A 13-year-old girl in France has admitted to police that she lied about a French schoolteacher who was later beheaded by an Islamic militant.
Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was murdered outside of his school by 18-year-old Chechen refugee, Abdullakh Anzorov, after a sustained campaign of hate against Mr. Paty by a group of parents at the school. Mr. Paty was targeted because he had shown a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in class during a discussion on free-speech. The showing of any image of Mohammed is banned under Islamic scripture. Mr. Paty had asked any children that would be offended to leave class before it was shown.
The 13-year-old girl had allegedly told her father that the class had shown a picture of Mohammed naked. The father then lodged a legal complaint against Mr. Paty resulting in anger among Muslim parents of the school and the wider Muslim community. The father even took these claims and put them on YouTube.
However, it has now been revealed that the girl says that she lied, and she had never told her father that they were shown a picture of Mohammed naked. Instead, she says that she was told to lie by her father.
It has also been revealed by her lawyer that she wasn't even at the class in which the cartoon of Mohammed was shown, as she was suspended at that time. Her lawyer told reporters:
"She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be a spokesperson."
The girl has been charged with slander and her father has been charged with 'complicity in a terrorist killing', as it is believed that it is he who increased the tension to such a degree that the murder was committed.
A lawyer for the Paty family said of the revelations:
"Everything in the investigation showed very early that she lied. A spokesperson of what? Of lies, of events that never happened? This explanation does not convince me and makes me rather angry because the facts are serious, they're tragic!"
The incident followed months of tension in France over community relations. Earlier in the year, French President Emmanuel Macron had said that many of France's Muslim minority were not properly integrating into mainstream French society. This led to extensive protests in many cities across the world, and a former Malaysian Prime Minister to claim that every Muslim had the right to kill as many French people as they so wished. The Malaysian former-PM later said his comments were taken out of context.
[h/t: I heart Intelligence]
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