Nice Church Attack and Paris Teacher Beheading Linked, French Investigators Say

Nice Church Attack and Paris Teacher Beheading Linked, French Investigators Say

Last month’s beheading of a Paris school teacher and the subsequent terror attack in the city of Nice appear to be connected, evidence uncovered by the French investigators shows. The Tunisian Muslim immigrant, Brahim al-Aouissaoui, who beheaded a 70-year old woman and two other worshipers in Nice’s Notre Dame church may have been in personal contact with the Russian-Chechen Muslim refugee who beheaded Samuel Paty, the 47-year-old Parisian middle school teacher.

French authorities and President Emmanuel Macron identified these acts of jihad as ‘Islamist terrorist attacks.’ No doubts could be cast on the Islamic motives behind the two killings. Both attackers shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ as they beheaded and mutilated their victims.

The Paris school teacher was beheaded after a Fatwa, or the Islamic death warrant, was issued against him for showing Mohammad caricatures from the Charlie Hebdo magazine to his class as part of a discussion on free speech. Al-Aouissaoui was “armed with a knife and carrying a copy of the Quran” when he attacked the worshipers in the Nice church, the Associated Press confirmed.

Reuters on Friday reported the latest findings released by the French Prosecutors:

The man suspected of knifing to death three people in a church in the French city of Nice had on his telephone pictures of the man who beheaded a middle school teacher near Paris 13 days earlier, prosecutors said on Friday.

The discovery of the photos on the phone of 21-year-old Tunisian Brahim al-Aouissaoui, who was shot and wounded by police in the Oct. 29 attack, could indicate a common motive behind the two attacks.

Anti-terrorist prosecutors said in a media statement that an examination of Aouissaoui’s mobile phone had also revealed images linked to the Islamic State group. The prosecutors did not say what they were or how they were linked to the group. (…)

Until now, the only connection prosecutors had drawn between the Paris attack and the Nice church attack was the method employed. In both cases, the attackers used a large knife and beheaded, or tried to behead, their victims.

The Paris beheading marked the beginning of a new wave of Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe. Samuel Paty’s decapitation was followed by a series of terrorist attacks in France. Earlier this month, a gunman struck outside a synagogue and other locations in the Austrian capital Vienna. The Islamic State took responsibility for the attack that killed four people and injured 23 others. The attacker, identified as “Abu Dagnah Al-Albany,” was pictured on social media with “a machine gun and a machete and … a ring stamped with a sentence saying “Mohammed is the messenger of Allah”,” Reuters reported.

Following the Islamist stabbing and beheading frenzy, President Macron raised the nation’s security alert to the highest level and called in the army to counter the threat. He ordered the deployment of 4000 soldiers to guard churches, synagogues, and places of worship.

Mass migration from Arab North Africa and Muslim-majority countries have turned major French cities into bastions of jihadi elements. The country is home to 17,000 ‘radicalized’ Muslims, a 2017 European Union intelligence report estimated.

France is under siege from jihadi forces, the country’s right-wing opposition warned. French opposition leader, Marine Le Pen, demanded a “wartime legislation” to fight “an organized and already installed force” of Islamism in the country. “The situation calls for a strategy of reconquest,” she urged.

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