The Chechen teenager who killed a French professor because he showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class contacted the student's parent, who launched a hate campaign against the victim on social media.
A source from the French police told Reuters that the attacker sent a text message and that it is not clear whether the parent - the father of the Muslim girl - responded to it.
BFM television reported that he had been exchanging messages with the killer via Whatsapp in the days leading up to the attack.
Eighteen-year-old Abdulah Anzorov, a refugee from Chechnya, beheaded history teacher Samuel Pati on Friday outside the school where he worked in the Paris suburb of Conflans.
Anzor was killed by the police shortly after the attack.
Hours after the crime, social media is being pointed at for helping to motivate the killer to commit the crime and allowing him to take responsibility moments later.
Prime Minister Jean Castex yesterday in the parliament, where a minute's silence was held in honor of the professor, said that France needs a law against endangering the lives of others through social networks.
"Things started on social media and ended on social media," said Gabriel Atal, a spokesman for the French government. "We have to try harder to get them under control."
Brahim Šnina, the girl's father, published three videos in which he harshly criticizes Pati, demands that he be fired and calls on people to take action.
Šnina also went to the school director to complain, and in the video posted on Facebook, he revealed the name of the professor and the school.
He is one of 16 people in custody over the gruesome killing that shocked a country whose democratic values the government says are under attack from within.
Pati will be posthumously awarded France's highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
Prosecutors said the attacker approached the students and asked to show him Pati when he was on his way home.
French media reported that the four who are being questioned by the police are students who received money from the killer.
It is not known whether they knew about his plan.
The fact that the killer came all the way from Evre, 80 km to the west, shows that he learned about Pati and the outrage of Muslims from videos on the Internet.
The videos were widely shared and some students and parents at the school said they were sent multiple times.
At least one of the recordings could still be seen Monday evening on Brahim Šnina's Facebook account.
He made one of the recordings with the help of Andelahim Sefriui, an Islamist militant who was on the radar of the intelligence services and who was also detained.
After killing Pati, Anzorov posted on Twitter a photo of a severed head in the street, addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, the "leader of the infidels", and boasted of killing "one of your dogs from hell who dared to disparage Muhammad".
Officials and politicians say Pati's killing will inevitably precipitate legislation in France and the EU that would hold social networks accountable for the sometimes inflammatory content posted by their users.
Facebook and Twitter have already come under pressure in Europe, the US and Asia to curb the spread of fake news and hate speech and stop turning a blind eye to promoting violence.
Last year, the platforms promised to improve their monitoring capacity and introduced a new policy against hate speech, after a white racist killed 51 people in an attack on two mosques in New Zealand and broadcast the video live on Facebook.
Facebook and YouTube have come under fire for helping extremist groups recruit, radicalize and organize — because their algorithms tend to steer users toward provocative content.
Lately, the rise of armed militia platforms in the US ahead of the presidential election, and the bizarre Quanon (QAnon) cult, have caused concern.
YouTube said last Sunday that, following the example of Twitter and Facebook, it is taking additional steps to limit Cuannon and other conspiracy theories that can lead to actual violence.
Cuannon portrays US President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against an alleged child trafficking ring run by celebrities and government officials from the "deep state".
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmann said that after the murder, 80 investigations were launched against those who justified the crime or said that the professor "deserved" it.
President Macron is increasingly concerned about what he calls Islamist separatism - an attempt by elements in France's large Muslim community to place conservative Islamic beliefs above the traditional values of the French Republic in some communities.
Macron said that the government has intensified its action against Islamist extremism in recent days.
Yesterday, the authorities ordered the closure of a mosque in a Paris suburb that shared a video on Facebook in which Šnina called for Pati to be fired and called him a bandit.
Macron's government prepared a law against online hate in May, but its key provisions, including the obligation of social networks to delete hate speech within 24 hours, as well as the requirement for transparency, were overturned by the Constitutional Council in June on the basis of freedom of speech.
Leticija Avia, who drafted the law, described the murder of Pati as a tragedy that "reminds everyone that social networks are a breeding ground for dangerous content."
She said she is continuing activities on the matter both in France and in Brussels, where the European Commission is scheduled to present its new law on digital services in December.
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