By A 14-year-old girl was severely wounded and left in a coma after being beaten outside her school by three other teenagers over what, her mother suggested, could have been down to un-Islamic behaviour.
The French government has launched an investigation over the attack in the southern city of Montpelier, which has caused political uproar across the country.
It came days after the head teacher of a Parisian school resigned following death threats after she asked a student to remove her Muslim veil, sparking widespread outrage.
The victim, named as Samara, is now out of her coma but was “seriously wounded” in the attack on Tuesday afternoon outside the Arthur Rimbaud College in Montpellier. The school is in the La Mosson-La Paillade district, a low-income suburb with many residents of immigrant origin, prosecutors said.
One of the accused is a girl from the same school, also 14, who was arrested on Wednesday and admits to having beaten the victim, Montpellier prosecutors said in a statement late on Wednesday. The two other minors arrested are aged 14 and 15.
The victim’s mother, Hassiba, said: “I don’t actually understand this child’s reasons for constantly attacking Samara, but there is something.
“I think it’s… the fact that [Samara]… is maybe a little more liberated than some students,” she told broadcaster BFMTV.
“Samara wears a bit of make-up. And this young girl [who attacked Samara] wears a veil. All day long, she called her a kouffar, which means miscreant in Arabic. My daughter dresses in European style. All day long there were insults, she was called a kahba, which means c–t in Arabic. It was physically and psychologically unbearable.”
The victim’s mother accused this classmate of being the “sponsor” of the attack and claimed that this schoolgirl had been suspended for two days in June 2023, having published a photo of her daughter on social networks calling for her to be raped.
‘All women have a right to dress as they wish’
Suggestions the incident may have been related to religion sparked a flurry of reaction from politicians.
Marine Le Pen of the hard-Right National Rally took direct aim at “Islamism, which is attacking our children”.
“It’s time to declare war on this totalitarianism that is attacking our children,” she said.
Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, added: “Schools are facing an Islamist offensive and an outburst of violence that must be stopped as a matter of urgency.”
Francois-Xavier Bellamy, candidate for centre-Right party the Republicans, denounced what he called the “serious violence against pupils, teachers and headmasters” adding: “Our education system is going through an existential crisis, but the denial has not stopped.”
Valérie Pécresse, conservative president of the Paris region, said she was appalled to hear Samara had been targeted by “the Islamist dress police,” saying the teenagers behind it were “the same as those who chase unveiled Iranian women in the streets of Tehran”.
On the Left, MP Sandrine Rousseau denounced an “absolutely, totally sexist attack” pointing out that “all women have the right to dress as they wish”.
Olivier Faure, the Socialist Party leader, said: “No one should be troubled for their religious or civic opinions. Our collective duty is to protect all our fellow citizens from the obscurantists who attack our freedoms. Samara’s attack is a disgrace.”
Far-Right warned against exploiting the attack
On Thursday evening, the victim’s mother said that on the day of the attack she had been called by her daughter’s head teacher to warn her that a group of young people were waiting for her outside the school. “Following this call, I called the school office twice,” asking them to keep Samara inside the school. But she said the staff member responsible was “unreachable”.
“And at 4pm my daughter, [having had] no information, went out as usual to catch the school bus … she was thrown into the lion’s den”, she told the Touche pas à mon poste ! programme on the C8 channel. However, she warned against “the exploitation of [her] daughter’s suffering by the far-Right”.
Despite the outcry, the reasons for the attack remain unclear.
According to a group of pupils interviewed on Thursday by an AFP journalist as they left the Arthur Rimbaud secondary school, what happened had “nothing to do with a certain way of dressing”.
Le Parisien cited the mother as also suggesting the attack may have been an act of revenge for posts on a “fake” Snapchat account in her daughter’s name in which classmates were ridiculed with filters such as rabbit ears.
‘We owe the truth to Samara’
Nicole Belloubet, the education minister, said she had launched an administrative inquiry to “establish the reality of the facts” and “who is responsible,” adding that she would “draw all the consequences” once it was completed.
“We owe the truth to Samara, to the family and of course to our institution,” said the minister, promising that she would “not fail”.
“I can assure you that my arm will not tremble, I will know how to take my responsibilities,” said Mrs Belloubet, adding, however, that she did not want “anything at this stage to prejudge” the conclusions of the investigation.
President Emmanuel Macron said that there was no justification “for a teenage girl to have been assaulted by several young people her own age”, while indicating that he would be “very cautious” at this stage.
“I like to comment on things, especially to make decisions when I am sure of the facts,” the president said. “I am therefore awaiting the full and complete return of the work of the courts, but also of the prefecture and the education authority.”
In a separate incident, a 15-year-old teenager was beaten up by several people on Thursday afternoon in Viry-Châtillon south of Paris as he left his secondary school and hospitalised in a “life-threatening” condition.
The controversy erupted as a 15-year-old teenager died on Friday afternoon after being beaten up by several people on Thursday south of Paris as he left his secondary school following a music lesson.
Prosecutors have launched an investigation for “murder and violence in a group in the vicinity of a school”. The perpetrators are at large.
