Pictured: Teacher, 47, beheaded by Islamist terrorist for showing his class cartoons of Mohammed

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The French teacher who was beheaded by a suspected Islamist terrorist yesterday for showing his class cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed has today been identified as Samuel Paty. 

The 47-year-old had received threats before he was stabbed and decapitated by 18-year-old Chechen gunman Aboulakh A in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, around 25 miles north-west of Paris. 

Muslim parents had taken offence at Mr Paty’s decision to show his class caricatures of the Prophet and branded him a ‘thug’ in a video shared online by a Paris mosque just days before he was murdered.  

He had ‘invited Muslim students out of the classroom’ before showing a Charlie Hebdo caricature of the Prophet crouching with a star drawn on his buttocks and the inscription ‘A star is born’.

A father of a 13-year-old pupil at the secondary school in middle-class Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb 25 miles from the centre of Paris, told Reuters Mr Paty had told any Muslim students to leave because the cartoon would likely cause offence. For Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous. 

One girl, thought to be Muslim, stayed behind by mistake, and later told her parents. They made a legal complaint to the school and held a meeting with the teacher, school principal and an official from the education authority. 

A man who said his daughter was in the class branded Mr Paty a thug in a video posted on Twitter, claiming: ‘If you want to join forces and say ‘stop, don’t touch our children, then send me a message.’ This thug should not remain in the national education system, should no longer teach our children. He should go educate himself.’ 

Before showing the images, Mr Paty asked Muslim children to leave the room because he planned to show something shocking, the man said. ‘What was the message he wanted to send these children? 

‘Why does a history teacher behave this way in front of 13-year-olds?’ the man asked. The video was reportedly shared by a Paris mosque, among others. The video has not yet been authenticated.

Mr Paty was then stabbed and decapitated by Russian national Aboulakh A, a suspected Islamist terrorist, yesterday at 5pm who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he launched his attack.

The attacker was shot dead by police about 600 yards from the killing when he refused to drop his weapons and threatened the officers. It is unclear whether the gunman had seen the video.  

Nine people have been arrested, including the parents of a child at the school who had signalled their disagreement with the teacher’s decision to show the cartoon, a judicial source said today.

Four people were initially detained by police over the murder outside Paris, but five new people held for questioning are members of the suspected Islamist’s social circle. 

Yesterday’s killing took place a few miles from where Emmanuel Macron launched an offensive against the radical Islamist creed that he said was making ever greater inroads into French society two weeks ago.

The French President denounced what he called an ‘Islamist terrorist attack’, claiming: ‘One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught the freedom to believe or not believe. He said the attack should not divide France because that is what the extremists want. We must stand all together as citizens.

Mr Macron added: ‘It was no coincidence that the terrorist killed a teacher because he wanted to kill the Republic and its values. The Enlightenment, (is) the possibility to make our children, wherever they come from, whatever they believe in, whether they believe or not, whatever their religion, to turn them into free citizens.

‘This battle is ours and it is existential. They will not pass. Obscurantism and the violence that goes with it will not win. They will not divide us. That’s what they seek and we must stand together.’

A video taken by a local resident shows the police attempting to arrest the gunman, who can be heard shouting at someone out of shot and pointing their guns at the suspect as they close in. 

They shout at him repeatedly to ‘throw your gun’ and ‘get down to the ground’ in French. At one point, an officer is heard saying that he is ‘shooting’, but says ‘these are marbles’ – suggesting the teenager was firing a BB Gun.

More inaudible shouting is heard as the police move up the road, where they are hidden from view behind some trees. Seconds later, multiple gunshots can be heard as the police shoot the suspect dead.    

A police source said the scene has been cordoned off and a bomb disposal unit dispatched because of the suspected presence of an explosive vest. 

‘[The attacker] is believed to be from a Chechen background,’ said an investigating source, referring to the Russian Federation republic.

Thousands of battle-hardened Chechen refugees, including many devout Muslims, entered France in the early 2000s following two bloody wars against Russia. Around 30,000 Chechens in total escaped to France, many of them resettling in the suburbs of major cities such as Paris. 

France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months – in the Dijon region, the Mediterranean city of Nice, and the western town of Saint-Dizier – believed to be linked to local criminal activity.

It was not known what link, if any, the attacker might have with the teacher or whether he had accomplices.

Police on Friday arrived at the scene after receiving a call about a suspicious individual loitering near the school, a police source said.  There they found the dead man and nearby sighted the suspect armed with a knife-like weapon, who threatened them as they tried to arrest him.

