France: High school graduate sentenced to 18 months in prison after death threat against teacher

A French court has sentenced a 19-year-old student to one and a half years in prison for threatening to kill a teacher.

According to the public prosecutor's office in Nice, the 19-year-old had threatened the teacher that he would have to "die like Samuel Paty". The 19-year-old had testified in court that he had only wanted to make a joke to impress a girl and had researched the teacher's address in an online network to send him the death threat after learning that the teacher had accused some of his students of cheating on an exam.

The 47-year-old teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded on 16 October near his school in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine by an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin. Paty had previously shown cartoons of Mohammed in an hour's time on freedom of expression. President Emmanuel Macron then defended the showing of cartoons of Muhammad, which led to protests in Muslim countries and calls for a boycott of France.