The mayor Les Républicains of La Baule (Loire-Atlantique), Franck Louvrier, said Friday, in the preamble of the city council, to have received death threats in early May, reports France 3.
"I received at the town hall, at the beginning of the month, threats under anonymity which were translated, in the same mailing, by photos of the decapitated head of Samuel Paty and another of the Bataclan massacre," he says. The message suggested that these tragedies could be repeated in La Baule.
Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was beheaded in October 2020 by a radicalized Islamist, after showing caricatures of Mohammed in class during a class on freedom of expression. During the Bataclan attacks on November 13, 2015, claimed by the Islamic State, 90 people were killed.
"We are within reach of violent acts"
The elected official explains that he is talking about these threats publicly because of recent events. In early May, Yannick Morez, mayor of the neighboring town of Saint-Brévin, resigned after his home burned down and received several death threats.
"In the current climate it is my duty to talk to you about it, in a democracy we cannot tolerate that violence replaces political debate," said Franck Louvrier Friday, "we were to bear slaps, as it was commonly said, we are within reach of violent and even criminal acts."
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Members of the municipal opposition have given their support to the edile, reports France 3, such as Laetitia English, of the group Avenir, who recalled that "threats against an elected official are morally intolerable, punishable criminally and incomprehensible in a democratic society of which the elected representative is the representative". For Jean-Yves Gontier (Renaissance) these threats are "unacceptable".
The mayor states that the judicial police of Nantes "immediately seized the investigation". He assures the city council of his "determination to fight unambiguously against these extremes, all extremes, with an unequivocal speech and actions".