Trump Expresses Condolences To Macron Over 'Vicious' Attack On French Teacher

Trump Expresses Condolences to Macron Over 'Vicious' Attack on French Teacher

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2020) US President Donald Trump has expressed condolences to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron over the deadly attack on a history teacher in a Paris suburb.

"Immigration security is national security ... A nation without borders is not a nation. So on behalf of the United States I'd like to extend my really sincere condolences to a friend of mine, President Macron of France, where they had just yesterday a vicious, vicious Islamic terrorist attack, beheading, and it's a teacher near Paris beheaded, a horrible thing, and they apprehended nine people," Trump said at a Saturday campaign rally in Janesville, Wisconsin.

On Friday night, French media reported that a history teacher, later identified as Samuel Paty, 47, was attacked and decapitated by an 18-year-old refugee of Chechen origin. The attack came after Paty showed a caricature of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to his students at the school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, north-west of Paris.

"France is having a hard time, and Macron is a great guy and I just want to say, whatever we can do," Trump told his supporters in Wisconsin on Saturday.

The killer, identified as Abdullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by French police shortly after the attack. Nine other people were detained as part of the investigation.

Spokesperson of the Russian Embassy in France, Sergey Parinov, told Sputnik on Saturday that the suspect had lived in France with his family on a legal basis since 2008. The attacker himself received a residence permit upon reaching the age of 18, according to Parinov.

According to France's anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard, the suspect was born in Moscow in 2002, was of Chechen origin, and had received refugee status in France.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has condemned the attack on the French teacher, urging French investigators on Saturday not to seek a "Chechen trace" in the attack, and stressing that the attacker had spent most of his life and was likely radicalized in France.