A French student admitted to lying about her teacher almost five months after a social media campaign spread the lies around the world and the teacher died in a terrorist attack, Sky News reported.
The girl, who was not identified, said she lied about her teacher asking Muslim students to leave the classroom before showing the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that were in a satirical magazine, reported the French newspaper Le Parisien.
“She lied because she felt trapped in a spiral because her colleagues asked her to be a spokesperson,” the girl’s lawyer, Mbeko Tabula, told AFP news agency.
She allegedly lied to her father and said she was suspended for disagreeing with her teacher, Samuel Paty, for showing the images in the free speech class. However, she was never in class that day and was suspended the day before for missing school a lot.
The girl’s father believed her daughter’s lies and started a social media campaign against Paty.
After the campaign became popular, Paty was murdered and beheaded by Abdullah Anzorov.
Paty’s family lawyer responded to the new information by saying that the family already knew that the girl was not in class that day, so they would know that she was lying. reported.
“So, to come and say now, sorry, I believed my daughter’s lies, this is very weak,” Virginie Le Roy, the family’s lawyer, told RTL radio.
After Paty’s death, the French government closed a mosque for six months and threatened to arrest anyone who disobeyed for six months.
France takes a vigorously secular stance and the government introduced a bill against religious extremism after the attack.