A primary school in Nice reported an eight year old boy to the police after he expressed solidarity with the Hebdo attackers.
thelocal.fr report that the child was questioned by police for half an hour on Wednesday
Local human rights groups as well as the family lawyer have opposed the way he has been treated following an incident at the school.
RT report:
Initially, school authorities became concerned when the child refused to participate in a minute’s silence at his school to commemorate the Paris attacks which killed 17 people in January, Marcel Authier, the head of the region’s public security, said.
At the time, the boy also expressed “solidarity” with the attackers.
Afterwards, the child, whose name has been reported as Ahmed, was in class when he was asked if he was “Charlie.”
“He answered, ‘I am on the side of the terrorists, because I am against the caricatures of the prophet,’” his lawyer Sefen Guez Guez told BFMTV.
However, when asked what terrorism is, the child reportedly answered that he didn’t know.
The primary school in Nice reported the boy to police after the incident.
“In the current context, the principal of the school decided to report to police what had happened,” Marcel Authier stressed.
“We summoned the child and his father to try and comprehend how an eight-year-old boy could hold such radical ideas. Obviously, the child doesn’t understand what he’s saying,” he added.
Father and son were deeply shocked by their treatment, according to an Islamaphobia watchdog who added that France is suffering from a “colective hysteria” in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.
Niamh Harris