A total of seven teenagers were added to the list of persons indicted in connection to the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty in the month of November.
According to reports, four teenagers were charged for their involvement in a terrorist murder.
Three of the four teenagers, who are aged between 13 and 14 years old, were slapped with “complicity in a terrorist murder.”
The three were said to have taken part in identifying Paty to his killer, 18-year-old Abdullah Anzorov.
Meanwhile, the fourth person was charged with “slanderous denunciation,” after relating her story of the civics lesson despite not attending the class.
According to reports, the two men were allegedly having contact with Anzorov while the girl – who was brought to a youth detention centre – had been in contact with one of the two men.
There were 14 people charged in connection to Paty’s murder, who became a target of Islamist extremism after showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad taken from the Charlie Hebdo magazine to his students.
In addition, around 400 incidents of “supporting terrorism” were reported while the country observed a one-minute silence for Paty at schools, according to French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquet.
Reports said that the incidents included teenagers approving the murder of Paty for what he did, as the act was considered highly offensive to a number of Muslims.
As a result, three teenagers in the northern city of Cambrai aged between 15 and 17 were charged with “supporting terrorism” by local authorities.
In Pontoise, northwest of Paris, an Algerian man was sentenced to six months in prison for “glorifying” Anzorov on social media as a martyr. He was slapped a 10-year ban from entering France.
Since 2015, over 250 people were killed in France in a series of jihadist attacks, which included the massacre of 12 people from Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices by two gunmen.
In response, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to crack down on Islamist extremism in the country.
Photo by popo.uw23/Flickr
