October 17, 2020

FRANCE: An Islamist Shouted Allahu Akbar Before Beheading A Teacher On The Street Because He Was Teaching About Freedom Of Expression. The Killer Posted A Photo Of The Decapitated Head On Twitter

euronews (in English) published October 16, 2020: Emmanuel Macron condemns 'Islamist terrorist attack' after teenager holding a knife is shot dead by police FRANCE 24 English published October 16, 2020: A man armed with a knife on Friday beheaded a middle school history teacher in front of his school in a suburb of Paris before he was shot dead by police.
BBC News, UK
written by Staff
Friday October 16, 2020

A teacher has been beheaded in a north-western suburb of Paris, with the attacker shot dead by police.

The victim is said to have shown controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his students.

The attack occurred at about 17:00 local time (15:00 GMT) near a school. Anti-terror prosecutors are investigating.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited the scene, calling the killing an "Islamist terrorist attack".

Mr. Macron said he was murdered because he "taught freedom of expression". The victim has not been named.

The knife-wielding attacker was shot as officers tried to arrest him in the aftermath of the attack. Police have not released any personal details about him.

A trial is currently under way in Paris over a 2015 Islamist assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted for publishing the cartoons.

Three weeks ago, a man attacked and wounded two people outside the magazine's former offices.

What do we know about what happened?

A man wielding a large knife attacked the teacher in a street in an area called Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, cutting off his head. The attacker then ran off, but local police alerted by the public were quickly at the scene.

The officers confronted the man in the nearby area of Éragny.

When they shouted at him to give himself up, he is said to have threatened them. The officers shot him and he died a short time later.

The scene is now sealed off, as the investigation continues.

In a tweet (in French), police urged members of the public to avoid the area..

Who was the victim?

According to Le Monde newspaper, the victim, a teacher of history and geography, had been talking in class about freedom of expression in connection with the Muhammad cartoons, which caused uproar among some Muslims when Charlie Hebdo published them.

Earlier this month, some Muslim parents complained to the school about the teacher's decision to use one or more of the cartoons as part of a discussion about the Charlie Hebdo trial, French media report.

Reacting to Friday's attack, Charlie Hebdo tweeted: "Intolerance just reached a new threshold and seems to stop at nothing to impose terror in our country."

If this motive for the killing is substantiated, it will be deeply shocking to the French, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris. They will see it as not just a brutal attack, he says, but a brutal attack on a teacher for carrying out his duty to explain.

France has seen a wave of Islamist violence since the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead, including famous cartoonists.

How is France reacting?

In the National Assembly, France's parliament, deputies stood up to honour the teacher killed on Friday and condemn the "atrocious terror attack".

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, travelling to Morocco, is returning urgently to Paris.

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer tweeted that the killing of a teacher was an attack on the French Republic.

He said his thoughts were with the victim and his family, and unity and firmness were the only responses to "Islamist terrorism".
BLM Antifa Resistance paramilitary wing for the Marxist Democrat party also kill people they hate because they don't think like them or because they are offended. The have already assassinated two American patriots who loved this country and freedom simply because they don't think like them. (emphasis mine)
The Charlotte Observer
written by Elaine Ganley, AP
Friday October 16, 2020

For the second time in three weeks, terror struck France, this time with the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in a street in a Paris suburb. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack” and urged the nation to stand united against extremism. The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive. Four people, one a minor, were detained hours later, the office of anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said without elaborating. Police typically fan out to find family and friends of potential suspects in terror cases.

Macron visited the school where the teacher worked in the town of Conflans-Saint-Honorine and met with staff after the slaying. An Associated Press reporter saw three ambulances at the scene, and heavily armed police surrounding the area and police vans lining leafy nearby streets.

“One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught ... the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,” Macron said.

He said the attack shouldn’t divide France because that’s what the extremists want. “We must stand all together as citizens,” he said.

The incident came as Macron’s government works on a bill to address Islamist radicals who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside the values of the French Republic. France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country’s No. 2 religion.

A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun — which fires plastic pellets — was shot dead about 600 meters (yards) from where the male teacher was killed after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening manner.

The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago, the police official told The Associated Press. The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said, adding that the suspected killer did not have a child at the school.

An ID card was found at the scene but police were verifying the identity, the police official said. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed.

France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, in the Dijon region, the Mediterranean city of Nice, and the western town of Saint-Dizier, believed linked to local criminal activity.

It was not known what link, if any, the attacker might have with the teacher or whether he had accomplices. Police were fanning out on searches of homes and potential family and friends of the man in question, the police official said.

The two officials could not be named because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing investigations.

“We didn't see this coming,” Conflans resident Remi Tell, who as a child had attended the Bois D'Aulne middle school, said on CNews TV station. He described the town as peaceful.

It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial for the January 2015 newsroom massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had published caricatures of the prophet of Islam.

As the trial started, the paper republished caricatures of the prophet to underscore the right of freedom of expression. Quickly, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the newspaper's former offices. They did not suffer threatening injuries.The 18-year-old told police he was upset about the publication of the caricatures.

In a video posted recently on social media, a man describing himself as a father at the school said the teacher who was slain had recently shown an offensive image of a man and told students it was “the prophet of the Muslims.” Before showing the images, the teacher asked Muslim children to leave the room because he planned to show something shocking, the man said.

“What was the message he wanted to send these children? ... Why does a history teacher behave this way in front of 13-year-olds?” the man asked. He called on other angry parents to contact him, and relay the message.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published November 8, 2019: Chechen Leader Threatens Killing For Online 'Gossip'. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said online commentators should be track downed and killed for assaults on honor.
I'm sharing this information with you because people are saying the killer was not a Muslim because he's a Chechen born in Moscow. For those of you who don't know, Chechnya is predominantly Muslim.  From what I just read 95% of Chechnya are Muslim to be exact. (emphasis mine) 
[BBC May 21, 2020] Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is one of the most powerful and most feared men in Russia.

For more than a decade the Kremlin has relied on him to maintain order in Chechnya - the Russian North Caucasus republic he has ruled like a personal fiefdom.

Human rights groups have accused him of a string of abuses, including the forced disappearance of opponents, torture and the persecution of homosexuals.

Mr Kadyrov has voiced strong support for the pro-Putin rebels in eastern Ukraine and for Russia's annexation of Crimea. He is on the EU and US sanctions lists, which target many close associates of President Putin.

Working with Islam

Mr Kadyrov continued his late father's successful work in co-opting Chechnya's main Sufi Muslim Brotherhood, the Qadiriya.

"The Muslim Brotherhood had always been hostile to Russia, but for the first time in history it had been turned into an ally against Islamists," according to Shishani.

Mr Kadyrov developed a direct relationship with the Kremlin, bypassing Russia's bureaucratic state institutions - another convenient arrangement for both sides.

It paid off for Mr Kadyrov, as Russia funded the reconstruction of infrastructure in Chechnya, including new roads and a giant mosque in the republic's capital, Grozny.

Such projects are good public relations for Mr Kadyrov, but do little to create much-needed local jobs, Shishani says.
UPDATE 10/17/20 at 10:25am: Added info below.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:44 PM

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