A 13-year-old student confessed to spreading a false story about French history professor Samuel Paty – which triggered a terrible chain of events that led to him being beheaded last year, according to reports on Tuesday.
The girl, whose name has not been released, admitted that she “lied” about an incident in a classroom at the school west of Paris to please her father, the Independent reported.
She originally claimed that Paty, 47, asked Muslim students to leave the class before he showed them cartoons of the prophet Muhammad during a free speech class, the vehicle said.
The girl reportedly told her father that she was suspended for two days after challenging the teacher for sending Muslim students into the hall while he showed the blasphemous image.
His lie prompted his father to open a legal complaint against the professor, who then started a social media campaign, the BBC reported.
The reaction against Paty grew, as representations of Muhammad are banned in Islam – and considered by Muslims to be highly offensive.
Ten days later, the professor was beheaded by an 18-year-old man, Abdullakh Anzorov, who was later shot dead by the police.
But now it was learned that the girl was not even in class on the day of the alleged incident at the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school.
The girl had apparently been suspended the day before for not attending classes and did not want her father to know about the punishment, reported the French newspaper Le Parisien.
Her lawyer confirmed on Monday that the girl was not in class – but claimed it was because she was ill that day.
“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her colleagues asked her to be a spokeswoman,” her lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told Agence France-Presse.
His lawyer, however, argued that the father should be to blame for the consequences due to his “excessive and disproportionate behavior”, reported the Independent.
The girl was accused of slander, while her father was arrested on suspicion of being an accomplice to a terrorist murder, the media reported.