France: Probe on after dozens of Paris schools receive threatening messages, beheading videos

The education ministry stated on Thursday that at least thirty schools in the Paris region had received threatening letters this week along with “shocking” footage of beheadings.

The establishments, which are primarily secondary schools, have been subjected to “serious threats” that include “justification of and incitement to terrorism,” an education ministry representative told the media.

The messages came through the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents; internal emails; or the Pronote software used by the education ministry.

The ministry stated that while “identifying the perpetrators” was an ongoing task, children and adults who had watched the “shocking videos” had been offered psychological treatment.

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At least five high schools in the western portion of the Greater Paris area, in the department of Yvelines, received bomb threats between Wednesday and Thursday, according to a police source.

The source claimed that in order to disseminate the letter and the beheading video, perpetrators “hacked a student’s email address”.

According to a police source, a secondary school in the Seine-et-Marne department, east of the French capital, got a threat claiming that explosives had been planted throughout the building “in the name of Allah”.

The most recent threats come after a wave of erroneous bomb scares in autumn 2023 that targeted schools, airports, and tourism destinations.

In the northern town of Arras, in October, a former teacher was fatally stabbed by a radicalized Islamist.

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A meeting on school security was scheduled to be chaired by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday.