The family lawyer for the beheaded French teacher Samuel Paty is “angry” over the revelation that a 13-year-old girl spread lies that led to his murder – and dissatisfied with the explanations given so far.
Virginie Le Roy, who represents the Paty family, said she did not buy the teenager’s excuse that peer pressure was part of the reason she lied about Muslim students being asked during a lesson in the school west of Paris to teacher to leave.
“This explanation does not satisfy me, it makes me a little angry because the facts are serious and dramatic,” she told RTL radio, reports Agence France-Press.
The girl, who has not yet been nominated, said Paty, 47, fired the Muslim students so he could show the class a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.
But she later admitted that she was not at the lesson and spread the false story to please her father, who then filed a complaint against Paty.
“Everything in the investigation showed very early on that she was lying,” Le Roy said.
She said she was ‘skeptical’ about the version of events the girl is now recounting, especially as she claims other classmates asked her to be ‘their spokesperson’.
A spokesman for what? Of lies, of events that never happened? Le Roy told the radio station.
The girl’s father launched a social media campaign against Paty at the time because he showed the blasphemous image, which is considered very offensive by Muslims.
As the setback against the teacher escalated, he was killed by an 18-year-old extremist, Abdullakh Anzorov.
The girl’s lawyer claimed Monday that she lied “because she felt trapped in a series of events.”
“There was a real discomfort, she feels compelled to add it to notice this message,” lawyer Mbeko Tabula told Euro News.
Tabula confirmed that she was not there on the day of the classroom incident.
But the girl was apparently suspended the previous day and did not want her father to know about the punishment, reports the French newspaper Le Parisien.
The girl is charged with libel while her father was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a terrorist death, reports the Independent.
