French newspaper faces threats after republishing Prophet Mohammed cartoon

Following the assassination of a French teacher in Paris, a regional newspaper has received threats after it republished a satirical drawing of the Prophet Mohammed from magazine Charlie Hebdo.

La Nouvelle Republique newspaper was attacked on social media after it published a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed on its front page on Sunday, in an editorial response to last week’s brutal killing of teacher Samuel Paty.

Editorial director of La Nouvelle Republique, Christophe Herigault, told BFM TV on Wednesday that, despite the mostly positive response that their front page got on October 18, they received “four or five threats, notably on Facebook, which has led us to lodge a judicial complaint.”

Herigault defended the publication's decision to publish the cartoon despite the threats, stating that “there was absolutely no desire to provoke” but it was done to express the paper's anger over the teacher's killing.

The police in France have not yet commented on the recent threats. However, French President Emmanuel Macron promised on Tuesday to take “concrete actions” against “the evil that is radical Islam” and announced that the Cheikh Yassine Collective, a Muslim group linked to Hamas that was “directly implicated” in the recent murder, would be broken up.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also called for two Islamic NGOs to be dissolved, after they were accused of taking part in a social media campaign against Paty that led to his death.

Paty’s brutal killing has provoked deep emotions across France, which has a long history of combating violent acts of extremism, and sparked rallies to pay tribute to him and pledge support for free speech throughout the nation.

Less than a month before Paty’s murder, four people were wounded outside the old headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for the magazine republishing a 2015 front page that featured a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. The act was to mark the start of the trial of three men accused of aiding a terrorist attack carried out against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Twelve people were killed at the magazine’s office by gunmen angered by Charlie Hebdo’s publication of caricatures of the Islamic prophet.

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