France woke up today in shock a day after the "Islamist, terrorist attack" during which an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin beheaded a teacher who showed his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, in a country where religious separatism is being debated.
The murder took place three weeks after an Islamist attack in which a Pakistani man injured two people with an ax near the former editorial office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
"Islamist terror hits school", headlined the newspaper Figaro, while the newspaper Parisien wrote "Fear" on the front page. Today, the French press writes about the attack, while the introduction of a curfew and a sanitary emergency due to the coronavirus epidemic is on the back burner.
A total of nine people have been detained since the attack that took place on the western outskirts of Paris.
According to the parents' association, the professor called the students of the Muslim faith to leave the classroom and showed the others caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during the discussion. The association added that the father of one student objected to such a class.
The identity of the attacker has been confirmed by investigators. The professor of history and geography was killed by a Russian of Chechen origin who was born in Moscow and is 18 years old. He killed a teacher near the Conflans-Saint-Honorin school, and he was killed by the police about 200 meters from the scene of the murder.
The attacker had no police record, nor was he known for radicalism.
Today, the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer will hold a meeting with representatives of the authorities, the school where the murdered teacher worked, as well as with the parents of the students.
During the day, the prosecution against terrorism will present the first elements of the investigation.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the scene of the murder last night.
Outside France, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, reacted, sending her condolences to the family and the French.
The killing occurred after an attack near the former Charlie Hebdo newsroom after the weekly, whose headquarters are now in an unknown location, republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The trial of the accomplices of the attack that took place on January 7, 2015, when 12 journalists and cartoonists of that newspaper were killed, is ongoing in Paris. In France, then, a wave of jihadist attacks began, unprecedented in that country, in which 241 people died.
Ten months after the attack in January, a second, even bigger terrorist attack took place in Paris on November 13, when 130 people were killed and more than 350 were injured.
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