French school pupil, 17, is arrested for threatening to behead his teacher ‘like Samuel Paty’
- The pupil sent a Snapchat asking students to ‘threaten with death’ the teacher
- French police said the teenager also wrote: ‘I’m going to make a Samuel Paty’
- Mr Paty was beheaded in October after using cartoons of Mohammed in a lesson
A 17-year-old French high school pupil has been arrested for threatening to behead his teacher ‘like Samuel Paty’.
The male pupil, from Annecy, a town in southeastern France, sent a message in a private Snapchat group asking other pupils to ‘threaten with death’ one of their school teachers.
French police said the teenager also wrote: ‘I’m going to make a Samuel Paty’.
A 17-year-old French high school pupil has been arrested for threatening to behead his teacher ‘like Samuel Paty’
Mr Paty, 47, was beheaded near his school in a Paris suburb by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, also a Chechen, on October 16.
The teacher was killed after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad for a debate on freedom of expression.
A high school pupil, who was shocked by the violence of the words in the Snapchat message, warned the threatened teacher anonymously.
‘They sent the teacher an anonymous email to warn her,’ Annecy police told France Bleu.
A French school pupil threatened to behead his teacher in a chilling echo of last month’s terror attack in France in which Samuel Paty (pictured) was beheaded
The teacher filed a police complaint after seeing the Snapchat screenshot and anonymous email, leading to the arrest of the teenager at his parents’ home after he admitted to sending the messages.
He had reportedly explained that he ‘had problems last year with this teacher’ and ‘wanted to joke’.
The teenager had had a dispute with the teacher last year and was no longer in their class so he decided to ask the other pupil to send death threats to the teacher, according to La Voix du Nord.
In police custody, the teenager, who was ‘known for his behavioural problems in several establishments, admitted the facts but said he did not intend to kill the teacher,’ said Captain Sandra Bernard, a Annecy police officer. The teacher is now on sick leave.
The pupil was presented to a juvenile judge at a court in Annecy for death threats against a person entrusted with a public service mission and provocation of a minor to the commission of a crime or an offence.
Pupils left messages to the teacher reading ‘Thank you Mr. Paty to have taught us History and Freedom of Speech, We love you’ (left) and ‘Hommage to Mr. Paty’ (right)
The terror attack in France has been followed by a wave of anger against Emmanuel Macron (pictured next to Paty’s coffin in Paris last month) throughout the Muslim world
Paty’s murder sparked a torrent of outrage that prompted President Emmanuel Macron to crack down on Islamist extremism and violence in a country reeling from a wave of jihadist attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 250 people.
Since the attack, there have been a number of cases whereby French schoolchildren have been making threats to attack their own teachers.
In November, police in France questioned four 10-year-olds who voiced support for the beheading of Samuel Paty and who said they would kill their own teacher if he lampooned Islam’s prophet.
‘They justified the teacher’s assassination by arguing that it was forbidden to offend the prophet and adding that they would kill their teacher if he caricatured the prophet,’ Interior Ministry spokeswoman Camille Chaize said.
Last week, a 14-year-old French pupil threatened his teacher as she showed photos of a demonstration sparked by the attack on Charli Hebdo.
The teenager, from Savigny-le-Temple, allegedly told his teacher in class: ‘I’ll cut you up like Samuel Paty’.
The pupil, who is Muslim, was arrested and charged for the death threat and for carrying a weapon, according to Le Parisien.