The lawyer for the family of the beheaded French professor, Samuel Paty, is “angry” by the revelation that a 13-year-old girl spread lies that led to her murder, and dissatisfied with the explanations given so far.
Virginie Le Roy, who represents the Paty family, said she does not buy the teen’s excuse that peer pressure was part of the reason she lied about being asked by Muslim students to drop out of class. teacher during a lesson at the school west of Paris.
“This explanation does not satisfy me, it makes me a little angry because the facts are serious and dramatic,” he told RTL radio, Agence France-Press reported.
The girl, who has not been named, said Paty, 47, fired Muslim students so she could show the class a controversial drawing of the Prophet Muhammad.
But he later opted out of being present at the lesson and having spread the false story to please his father, who filed a complaint against Paty.
“Everything in the investigation proved very early that he lied,” Le Roy said.
He said he was “skeptical” about the version of events now being told by the girl, particularly claiming that other classmates had asked her to “be her spokesperson”.
“A spokesman for what? Of lies, of events that never happened? ”Le Roy told the radio station.
The girl’s father mounted a campaign on social media at the time against Paty to show the blasphemous image, which Muslims consider very offensive.
As the reaction grew against the professor, he was assassinated by an 18-year-old extremist, Abdullakh Anzorov.
The girl’s lawyer said Monday that she lied “because she felt trapped in a chain of events.”
“There was a real unease, she felt compelled to add to it to make this message stand out,” lawyer Mbeko Tabula said, Euro News reported.
Tabula confirmed she was not there on the day of the classroom incident, explaining her absence because she was ill.
But it appears the girl had been suspended the day before and did not want her father to know the punishment, French newspaper Le Parisien reported.
The young woman has been accused of slander, while her father was arrested on suspicion of being an accomplice in a terrorist murder, the Independent reported.
