Jean Castex paid tribute on Saturday to Professor Samuel Paty, killed a year ago to the day for showing in class caricatures of Muhammad, presenting him as “a servant of the Republic (…) victim of Islamist terrorism and human cowardice ”.
Samuel Paty was “struck to death in the most abject conditions in the name of the most barbaric obscurantism, quite simply because he was fulfilling his mission in one of these colleges in France,” said the head of government during a tribute to the Ministry of Education. “To pay homage to Samuel Paty is to pay homage to the Republic”, he added alongside Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and in the presence of the victim’s family and many former ministers of education.