rench police have arrested nine people over the beheading of a teacher near his school in a Paris suburb, a judicial source said on Saturday, in what President Emmanuel Macron labelled an Islamist terror attack.
The source said the killing was carried out by an 18-year-old Chechen, who was then shot and killed by police near the scene in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris.
Police said the victim was 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown his pupils some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as part of a class discussion on freedom of expression — a lesson that had prompted complaints from parents.
Two of the suspect’s brothers and his grandparents were initially detained by police for questioning.
The judicial source told AFP Saturday that five more people had been detained, including the parents of a child at the school and friends of the suspect.
According to the source, the parents had signalled their disagreement with the teacher’s decision to show the cartoons.
The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) as police confronted him, a cry often heard in jihadist attacks, a police source said.
French anti-terror prosecutors said they were treating the assault as “a murder linked to a terrorist organisation”.
Police said they were investigating a tweet posted from an account since shut down that showed a picture of the teacher’s head.
It was unclear whether the message, which contained a threat against Macron described as the leader of the infidels, had been posted by the attacker, they said.
