France’s president Emmanuel Macron says a teacher’s murder last week was the work of domestic militant Islamist group.
The murdered teacher, Samuel Paty, had discussed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed with his class earlier this month.
After the murder, 16 people were initially detained, by police. They included members of the killer’s family and five adolescent students at Paty’s school.
A judicial official says seven of the 16 people, including two minors, were to go before a magistrate to face for preliminary charges.
Questions investigators are still trying to answer include how the killer set up their encounter with Paty, whether there was complicity and whether the murder was premeditated.
At Macron’s request, his Cabinet ordered a group called the Collective Cheikh Yassine that was “directly implicated” in the teacher’s murder to be dissolved at Wednesday’ Cabinet meeting.
A Paris mosque has also been shut down for six months – with a six-month prison sentence for violators.
The Pantin mosque’s closure is a punishment for relaying a virulent message about Paty on social media from the father of one of his students.
The Pantin mosque was also associated with an 18-year-old Pakistani refugee who three weeks earlier attacked and injured two people with a meat cleaver.
Rising tensions in Paris after Paty’s murder spilt over on Sunday when two Muslim women were repeatedly stabbed under the Eiffel Tower by two other women shouting “Dirty Arabs.”
President Emmanuel Macron is currently working on a bill to address Islamic radicals, who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside French values.
But members of France’s five million-plus Muslim community have complained of ‘Islamophobia’ caused by a clampdown on mosques and Muslim organisations.
After a meeting with regional officials working to counter radical Islamists, Macron said other associations and individuals are also on the radar to be shut down or silenced.
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