A 13-year-old student has confessed to spreading a false story about French history teacher Samuel Paty, which triggered a horrific chain of events that led to his beheading last year, it was reported on Tuesday.
The girl, whose name has not been released, admitted she had “lied” about an incident in the school classroom west of Paris to please her father, the Independent reported. .
He originally claimed that Paty, 47, had asked Muslim students to leave the class before he showed them the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a free speech class, the media reported.
The girl reportedly told her father that she was suspended two days after challenging the teacher because she was sending Muslim students to the lobby while showing the blasphemous image.
His fib prompted his father to file a legal complaint against the teacher, who launched a campaign on social media, the BBC reported.
The reaction grew against Paty, as representations of Muhammad are banned from Islam and considered by Muslims to be highly offensive.
Ten days later, the master was beheaded by an 18-year-old man, Abdullakh Anzorov, who was later shot dead by police.
But now it has been seen that the young woman was not even in class on the day of the alleged incident at the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school.
According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the girl had been suspended the day before for not attending class and did not want her father to know the punishment.
Her lawyer on Monday confirmed that the girl was not in class, but claimed it was because she was ill the same day.
“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her classmates had asked her to be her spokesperson,” her lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told Agence França-Presse.
His lawyer, however, argued that the father should be to blame for the consequences because of his “excessive and disproportionate behavior,” the Independent reported.
The girl has been charged with slander, while her father was arrested on suspicion of being an accomplice in a terrorist murder, the media reported.