The man, who decapitated French teacher Samuel Paty over showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to his pupils, was in contact beforehand with a parent, who had launched an online campaign against the teacher, news agency AFP reported quoting police sources.

The 18-year-old killer had exchanged messages on WhatsApp with the father of a girl in Paty’s class, the sources told AFP. The father is in police custody, the source added.

The breakthrough in the case came
as President Emmanuel Macron promised more pressure on Islamist extremism after
days of clampdowns which have resulted in over a dozen arrests, a mosque
ordered shut and a pro-Hamas group to be dissolved.,”Our fellow citizens
expect actions,” Macron said during a visit to a Paris suburb. “These
actions will be stepped up.”

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Police sources said earlier that the
18-year-old killer had exchanged messages on WhatsApp with the man who wanted
Samuel Paty fired after his daughter told him how the teacher had shown
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a lesson on free speech.

The parent — the
father of a girl in Paty’s class — was behind an online campaign urging
“mobilisation” against the teacher. The man, now in police custody,
had placed his phone number on Facebook and exchanged messages with the killer
— 18-year-old Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov — on WhatsApp in the days leading up
to the murder, police sources told AFP.

Anzorov was shot dead by police soon
after the killing. Among other messages, the father had published a video
railing against Paty’s choice of lesson material.

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The mosque, now targeted for
a six-month closure, shared this video on its own Facebook Page. Macron added
that a pro-Hamas group active in France would be dissolved for being
“directly implicated” in the murder of the teacher.

The decision to
shut down the “Cheikh Yassine Collective”, which supports the
Palestinian cause and is named after the Hamas founder, will be taken at a
Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, he said. The group’s founder and Islamist radical,
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, is currently being held by police for publishing a video
on YouTube insulting Paty.

Prime Minister Jean Castex told MPs on Tuesday that
the government was now targeting “all associations whose complicity with
radical Islamism has been established”.

Also read: ‘Fatwa launched’ against beheaded teacher: French minister

Paty, 47, was attacked Friday on
his way home from the junior high school where he taught in
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Paris. Police
have arrested 16 people in connection with the killing, including and four
members of Anzorov’s family.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin vowed there
would be “not a minute’s respite for enemies of the
Republic”.

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said Tuesday that
Paty would be posthumously bestowed France’s highest order of merit, the Legion
of Honour. The school said Paty had given Muslim pupils the choice to leave the
classroom before he showed the cartoons.

Also read: Who was Samuel Paty, the teacher killed in Paris for showing caricature of Prophet Muhammad

But the girl’s father was outraged by
him displaying a caricature of the prophet naked, and sought Paty’s dismissal
for disseminating “pornography”. On Tuesday, the head of the Pantin
mosque, M’hammed Henniche, said he had shared the father’s video out of fear
that Muslim children were being singled out in class. Five pupils suspected of
accepting payment for pointing Paty out to his killer were among those in
police custody.

Paty’s beheading was the second knife attack claimed in the
name of avenging the Prophet since a trial started last month over the Charlie
Hebdo killings in 2015 when 12 people, including cartoonists, were gunned down
for publishing Mohammed cartoons. After Paty’s murder, Macron threatened that
“fear is about to change sides”.

Junior interior minister Marlene
Schiappa assembled French bosses of social networks Tuesday to discuss
bolstering the “fight against cyber-Islamism”.

Tens of thousands of
people took part in rallies countrywide over the weekend to honour Paty and
defend freedom of expression. The French parliament observed a minute of
silence for Paty on Tuesday, while thousands gathered for a silent march in the
teacher’s honour in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in the evening.

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Macron will attend
an official homage with Paty’s family Wednesday at the Sorbonne
university. Darmanin has called for vigilance at schools to be bolstered when
pupils return after the autumn break.

The next edition of Charlie Hebdo,
meanwhile, will feature the headline “The decapitated Republic” on
its front page along with cartoons representing various professions, the weekly
said Tuesday. “These murderers want to decapitate democracy itself,”
reads the editorial to be published Wednesday.