Four Students Charged Over The Murder Of School Teacher In France

Four teenage students have been charged on Thursday, in France over the murder of Samuel Paty, as well as other three students for allegedly pointing out the teacher to his murderer.

Three other pupils were charged with complicity earlier this month over the last month murder of Samuel Paty, who had shown his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a lesson on free speech. The students were suspected of identifying Paty to his killer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, who then tracked him down and beheaded him in a street near his school.

Three of the four students, who are between 13 and 14 years old, are being charged with “complicity in a terrorist murder”, while the fourth is the daughter of Brahim Chnina, who launched a virulent online campaign against Paty denouncing the teacher’s use of the cartoons published by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo

She has been charged with “slanderous denunciation” of Paty after relating her version of events in the classroom, though she did not actually attended his civics lesson.

Paty’s murder sparked a torrent of outrage that prompted President Emmanuel Macron to crack down on Islamist extremism and violence in a country reeling from a wave of jihadist attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 250 people.