French authorities have charged four teenagers in relation to the terrorist murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty. Three of the teenagers have been charged with 'complicity in a terrorist murder', and a fourth has been charged with 'slanderous denunciation' and is believed to be the daughter of a man who launched an online hate-campaign against the teacher.
French law bars their names from being published in the media due to their age.
Seven others have already been charged in relation to the crime and all bar two other teenagers have been remanded in custody.
Samuel Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee and Islamic extremist Abdullakh Anzorov, who was later shot dead by French police. Paty had been targeted because he had shown a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Mohammed during a class on freedom of speech. After he had shown the images, he was targeted by an online hate mob, including parents of students at the school. Paty had even asked Islamic students if they would like to leave the class before images of the prophet were shown.
In Islam, it is forbidden to show images of the prophet Mohammed. Cartoons of the prophet Mohammed have been an issue in France and across much of the world since the publication of them in a Danish magazine, such images were also distributed by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Workers of Charlie Hebdo were later targeted in two separate terrorist attacks which killed 12 people and wounded another 11. Both attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists.
Since the attack on Paty, French president Emmanuel Macron has taken a hardline stance against Islamism and has been highly critical of members of the Muslim community and their inability to properly integrate into mainstream French society.
This hardline has resulted in a number of Islamic states and Islamic preachers denouncing both Macron and France for being 'anti-Islamic' and calling for French goods to be boycotted. Over the last decade, there have been almost 300 deaths caused by Islamic terrorism in France, the highest number in Europe.
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