French security services ‘failed to respond’ to red flag over extremist messages posted by teacher’s killer

People lay flowers in front of the middle-school where murdered school teacher Samuel Paty taught 

Credit: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images

An alarming message posted online by the teenager who beheaded a French teacher last week was reported to counter-terrorism services six days before the killing, but no action was taken, French media have reported.

A tweet by Abdoullakh Anzorov on October 10 was immediately reported to Pharos, the police service that monitors extremist discourse online.

Pharos, which has only 30 staff to deal with hundreds of reports a day, did not follow up because Anzorov was not among 8,000 potentially dangerous suspects on France’s terrorism watch list. 

“It’s impossible to place all those who post worrying messages online under surveillance,” a security source said. “It’s extremely difficult to distinguish those likely to act and actually carry out attacks from those who are just giving vent to provocative views.”

Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, immediately deleted the message from one of his Twitter accounts under the name Al Ansâr, and later deactivated the account. 

Paty's death has dominated French media

Credit: Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg

French police have asked Twitter to retrieve the October 10 message but have yet to receive it, the public service broadcaster FranceInfo reported. 

Other posts by Anzorov were flagged up on Sept 11, the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, when he tweeted an Islamist fighter on a camel, an emblem often used by jihadists, and in June. 

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is under fire over the failure to identify Anzorov as a risk. He has ordered security services to step up surveillance of suspected extremists and shut down mosques or groups deemed to be promoting radical Islam.  

Since the teacher’s killing, police have arrested 27 people who posted extremist messages online, Jean Castex, the prime minister, said on Friday.  

The government plans to tighten the regulation of social media, believed to have played a central role in Anzorov’s decision to murder Samuel Paty. The 47-year-old history teacher was targeted in a vitriolic online campaign for showing his class cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Anzorov was also in contact with a jihadist in Syria on social media, investigators have established.