The teenager whose accusations of Islamophobia were a major contributing factor to Samuel Paty’s beheading last October had admitted she lied about being in his class when the teacher showed cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
The 13-year-old, who was the origin of claims of Islamophobia against Paty, admitted to a French counter-terrorism judge that she had lied about being in the class at the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school when the cartoons were shown as part of a discussion on freedom of expression.
She had initially claimed in early October that Mr Paty had stigmatised Muslim pupils by asking them to raise their hands to identify themselves and then ordered them to leave the room so he could show the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons to the rest of the class, Le Parisien reports.
She then went to the police on October 8th to report Paty for “dissemination of pornographic images”, according to the newspaper. The incident was later amplified by the girl’s father, Brahim Chnina, who posted a video to social media repeating the accusations and condemning the teacher.
Chnina was also revealed to have been in contact with 18-year-old Chechen refugee and terrorist Abdulakh Anzorov through the messaging app Whatsapp.
Ten days after the girl made the accusations, Anzorov beheaded the 47-year-old history and geography teacher on the street.
Before the 13-year-old’s confession, investigators had learnt from the girl’s classmates that she had not been present for the lesson. They also contradicted her claims that Paty forced pupils to leave the class, saying that he asked them to close their eyes if they were shocked by the images.
In her confession, the teen said admitted that she had not been present but had heard of the lesson from a classmate and that she had been excluded from school due to absenteeism.
Mr Chnina has been indicted on charges of “complicity in a terrorist assassination”. He has since claimed that his reaction was “stupid,”, saying he was angrier about his daughter being excluded from school for two days and did not care about the Mohammed cartoons.
“I did not think that my messages were going to be read by terrorists,” he said.
“I was not trying to do any harm by making this message. I find it hard to imagine that we have come to this, that we have lost a history teacher, that all of society is angry with me,” he added.
Le Parisien notes that Mr Chnina had been virulent in his condemnation of the teacher in the video. While in custody in October, he had even compared Mr Paty to “Hitler”.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.