Samuel Paty: French schoolgirl admits lying about murdered teacher

By Dilip -

A French schoolgirl has admitted to spreading false claims about a teacher before he was murdered last year. Samuel Paty was beheaded in October after showing students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The girl, whose complaints sparked an online campaign against Paty, has now admitted that she was not in the class. Mr Paty's killing stunned France and led to an outpouring of support at memorial ceremonies and marches around the country.

The 13-year-old girl, who has not been officially named, originally told her father that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the classroom while he showed the cartoon during a class on free speech and blasphemy. According to evidence given by the girl seen by French media she said: "I didn't see the cartoons, it was a girl in my class who showed me them." "She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be a spokesperson," her lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told AFP news agency.

The girl's father filed a legal complaint against the teacher and began a social media campaign over the incident based on his daughter's account. He identified Paty and the school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris. Prosecutors said shortly after the killing that there was a "direct causal link" between the online incitement against Paty and his murder. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police shortly after the attack. It then emerged that the campaign against the history and geography teacher had been based on a distorted account of what had happened in class days earlier...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56325254

Press release: Muslim intellectuals, activists condemn Paris beheading, demand abolition of apostasy and blasphemy laws

French teachers vow to ‘teach difficult subjects’ after colleague’s murder


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