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A man of Chechen origin who was under surveillance by French security services over suspected Islamic radicalization stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school and critically wounded three other people Friday in northern France, authorities said.
The attack was being investigated by anti-terror prosecutors amid soaring global tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas. It also happened almost three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a radicalized Chechen near a Paris area school.
The man arrested as the main suspect in Friday’s stabbings had been under surveillance since the summer on suspicion of Islamic radicalisation, French intelligence services told The Associated Press. He was detained Thursday for questioning based on the monitoring of his phone calls in recent days, but investigators found no weapon or threat or indication that he was preparing an attack, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
“There was a race against the clock. But there was no threat, no weapon, no indication. We did our our job seriously,” Darmanin said on TF1 television.
The suspect was reportedly refusing to speak to investigators. Several others also were in custody Friday, national counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said. Police said the suspect’s younger brother was held for questioning.
Victim of attack was French teacher
A colleague and a fellow teacher identified the dead educator as Dominique Bernard, a French language teacher at the Gambetta-Carnot school, which enrolls students ages 11-18. The victim “stepped in and probably saved many lives” but two of the wounded – another teacher and a security guard – were fighting for theirs, according to French president Emmanuel Macron.
Sliman Hamzi, a police officer who was one of the first on the scene, said the suspected attacker, a former student at the school, shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great” in…
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