In France, police detain five Chechens in case on teacher Samuel Paty's murder

The French police detained five Chechen natives from among acquaintances of Abdullakh Anzorov, who beheaded teacher Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a source reported.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on October 16, Samuel Paty, a teacher of history and geography, was beheaded in France. Before his murder, at a lesson on freedom of speech, the teacher showed his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad from the French weekly Charlie Hebdo. The killer was identified as 18-year-old Abdullakh (Abdulla) Anzorov, a Russian citizen of Chechen origin, who had been granted refugee status in France. Among the sixteen detainees in the case, six of whom have already been released, four are relatives of Abdullakh Anzorov.

In the French departments of Seine-Maritime and Haute-Loire (Upper Loire), the police detained five more 18-21-year-old Chechens, a source reported. Investigators of the Anti-Terrorism Directorate of France suggested that the detained Chechens communicated with Abdullakh Anzorov, and moreover, they communicated after Samuel Paty showed his students the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported in the evening on December 8.

In the evening on December 8, the French daily newspaper Le Figaro reported that if the police did not bring specific charges, then all five detainees would be released within 96 hours. All five Chechens were detained back in the morning on December 7, the France Bleu Radio Station reported.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 9, 2020 at 01:19 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.