Teacher received threats before he was beheaded

– It is a new step that a history professor is killed in the open. The fight against Islamo-fascism is ongoing, says Eva Joly to TV 2.

Joly is a former presidential candidate in France, and is also known as a corruption hunter.

The term “Islamofascism” draws parallels between certain variants of Islam and the European fascist movements of the last century.

Joly describes the horrific beheading of the teacher in her late 40s in a suburb northwest of Paris as dramatic and outrageous.

– You attack a history professor because he teaches what it means to have freedom of speech, says Joly.

The teacher who had his neck cut off taught about free speech and had shown a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

– One of our countrymen was murdered because he taught, because he taught his students about freedom of speech, the freedom to believe or not believe. Our compatriot was cowardly attacked and fell victim to an Islamist terrorist attack, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday night.

Nine in interrogation Saturday

The perpetrator is an 18-year-old Chechen born in Moscow. According to Europe 1, he received a residence permit in March 2020, when he came of age.

Nine people, among them minors, have been taken in for questioning after the terrorist attack. Four of them are said to be related to the suspected perpetrator.

Was threatened

The victim was a history teacher at the secondary school level, and discussed the Muhammad caricatures in the teaching, for which he received threats.

French Senator Bruno Retaillleau told Europe 1 that the teacher had received threats over several days and that he had no police protection.

Residents of the suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, where the crime took place, are in shock.

– A friend of mine walked past the scene and warned that we had to be careful, says a father who lives about a hundred meters from the school to Europe 1.

One of those arrested is said to be the parent of one of the students where the teacher taught, reports AFP. According to Le Parisien, the person in question must have expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the teacher showed a cartoon of Muhammad.

According to Le Figaro, the teacher had been reported to the police, and a request had been made to the principal that he be fired.

– People are completely shaken

The news of the murder comes at the same time as a trial is underway in the wake of the terrorist attack on the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, in which twelve people were killed.

The reason Charlie Hebdo became the target of the attack was that the satire magazine had printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad several times.

– People are completely shaken. This may affect them even more because it was a schoolteacher who was beheaded in this cruel way. It is not long ago that we had an attack on what was thought to be Charlie Hebdo’s offices, where two were seriously injured for the same reason. Now the level of terrorism is extremely high in France, says journalist Vibeke Knoop Rachline to TV 2.

Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide (H) and Prime Minister Erna Solberg (H) also react strongly to the murder.

– Serious and cruel news about the terrorist act in France. We must stand together against attacks on freedom of thought and enlightenment. My thoughts go to the victim’s loved ones, colleagues and students, they write on Twitter.

(TV 2/NTB)