French teen handed jail term over links to Samuel Paty killing

LONDON: A Muslim teenager in France has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison over her association with and support for the killer of schoolteacher Samuel Paty.Paty was stabbed to death in a Paris suburb after showing students images of the Prophet Muhammad. The teenager, who was aged 17 at the time of the killing, repeated the demands of Paty’s killer, 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, who was shot dead by police after the attack. A further six people are awaiting trial in connection to the 2020 murder.Authorities discovered Daesh content on the girl’s phone and information about weaponry. She was sentenced for “terrorist criminal association,” with authorities noting signs of continued radicalization after she signaled her desire to travel to Turkey or Chechnya. However, police said while in custody, the girl had privately condemned the killing of Paty.France has faced a series of controversies over schoolteachers receiving physical and even death threats from students.Didier Lemaire, a teacher, was placed under police protection after receiving death threats in the wake of comments he made in support of Paty.And in the months after the murder, a separate incident saw a school student arrested for threatening to behead his teacher “like Samuel Paty.”