Maria Laura Avignolo
10/17/2020 4:05 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 10/17/2020 5:16 PM
France continues to be horrified by the Islamist terrorist attack that beheaded Samuel Paty, a history teacher, for teaching freedom of expression and secularism, the foundations of the Republic of France, to his 13-year-old high school students.
The attacker was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Russia and a political refugee in Evreux, Normandy, unknown to the secret services, in the name of radical Islam.
The justice has accused him of "murder in connection with a terrorist company" and "association of terrorist criminals", according to the anti-terrorist attorney Jean Francois Ricard.
A crime that is going to have a huge impact on education in France
, the protection of its teachers and the secular bond between Muslims in the country and the republic.
The school in France is the backbone of the Republic, where they train their free citizens, whether they believe in a religion or not.
The murder of an educator is a call to hatred
and dangerous community division, when many Salafi Muslims do not want to send their daughters to school or to gymnastics and swimming classes.
"I am a teacher", say the posters of a group of teachers, in support of their colleague who was beheaded on Friday in front of the school where he taught.
Photo: AFP
Not even his Chechen family knew of his radicalization.
Ten people are in "garde a vue" (provisional detention), including his mother, his younger brother, his grandparents, the father of the student who reported the teacher on the Internet and a man who spread it, booked by the secret services for Islamist radicalization, and another parent.
The latest detainee has not been identified.
The sister of the producer of the video traveled to Syria to join the jihadist group ISIS.
Who was the teacher
Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was beheaded on Friday by Abdoulak Abouyezidvitch A., an 18-year-old business security officer, who was shot 11 times by police in a residential neighborhood in Val d 'Oise, on the outskirts of Paris, after taking responsibility for the attack by
showing his decapitated head on social networks
.
A horrifying act, which began to unfold on October 4, step by step.
It was when Professor Paty decided, in his civic instruction class, to
explain freedom of expression by showing the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad
, published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, to his high school students in Conflans Sainte Honorine, in Yvelines, 35 kilometers from Paris.
"Freedom, equality, fraternity", reads the poster at the school where the teacher assassinated by an Islamic extremist taught.
Photo: AFP
He asked Muslim students to leave the class
because they might see “images offensive to their beliefs.” A 13-year-old Muslim woman refused to do so and remained in the classroom.
Two days later
the father of the student uploaded a video to YouTube asking for solidarity in the mobilization to kick the teacher out
.
Simultaneously, with his daughter, he went to the police on October 8 to denounce Samuel Paty for "pornography in front of minors."
Her daughter's account said that she had shown the Prophet Muhammad naked to the minors in the class.
Paty was summoned to the police on October 12, explained his class and simultaneously
denounced those who attacked him for "defamation and libelous denunciation
.
"
The director of the high school summoned the two parents who demanded that the teacher resign.
Two days later, the same father published the teacher's name, address and telephone number on social media.
His video was broadcast in different mosques in France, at the time of prayers.
It was initially viewed by 27,000 people, including the terrorist who carried out the beheading.
A death foretold
Thus begins the story of an announced death.
The teacher was threatened with death
, as were his high school classmates.
The terrorist arrived at school last Friday, before class was dismissed.
He began to ask who Professor Samuel was to the students themselves.
When Samuel leaves school he is identified.
The terrorist attacks him in the abdomen, on the head and beheads him in the vicinity of the high school
.
Then he uploads a macabre video to Twitter, to his account Tchétchène 270, with the head of the murdered professor, with a violent claim.
"Macron, I executed one of your hell dogs," was his message on the networks.
"I am Samuel", tributes to the professor assassinated in another attack that moves France.
Photo: AFP
The high school called the police, after some students reported the presence of a stranger asking for the teacher.
When they arrived, Abdoulak Anzorovov had already committed his monstrous act.
He was walking through a wooded and residential neighborhood in the neighboring commune in Val d'Oise, with
two bloody knives
.
The police from the criminal squad ordered him to stop, throw the knife away.
Abdoulak shouted: "Allah is Great", tried to attack the policemen and was killed with eleven shots.
Neighbors recorded the screams and his death live from their balconies in Ergany, half an hour from Paris.
It was 5:30 in the afternoon.
The country was facing an act of hatred, which had nothing to envy to the massacre of
Charlie Hebdo
journalists
and the attacks that occurred since 2015. This time the drama was aimed at teachers, education, the soul of France.
Who was the attacker
The antiterrorist prosecutor detailed the murder agenda on Saturday, when hundreds of French people convened in front of the high school to lay flowers and pay tribute to a "calm, pedagogical, friendly" teacher, who had
died in the name of freedom of expression
.
A neighborhood shocked by barbarism, with many people as direct witnesses and with a group of psychologists, in a crisis cell, helping them.
According to the official, the terrorist was in front of the high school on Friday afternoon and had asked the students to mark the teacher.
On his phone they found a text claiming the attack, written at 12:57 p.m., and a macabre photograph of his victim, at 4:57 p.m. on Friday.
Laurent Brosse, mayor of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, where the attack occurred on Friday, and other authorities, in a tribute, this Saturday, to the murdered professor.
Photo: AP
He had received a residence letter from the police prefecture on March 4.
His parents had bought him a car to go to work as a security officer.