They opened fire and injured him severely, the source said. The man later died of his injuries, a judicial source said.

Before being shot, the teenager had posted a grisly video of the severed head on social media before being shot dead by police, AP reported.  French anti-terror prosecutors confirmed they were investigating an assault in which a man was decapitated on the outskirts of Paris.  

‘The body of decapitated man was found at around 5.30 in the afternoon,’ said an investigating source. ‘When police arrived, the person thought to be responsible was still present and threatened them with his weapons.’

The unidentified killer then fled to the nearby town of Eragny-sur-Oise where he refused to surrender.

‘He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,’ said the source. ‘This is when he was shot dead by police… Around ten shots were heard.  

France’s parliament suspended Friday’s debate after news of the decapitation, with session president Hugues Renson, visibly moved, calling the attack ‘abominable’.

MPs stood as Renson said that ‘in the name of all of us, I want to honour the memory of Mr Paty.’ Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer tweeted: ‘The Republic is under attack.’

Lawmakers and teachers’ unions hailed the slain teacher’s courage for confronting challenging taboos in French society. Freedom of expression was a core tenet of democracy, they said.

Jean-Remi Girard, president of the National Union of School Teachers, told BFM TV that children needed to understand that blasphemy can shock, but is legal.  

Sophie Vénétitay, deputy head of the SNES-FSU teachers’ union, said: ‘He was murdered because he was doing his job, namely teaching critical thought.’ She said Mr Paty was a history and geography teacher who was in charge of ‘moral and civic education’.  

‘In that capacity, he gave a lesson on the freedom of expression with the Mohammed cartoons,’ she said. 

Thibault Humbert, mayor of the nearby suburb of Éragny-sur-Oise, said: ‘This was an exceptionally violent and horrifying attack. The police must be commended for intervening with such speed.’  

Other politicians lined up to express their horror at the killing, with Xavier Bertrand, centre-Right president of the Hauts-de-France region, saying: ‘Islamist barbarity has taken aim at one of the symbols of the Republic: school. The terrorists want to shut us up, to bring us to our knees. They should know that we will not bend, they will never forbid us to read, write, draw, think, teach.’

Marine Le Pen of National Rally said: ‘A teacher beheaded for showing Charlie Hebdo caricatures. We are in France with this level of unbearable barbarity. Islamism is waging war on us: it is by force that we must drive them out of our country.’

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the far-Left party, Unbowed France, said: ‘Horrible crime in Conflans! In fact, the assassin takes himself for the god that he claims he follows. He is sullying religion. And he is inflicting on us all the hell of having to live with murderers like him.’ 

Local lawmaker Antoine Savignat said, ‘If we cannot talk about the Charlie Hebdo caricatures in school, we end up in denialism… In France, the country of freedom of expression, this cannot be allowed to happen.’ 

The attack follows a terrorism enquiry being launched in Paris last month after two news agency staff were stabbed outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine where staff members were murdered in 2015 after publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet.  

Those on trial range in age from 29 to 68, and are charged with providing logistics to the terrorists, including cash, weapons and vehicles.

Paris-born brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi murdered 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo offices using Kalashnikovs, before escaping in a stolen car, and later being killed by police.

A third terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, gunned down four shoppers in a kosher supermarket and a policewoman during three days of carnage before he too was killed.

Charlie Hebdo now produces its magazine from a top secret location, and in September re-published the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which had provoked outrage in the Muslim world. 

There have been a series of bomb, gun and knife attacks carried out by Islamic State and al-Qaeda operatives in France, dating back to early 2015

The deadliest single terrorist attack ever in the country came in November 2015 when 130 people were killed in Paris. Suicide bombers pledging allegiance to ISIS targeted the Stade de France, cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died.

Earlier in the year, two Paris-born gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda broke into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, leaving 17 people dead inside and three outside.

In July 2016, 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a 19-tonne truck was deliberately driven into crowds on the seafront promenade at Nice, in the South of France.

The terrorist turned out to be a Tunisian immigrant who was shot dead by police. During the same month, two Isis terrorists murdered an 86-year-old Catholic priest during a church service in Normandy.

There have been frequent knife attacks on the forces of law and order, leading to the deaths of serving police.

In October last year, a radicalised computer operative working at the Paris Prefecture in central Paris stabbed four of his colleagues to death. The attacker – who was also shot dead – turned out to be a Muslim convert who kept extremist Al-Qaeda and Islamic State literature and images on his computer.