The government promised last Thursday to “hunt down” the perpetrators of threats of attacks against high schools. A young man was arrested this Thursday, March 28 in the morning in the town of Malakoff (Hauts-de-Seine), according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. If he admitted to being at the origin of several messages threatening attacks, according to France Infothe Paris public prosecutor’s office, contacted by Release, specifies that the suspect placed in police custody is a minor and that he “has not yet been interviewed, so any statement he may have made is not confirmed”. He would be 17 years old according to a source close to the case at AFP. “It is also recalled that the investigations are covered by the secrecy of the investigation in order to guarantee the smooth running of it, that the suspect is presumed innocent, and that his minority further strengthens the protection from which he benefits”added the prosecution.
In recent weeks, many digital workspaces – ENTs, platforms used to create links between teachers, students and parents – have been hacked across France and have been the subject of a wave of threatening messages, some accompanied from a beheading video.
Again on Wednesday, more than fifty educational establishments in Paris, mainly colleges, were targeted by new attack threats and two new investigations were opened. One “concerns the messages broadcast via the Digital Work Spaces (ENT) of the Ile-de-France colleges on the night of March 26 to 27, 2024”, the other “aims to centralize open investigations by the various public prosecutor’s offices concerning messages broadcast via the ENTs of other regional jurisdictions”, explained the prosecution. The Paris prosecutor’s office had already opened an investigation into threats against high schools in the Ile-de-France region on March 21.
These three procedures concern the offenses of attacks on an automated data processing system implemented by the State, threats of death or damage to property dangerous to people against a person responsible for the mission of public service, apology for terrorism by means of an online public communication service, provocation to an act of terrorism, identity theft and disclosure of false information in order to make people believe in dangerous destruction, the prosecution listed.
These new threats in Paris follow other messages targeting educational establishments across the country. On Monday, the Ministry of National Education announced that nearly 130 high schools and colleges in Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France and the Grand Est region had been targeted since last week. Dozens of high schools in the south of France were then targeted during the night from Monday to Tuesday.
Updated at 11:45 a.m. : with the statements of the Paris prosecutor’s office.