PARIS — A knife-wielding man decapitated a instructor close to a college in a suburb north of Paris on Friday afternoon and was later shot lifeless by the police, officers stated, abruptly hitting France with a nationwide trauma that revived reminiscences of current terrorist assaults.
A police officer and fogeys with data of the assault confirmed French media stories that the sufferer was a historical past instructor on the faculty who had proven caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a category on freedom of expression, which had incited anger amongst some Muslim households.
The instructor, nonetheless unidentified by Friday night, was instantly depicted as a martyr to freedom of expression throughout the political spectrum. Representatives in France’s Parliament rose to “honor the sufferer’s reminiscence,” the president of the session, parliamentary deputy Hugues Renson, declared because the deputies stood. And President Emmanuel Macron hurried to the scene of the assault Friday night time.
“This was an try to strike down the republic,” Mr. Macron stated.
Seizing on the symbolic nature of an assault towards a highschool instructor, and reprising anti-Islamist themes he has lately emphasized, Mr. Macron stated the instructor had been “the sufferer of a terrorist, Islamist assault.”
The instructor was struck down “as a result of he taught, as a result of he taught the freedom of expression, the freedom to imagine and never imagine,” the French president stated in a quick televised tackle.
France’s antiterrorism prosecutors instantly took over the investigation of the assault, which occurred on the junction of two adjoining Paris suburbs, Eragny and Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
A lot remained obscure Friday night time within the absence of an official police narrative. However the underlying themes of what was identified conjured up France’s current historical past of terrorist assaults: an assailant rigorously selecting a sufferer thought to represent an offense towards Islam.
Turmoil on the faculty over the instructor’s methodology of instruction — Mr. Macron alluded to this in his remarks — had evidently preceded the killing. “We’ve got seen the principal, who in these final weeks has withstood with outstanding braveness a substantial amount of strain,” Mr. Macron stated.
In a video that extensively circulated on YouTube earlier than the assault, a Muslim father or mother on the instructor’s faculty, School du Bois-d’Aulne, expresses anger that an unidentified instructor had requested Muslims within the class of 13-year-olds to depart as a result of “he was going to point out a photograph that may shock them.”
The father or mother asks on the video: “Why this hatred? Why does a historical past instructor act like this in entrance of 13-year-olds?”
The assailant just isn’t identified to have a connection to the varsity. French media reported that he was 18 and of Russian origin.
A police union official advised the French tv station BFM that witnesses had seen the assailant reducing the sufferer’s throat. The nationwide police have been known as, officers stated, and after having found the decapitated sufferer, confronted the assailant close by, near the varsity. Brandishing a big knife, he threatened the officers, and after refusing to give up, was shot 10 instances, they stated.
French media, quoting witnesses, stated the assailant was heard to yell “Allahu akbar” in the mean time of the knife assault. {A photograph} of a corpse mendacity in the midst of a leafy suburban avenue appeared on French tv not lengthy afterward.
The assault got here three weeks after a knife-wielding assailant wounded two people in Paris close to the positioning of the previous Charlie Hebdo workplace — the scene of a 2015 terrorist assault focusing on the satirical newspaper for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
French officers of all political stripes rushed to denounce the instructor’s killing. The inside minister, answerable for the police, minimize quick an official journey to Morocco and flew house to Paris.
“The assassination of a historical past instructor is an assault on freedom of expression and the values of the republic,” the president of the Nationwide Meeting, Richard Ferrand, stated on Twitter. “To assault a instructor is to assault all French residents and freedom.”
“Frightful. Big emotion and anger within the face of this terrorist barbarism,” a number one Socialist parliamentarian, Boris Vallaud, wrote on Twitter.
Within the video, the father or mother particulars what his daughter advised him had transpired within the class.
“So this week, he allowed himself to inform them, the Muslims, Muslim college students elevate your palms,” the dad and mom says. “In order that they raised their palms, and he stated, ‘proper, depart the category.’ So my daughter refused to depart and requested him, ‘why?’ And he stated he was going to point out a photograph that may shock them. After which he confirmed them a unadorned man, telling them it was the prophet.”
One other father or mother, Carine Mendes, 41, whose little one had attended the category, provided a extra nuanced view of what occurred. She known as the instructor “a really candy particular person, in his phrases, in his expressions.”
Ms. Mendes stated the instructor had urged to Muslim college students who didn’t wish to see the cartoon that they depart the classroom quickly, and had requested those that remained to not inform their Muslim classmates in regards to the cartoon so as to not offend their religion.
“He actually tried to do issues with respect, he didn’t wish to harm anybody,” she stated.
However in a second class the place the instructor gave the course, a shocked pupil refused to depart the room and advised her father about what occurred. He was the daddy who later complained within the video posted on-line.
The following day, the instructor apologized to his college students and the principal despatched an electronic mail message to folks to attempt to clear up the state of affairs. The instructor’s suggestion to depart the classroom, the principal stated, had been insensitive.
“With out eager to offend anybody, it turned out that by providing this risk to the scholars, he nonetheless offended the scholar,” the principal’s electronic mail learn.
Ms. Mendes stated that what occurred “was terrible.”
“He was simply giving a course on freedom of expression,” she stated.
“A instructor was killed only for doing his job,” Sophie Venetitay, a lecturers’ union official, advised BFM.
Fixed Méheut and Antonella Francini contributed reporting.
