PARIS — The suspect in the beheading of a background instructor in a Paris suburb was an 18-yr-previous immigrant of Chechen descent who was angered by the classroom show of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, French officials explained on Saturday.
The suspect, recognized by the authorities as Abdoulakh A., stalked the place outdoors the college on Friday afternoon in advance of following the instructor, whom he stabbed and decapitated with a knife, Jean-François Ricard, the leading antiterrorism prosecutor, explained at a information conference.
“The personal was in front of the university in the afternoon and asked college students to indicate the long term victim to him,’’ Mr. Ricard explained, referring to the middle college the place the instructor had taught. The suspect was fatally shot by the police in a confrontation quickly just after the killing.
Investigators discovered a message organizing the assault on the suspect’s cellphone, written a couple of hrs in advance of, Mr. Ricard explained. Then, shortly in advance of he was killed by the police, the suspect uploaded a photograph of the victim to Twitter, he extra.
The gruesome killing appeared to be the culmination of a couple of weeks of stress at the college, School du Bois-d’Aulne, in a quiet, middle-class suburb north of Paris. Muslim mothers and fathers upset above the classroom show of two caricatures published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had contacted college and police officials, but movies uploaded on social media by 1 father widened the dispute to an outdoors audience.
Investigators have been even now attempting to piece with each other how the suspect invested his days in advance of the assault, Mr. Ricard explained. But the suspect did not seem to have any direct ties to the college or to have been previously concerned in the dispute.
Born in Moscow, the suspect lived in France with the standing of a refugee, Mr. Ricard explained, incorporating that he was not identified to antiterrorism officials.
The brutal killing was the 2nd violent episode inside weeks to be linked to the caricatures published by Charlie Hebdo, which had led to deadly attacks in Paris in 2015. Final month, as the trial of accomplices in the 2015 assault acquired underway, the magazine republished the drawings — an act that was observed as a daring statement in the title of freedom of expression by some but as reckless and pointless provocation by many others.
Final month, a 25-yr-previous Pakistani immigrant attacked two persons outdoors the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, apparently angered just after viewing movies displaying protests in Pakistan towards the republication of the cartoons.
Past its brutality, Friday’s killing hit a far larger nerve in France as President Emmanuel Macron and other leading government officials rushed to the scene on Friday evening.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, the minister of nationwide training, explained that in Friday’s killing, it was “the republic that was attacked.’’ France explained a ceremony would be organized to pay out nationwide homage to the slain instructor.
The minister’s phrases reflected the central position played by France’s public colleges — hewing to a nationwide curriculum established by the central government — in instilling civic values and a nationwide identity. But they also underscored the recurring tensions concerning France’s standard republican values and individuals of newer arrivals, particularly individuals of Muslim faith who oppose the publication of the caricatures.
The tensions at School du Bois-d’Aulne emerged early this month as the instructor — who was 47 and, in accordance to mothers and fathers and college students, had taught at the college for only couple of many years — broached the subject of freedom of expression.