He had come to France when he was 6 years old, fleeing with his family from the civil war in Chechnya.
The father of the student, who stayed in the class and later informed this man about the class with the cartoons, is at the heart of the investigation.
He was arrested in Chanteloup les Vignes and was placed in provisional detention together with another radicalized person who was booked by the intelligence services.
Tribute at school
After President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the high school on Friday to comfort his teachers and his famous phrase: "They will not pass, they will not divide us", hundreds of pupils, teachers and students with their parents came spontaneously from all over the region on Saturday to Bois d'Aulne to pay homage to him and
claim freedom
and the republic that guarantees it.
"Je suis Samuel" (I am Samuel) were the posters that his students showed, in tears.
A replica of “Je suis Charlie”, which was imposed in France when two ISIS terrorists murdered Charlie Hebdo journalists in 2015. They were joined by their parents and other teachers.
But
many students do not want to go back to school
.
"I can't believe that my son's teacher had his head cut off," said a father at the demonstration.
"My son goes to this school and he never wants to go back," he said.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, visited the school where the murdered teacher taught on the same Friday.
Photo: EFE
Marcial is 16 years old and goes to the same high school.
He had Monsieur Paty as a teacher 3 years ago.
"When I saw on television" Professor, Bois d'Aulne-decapitation, I established the direct link: "It is Mr. Paty," he said. He found out when he returned from his soccer training.
Virginie was his student too and recalled that every year since 2015, "Monsieur Paty did the same."
“It was to talk about freedom in relation to the Charlie Hebdo bombing.
He showed the images, the cartoons, ”he recalled.
There is now the risk of self-censorship from the teachers themselves
, who feel a threat when they teach.
“To kill a teacher is to kill the will to open the world to children.
At the symbol level, there is nothing worse than killing a teacher, ”said Iannis Roder, who has taught for 20 years at a school in Seine Saint Denis, an immigrant neighborhood, five minutes from Paris.
Secularism the soul of France
"Education was struck to the heart," described former President Francois Hollande.
“We are in a long war against Islamist terrorism.
We must live with this but combat this phenomenon and think that there will be all other victims.
We must prepare the French for this, ”said the former head of state.
"We have won battles but we have not won the war," he concluded.
France defends its secular law, founded in 1905. It is nothing more than
a clear separation of the church from the state
.
“The republic ensures freedom of conscience.
It guarantees the free exercise of worship under the only restriction established in the interest of public order ”.
It is a set of constitutional principles that separates political power from religious organizations.
The republic does not recognize or pay for or subsidize any cult but it does not combat any religion.
"I am a teacher and I will continue teaching freedom of expression," reads the poster, during a demonstration to condemn the attack on Friday.
Photo: AFP
But the jihadist Muslim Salafists, a rigorous version of Islam that supports holy warfare, sees secularism as an attack on their own religion.
His target is the republican school, which does not allow religious signs inside and accepts blasphemy, a "crime" that is paid with the death penalty for jihadists and radical Islam in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
A national tribute will be held across the country on Wednesday, led by President Emmanuel Macron.
Commotion among Muslims
Muslims in France reacted in horror to this new terrorist act, which they pay with suspicion in their work, in the street, in public services, in search of a job.
“Every time there is an attack, there is tension in our community and among the refugees.
We fear that we will be stigmatized.
Not everyone understands that jihadism is not Islam, that our religion is moderate, respectful of another belief, that the prophet would have condemned this monstrous act, "said Mohammed, a Sudanese political refugee from Nancy, who signed the" republican contract "that requires France to those who come seeking asylum.
The great imam of Bordeaux, Tarek Oubrou stated that “God has given man permission to caricature the divine.
Theologically it is established in the texts ”.
He called for "sticking together" and "not giving in to division."
The terrorist's family was also horrified at the act.
An uncle of the attacker expressed his “condolences to the family of the victim and all of France.
We hope they accept them. "
“The Chechen community is not like that.
We are grateful to France.
There is someone behind this boy.
It is the Internet, social networks.
It wasn't like that, ”he told BFMTV.
March on sunday
Charlie Hebdo
summoned the country to a tribute in the place de la Republique, on Sunday at 3 in the afternoon.
A support "to the body of teachers, for freedom, against terror", is the call.
The editorial staff of the magazine issued a statement to express “their feeling of horror and rebellion after a professor in the exercise of his profession was assassinated by a religious fanatic.
We express our most lively support to the family, to those close to us and to the teachers.
Intolerance comes from taking a new step and seems not to back down for anything to impose its terror on the country.
Only the determination of political power and the solidarity of all will make this fascist ideology fail, ”wrote Charlie Hebdo.
Politicians have joined
the mobilization
: from the left with Jean Luc Melenchon to former Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
Education Minister Jean Michel Blanquer expressed his solidarity for all teachers in France.
“This act has roots.
It is hatred, hatred for the Republic.
There are clearly enemies of the republic and against the school.
Because the school is the backbone of the Republic, "he said." That is why our response must be at the height. A republican strategy will be launched in the face of this heinous act, "he concluded.
The biggest challenge will not only be to stop the division but also the fear of teachers to teach freely and without pressure in the schools of France.
Paris, correspondent
CB