Suspect in teacher's beheading in France was Chechen teen
PARIS: A suspect shot dead by police after the gruesome beheading of a
history teacher in an attack near Paris on Friday was an 18-year-old
Chechen, police said.
France's anti-terrorism prosecutor's office
said that authorities investigating the horrific killing of the man in
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine have also arrested nine suspects, including the
grandparents, parents and 17-year-old brother of the attacker.
The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said.
Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus. Two wars in the 1990s triggered a wave of emigration, with many Chechens heading for western Europe.
France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in
recent months, believed linked to local criminal activity and
score-settling.
A police official said the suspect in Friday's
attack armed was shot dead about 600 meters (yards) from where the
teacher was killed. He was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun - which
fires plastic pellets - and police opened fire after he failed to
respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening
manner.
French President Emmanuel Macron
arrived quickly at the school on Friday night to denounce what he
called an "Islamist terrorist attack." He urged the nation to stand
united against extremism.
"One of our compatriots was murdered
today because he taught ... the freedom of expression, the freedom to
believe or not believe," Macron said.
The French anti-terrorism
prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist
motive, the prosecutor's office said.
It is the second time in three weeks that terror has struck France linked to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Last
month, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people
with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of the satirical
newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
The weekly was the target of a deadly newsroom attack in 2015, and it
republished caricatures of the prophet this month to underscore the
right to freedom of information as a trial opened linked to that attack.
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