French schools reopened on Monday for the first time since the beheading of a teacher who opened a class debate on free speech by showing students caricatures of the prophet of Islam, in mourning and under tight security for a national homage.
Samuel Paty was killed on Oct. 16 outside his school in suburban Paris by an 18-year-old refugee of Chechen origin to punish him for showing the caricatures published by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which triggered a newsroom massacre by extremists in January 2015.
Since their re-publication in September at the start of the ongoing Paris trial over the killings, France has endured three attacks blamed on Muslim extremists: one by a Pakistani refugee that injured two people outside the newspaper’s old headquarters, the slaying of the schoolteacher, and a deadly knife attack last Thursday in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice. All three have prompted terrorism investigations, and France is now at its highest level of alert.
French President Emmanuel Macron promised to increase protection of schools and churches immediately after the Nice attack, more than doubling the number of soldiers actively deployed in the country. Paty was killed at the beginning of a two-week French school holiday.
On Monday, the school where he taught at Conflans-Saint-Honorine reopened for teachers only.