Two pupils among seven people facing terror charges over teacher’s killing

The French teacher decapitated while returning home last week has been posthumously awarded the Légion d’honneur, hours after France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the killer had paid two pupils from the school to identify his victim.

At a private ceremony in the main amphitheatre of the Sorbonne university on Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron bestowed the country’s highest honour on the family of Samuel Paty, 47, who was killed on Friday after showing his class two cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as part of a discussion on free speech.

Parent had campaigned against teacher’s use of Muhammad cartoons before beheading

A parent accused of organising a campaign against the history teacher decapitated outside his school near Paris last week exchanged text messages and phone calls with the killer, French media have reported.

Citing police sources, Europe 1 radio said investigators had uncovered traces of several text messages between the father of a pupil at the school and the 18-year-old killer in the days leading up to Samuel Paty’s death last Friday, along with phone conversations.

French imams have visited the school of the teacher who was beheaded by a suspected Islamist militant to pay their respects and call on Muslims to rally behind freedom of expression. Hassen Chalghoumi, an imam at Drancy mosque, said of the victim, Samuel Paty: 'He's a martyr, he's a wise man, he taught about tolerance, about civilisation and the respect of others.' 

• Beheaded teacher to get France's highest honour, says minister

Nation mourns Samuel Paty, who was beheaded in a terrorist attack on Friday

Tens of thousands of people have rallied in solidarity, in dozens of towns and cities across France, after a secondary schoolteacher was beheaded in an attack that has shocked a country already shaken by terrorist atrocities.

Demonstrators gathered on Sunday in cities including Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux in support of free speech and in tribute to Samuel Paty, who was killed outside his school on Friday after discussing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad with his class.