A 13-year-old schoolgirl confessed to lying about a French teacher who was beheaded after showing his class cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, according to the girl’s lawyer. Samuel Paty, a high school teacher in a city near Paris, was murdered by a radical last October Chechen teen after showing the cartoons to students during a social studies class on freedom of speech.
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The unknown girl told police she lied about her participation in the class and falsely accused Paty of asking Muslim children to leave the classroom while showing the photos.
Her father, who was charged in connection with the murder, posted several inflammatory videos on Facebook based on his daughter’s testimony identifying Paty.
“Everything in the investigation showed very early that she was lying,” the lawyer of the Paty family, Virginie Le Roy, told RTL radio on Tuesday.
She said she was “skeptical” about the version of the events narrated by the girl. On Monday, the girl’s lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told AFP, “She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to become a spokesperson.”
Le Roy added: “A spokesperson for what? Of lies, of events that never happened? This explanation doesn’t convince me and makes me quite angry because the facts are serious, they are tragic.”
The murder of Paty shocked France and sparked new debate on freedom of speech, the integration of France’s large Muslim population and the role of social media in fueling hatred.
Paty was murdered in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine by the 18-year-old Muslim extremist from Russia who saw the online campaign against the teacher set up by the schoolgirl’s father and another man, a well-known Muslim preacher.
Both persons behind the Facebook videos have been charged with “complicity in murder” for their posts and are awaiting trial in prison, while the schoolgirl has been charged with defamation.
The murderer was shot by the police.
A draft new security law under discussion in the French parliament would make it a criminal offense to publish information about an official online, knowing that it could harm him.