved, or the division between state and faith. According to a police source, the teacher showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during that lesson, which would have caused dissatisfaction in some families of students. Parents demanded the dismissal of the man and according to the newspaper Le Figaro the teacher was threatened afterwards. He had filed a complaint with the police for this.
Macron: “Obscurantism will never win”
For President Macron, the murder is a bitter pill. Barely two weeks ago, he announced measures to safeguard the separation between church and state celebrated in France. Macron wanted to monitor imam training abroad and financing from abroad more strictly. He spoke of an Islam “which can exist in peace with the republic”.
Macron went to the site of the attack on Friday evening. There, he said that the teacher has been the victim of “an obvious Islamist-inspired terror attack,” and that “obscurantism will never win” and that the “entire nation” is on the side of the teachers to “protect” them.
Charlie Hebdo
The attack is reminiscent of that of January 2015, when at the office of Charlie Hebdo twelve people died in Paris. The satirical magazine had also published cartoons of the prophet. It would have been those cartoons that the teacher at the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine showed in his lesson. Three weeks ago was the editorial board of Charlie Hebdo the target of another attack, resulting in two injuries.
The investigation into the facts is conducted by the national terror police, which must determine whether there is an organization behind it. Chechens represent about a fifth of all radicalized Muslims in France, according to the chairman of the terrorism analysis center.
– .
