French father jailed for threatening to behead his son’s teacher

A French court has sentenced a man to six months in prison after he threatened to “cut off the head” of a teacher at his son’s school last week.

The defendant confronted his son’s teacher in the school car park in the southwestern town of Le Fauga last week, after the nine-year-old was moved to another class because of his behaviour.

He threatened to decapitate the 58-year-old teacher before entering the school, where he repeated the threats in front of the headteacher.

Remarks of ‘great violence’

The court sentenced the defendant to six months in prison, to be served immediately, a harsher sentence than the six months under electronic monitoring sought by the public prosecutor.

The presiding judge, Fabrice Rives, condemned the “extremely worrying remarks” and described them as being of “great violence”, explicitly referring to the murder of Samuel Paty.

In that case, Paty, a history and geography teacher, was beheaded in 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin after showing his class caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

At the hearing, the defendant apologised, saying he had “not realised the seriousness” of his words.

Describing himself as “very, very protective” of his children, he said he was not a violent person and did not know what had come over him that day.

Teacher ‘traumatised’

The teacher is currently on sick leave and unsure whether she will return to the classroom, according to her lawyer, Jocelyn Momasso-Momasso.

He said she was “traumatised”, adding that she had told him: “I didn’t sign up for this.”

At the hearing, the defendant said he had already agreed to move two of his three children who attended the school to another establishment.

Additional sources • AFP