French youth charged after wave of school attack threats

French prosecutors have charged a 17-year-old over graphic threats sent to more than 150 schools in recent weeks, a judicial source said Saturday.

Published: 31 March 2024 08:20 CEST

French youth charged after wave of school attack threats

A police car in front of the Ravel high school (lycee Ravel) in Paris. Photo: Bertrand GUAY/AFP.

Some of the messages, sent via the dedicated messaging systems for teachers and students, included links to videos of beheadings and other violence, said the source.

The young man was detained on Thursday in the Malakoff suburb south of Paris. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau had said he did not have any criminal record for this kind of behaviour.

After questioning he was charged with a range of crimes including death threats, promoting terrorism and hacking personal data. He has been placed in pre-trial detention.

The messages were sent via the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents, internal emails, or the Pronote software used by the education ministry.

One school in the Val-d’Oise department northwest of the capital received a message “threatening a terrorist attack”. It included “links to a video showing people being decapitated”, said a police source.

In the Seine-et-Marne department east of Paris, a secondary school received a message saying explosives had been hidden throughout the establishment.

School officials and teachers have been on high alert since 2020, when Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and then beheaded by a radicalised Islamist near his secondary school near Paris.

In October, a radicalised Islamist stabbed a former teacher to death in the northern town of Arras. And in the autumn of 2023, a flurry of false bomb alerts targeted schools as well as airports and tourist sites.

Education Minister Nicole Belloubet said Thursday that the ENT messaging function had been suspended while the investigation continued.

She also announced the creation of a rapid-response force for schools facing such threats.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.