A 43-year-old man already incarcerated at a French prison in Amiens was sentenced to a further eight months by a court after he praised the terrorist attacker who killed and beheaded French teacher Samuel Paty.
The man had previously been found guilty of contempt of court and during a training exercise with fellow inmates on October 19th, had spoken positively about the murder of Mr Paty saying, “It’s good for him, he (the terrorist) did the job well, don’t touch my religion, my prophet.”
His comments came just days after Samuel Paty had been beheaded in the street by a Chechen teen radical Islamic terrorist, and other inmates said they were offended by the remarks, Franceinfo reports.
In court, the 43-year-old apologized for his statements saying, “I reacted foolishly, I thought that the teacher had mocked the students and that he had asked to make caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Paty had shown cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that were published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his class prior to his murder while illustrating a point about freedom of expression to his pupils.
Following the incident, the father of a student at the school launched a social media campaign alongside a well-known French Islamist radical. The father was also later revealed to have been in contact with the teen who murdered Paty and was subsequently arrested after the murder.
The 43-year-old man also claimed in court that the Islamic holy book, the Qu;’ran, forbids killing and said he would have protested the murder if he were not in prison. In the past, he has also allegedly stated there were “too many white people in France” and stated, “more attacks are needed.”
Djamila Berriah, the man’s lawyer, stated that he would be appealing the verdict and argued that his client had psychiatric problems and called the case “absolutely scandalous.”
Days after the murder of Mr Paty, French police raided over 80 extremists who expressed support or the murder of the French teacher and took eleven people into custody.
Since then, French President Emmanuel Macron and his government have made moves to shut down Islamist groups and have earned criticism abroad from Islamist leaders such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.