Beheaded Teacher Paty Will Get France’s Highest Honor: Minister

A woman holds a banner as she attends a tribute to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans St Honorine, at the Place de la Republique, in Lille, France, on Oct.18, 2020. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

PARIS—Samuel Paty, the 47-year old history teacher beheaded by a suspected Islamist last week, will posthumously get France’s highest award, the “Legion d'Honneur,” education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told BFM TV on Tuesday.

Paty was murdered on Friday in broad daylight outside his school in a middle-class Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin. Police shot the attacker dead.

The teenager sought to avenge his victim’s use of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.

The murder shocked France and carried echoes of the attack five years ago on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Public figures called the killing an attack on the Republic and on French values.

A national ceremony in honor of Paty will be held at Paris’ Sorbonne university on Wednesday.