French police in the city of Nîmes have arrested a 33-year-old woman on suspicion of being in direct contact with Islamist teen Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov just days before he beheaded teacher Samuel Paty.
Police arrested the woman on Tuesday morning, and she is being investigated for “complicity in terrorist murder” and “terrorist criminal association”.
The arrest came as a result of a joint operation by the Anti-Terrorist Subdirectorate (Sdat) of the Judicial Police and the Directorate-General for Internal Security (DGSI), France’s domestic security agency.
According to a report from the French magazine Le Point, the 33-year-old can be held for at least 96 hours while prosecutors debate indicting her.
While police shot dead Anzorov after he beheaded Paty in October, at least 14 others have been indicted in connection with the terrorist attack so far. Anzorov killed Paty for showing cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed to his class during a lesson on freedom of expression.
One of the suspects currently in custody is Brahim Chnina, the father of a pupil at Paty’s school who claimed to have been in the class when the teacher showed the Mohammed cartoons. In March, the 13-year-old admitted she had lied about seeing the cartoons herself.
Chnina, meanwhile, had led the social media campaign against Paty prior to his murder, along with Islamist extremist Abdelhakim Sefrioui. The social media posts, which identified Paty by name, were also shared by the Pantin mosque in Paris, which later apologised for spreading them.
Mr Chnina was also reported to have had contact with Abdoullakh Anzorov before the attack, with the pair conversing on the messaging app Whatsapp.
After being indicted by French authorities, Chnina stated that his reaction to his daughter’s claims had been “stupid” and said: “I did not think that my messages were going to be read by terrorists.”
“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.