The two men arrested in connection with the murder of the teacher have extensive contacts with active terrorist organisations. One of them spoke to the teacher s murderer on several occasions before the deadly attack. Teachers in France are exposed to a growing number of physical and verbal attacks. The Adama Committee, carrying a sign with a rude pun on words, also attended the event that paid tribute to the teacher.

As the investigation progresses, new and astounding information is being unravelled regarding the murder of Samuel Paty, a teacher cruelly slaughtered with Islamist methods on Friday, 16 October. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen national Abdoullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police shortly after the attack, but new details keep coming to light about how he learned about what happened at the school and how students from the school provided the attacker with information about the victim in exchange for money.

According to information obtained by the Mediapart investigative portal, the two men taken into custody after the murder were also in direct and indirect contact with terrorists who had been involved in several attacks.

One of the suspects is Brahim Chnina, whose daughter attends the school where the beheaded teacher Samuel Paty taught. Although the murdered teacher did not teach Chnina s daughter, she heard from other students that Samuel Paty showed and analysed the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in the weekly Charlie Hebdo during a class. The girl told this to her father, who was so infuriated at what happened that he produced several videos denouncing the teacher s actions and demanding his dismissal.

Jean-Francois Ricard, state prosecutor investigating the case, said that the man s half-sister, Khadidja Chnina had joined the Islamic State jihadi organisation and had been staying in Syria since 2014. Her name had already come up in 2017 during the investigation of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France. The woman s name was in the phone of the Algerian terrorist, Adel Haddadi, who was one of the terrorists missioned to carry out a bomb attack on the national football stadium Stade de France in 2015, but he was captured by police before the attack. 

The other man in custody is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a member of the Council of Imams of France, who is known for his anti-Semitic and radical Islamist views. He is also the head of the Islamist group called Cheik Yassine that the French government intends to dissolve. President Emmanuel Macron announced on Twitter that the Council of Ministers will dissolve the organisation in question and other actions are also to be expected.

Mediapart revealed that the leader of the organisation, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, was also in contact with one or several terrorists. In 2009, for example, he had 88 phone calls in three months with Mohamed Belhoucine, an accomplice to Amedy Coulibaly, who was the perpetrator of the 2015 attack at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris.

Returning to Brahim Chnina, the Muslim parent who posted the video, it was also revealed that he had contact with Abdoullakh Anzorov, the terrorist who beheaded the teacher. BFMTV reported that the two had talked to each other three times before the attack. The man denied to the investigators that he knew the attacker and did not remember any exchange of messages between them. He claimed he had spoken or sent messages to numerous individuals unknown to him who contacted him after his inciting video. It turned out that the Chechen terrorist first called him after 7 pm on 9 October. The next day, he also sent him a message mentioning the date of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, and then three days later they spoke on the phone again. However, Brahim Chnina claims he does not remember the call.

Since the death of Samuel Paty, who was executed with brutal cruelty, an increasing number of school violence cases has come to light. At a sympathy protest in memory of Mr Paty, a young teacher said she had been threatened with a knife by one of her students after a lesson she gave on Islam. The actu.fr news portal reported another incident in a town called Fontenay-sous-Bois, near Paris, where a 10-year-old boy attacked a teacher in front of other students during class. He bit her arm and then hit her in the face so hard that her nose started bleeding.

According to the news portal, the child named Jihad is a notoriously problematic student who has not been able to adapt to the school system. Unfortunately, teachers do not have any tools at their disposal to deal with such students.

However, French teachers are not only insulted by students and their parents. Assa Traore has also paid tribute to Samuel Paty, but the board she held up could rather be interpreted as an insult than a tribute. Assa is the leader of the Adama Committee, an organisation to commemorate Adama Traore, also known as the George Floyd of France, who died in 2016 after a police action. She attended a commemoration with members of the organisation at the weekend in Paris. However, they wrote an extremely tasteless pun on words on their board.

The board read: „mort en saignant”, meaning he had died in blood. However, „en saignant” (in blood) and „enseignant” (teacher) sound the same, and the word „mort” is also an adjective, so when pronounced, it can also be interpreted as „dead teacher.”

Many were outraged by the text. Essayist Eric Naulleau believes that Assa Traore showed her true colours when she went to the demonstration supposedly to express her condolences in memory of the murdered teacher. Moreover, she wore a T-shirt with her brother s name on it again.

The essayist was not the only one outraged at the vile joke made by the Adama Committe. Benjamin Briand, a teacher, wrote on Twitter that he expected a public apology from Assa Traore for the words.