Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia

Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
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Pro-Palestinian supporters rally on the campus of Columbia University on April 22, 2024 in New York City. (AFP)
Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
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Two student protesters converse at the Pro-Palestine protest encampment at the Columbia University campus in New York on Monday April 22, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 23 April 2024
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Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia

Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
  • Columbia University canceled in-person classes and police arrested dozens of students at New York University and Yale
  • Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments on other campuses around the country

NEW YORK: Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public on Monday as some of the most prestigious US universities sought to diffuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.
The various actions followed the arrest last week of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green, as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining a safe and inclusive campus.
In addition to the demonstrations at the Ivy League schools, pro-Palestinian encampments have sprouted up on other campuses, including the University of Michigan, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.
Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia in New York City, where the campus gates were locked to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on campus and outside.
US Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina who was visiting Columbia with three other Jewish members of Congress to view the encampment, told reporters after meeting with students from the Jewish Law Students Association that there was “an enormous encampment of people” who had taken up about a third of the green.
“We saw signs indicating that Israel should be destroyed,” she said after leaving the Morningside Heights campus.
A woman inside the campus gates led about two-dozen protesters on the street outside in a chant of, ” From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! ” — a charged phrase that can mean vastly different things to different groups. Meanwhile, a small group of pro-Israel counter demonstrators protested nearby.
University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the school community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on campus.
“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Shafik wrote, noting that faculty and staff should work remotely when possible and that students who don’t live on campus should stay away.
Protests have roiled many college campuses since Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a ceasefire and are protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said.
He also said MIT has been sending out confusing rules about protests.
“We’re out here to demonstrate that we reserve the right to protest. It’s an essential part of living on a college campus,” Iyengar said.
On Sunday, Elie Buechler, a rabbi for the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to nearly 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it’s more safe for them on campus.
The latest developments came ahead of the Monday evening start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary building two blocks from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, said protesters over the weekend were “calling for Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slurs were not students.
“Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that. There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over into the vilification of Judaism,” he said.
The protest encampment sprung up at Columbia on Wednesday, the same day that Shafik faced bruising criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she hadn’t done enough to fight antisemitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago following widely criticized testimony they gave to the same committee.
In her statement Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible and that she understands that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
Over the coming days, a working group of deans, school administrators and faculty will try to find a resolution to the university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes would resume.
Several students at Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, said they were suspended for taking part in last week’s protests, including Barnard student Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
At Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear in court later, he said.
Protesters set up tents on Beinecke Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to end any investments in defense companies that do business with Israel.
Nadine Cubeisy, a Yale student and one of the protest’s organizers, said it was disturbing that “this university that I’m going to, that I contribute to and that my friends give money to is using that money to fund violence.”
In a statement to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter Salovey said university officials had spoken to the student protesters multiple times about the school’s policies and guidelines, including those regarding speech and allowing access to campus spaces.
School officials said they spoke with protesters over several hours and gave them until the end of the weekend to leave Beinecke Plaza. The said they again warned protesters Monday morning and told them that they could face arrest and discipline, including suspension, before police moved in.
A large group of demonstrators regathered after Monday’s arrests at Yale and blocked a street near campus, said Bruckhart. There were no reports of any violence or injuries.
Last week, the University of Southern California took the unusual step of canceling a planned commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, who had publicly supported Palestinians. The university cited security concerns in a decision that was praised by some pro-Israel groups but criticized by free-speech advocates.


Ukrainian delegation visiting Seoul to ask for weapons aid, media reports say

Ukrainian delegation visiting Seoul to ask for weapons aid, media reports say
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Ukrainian delegation visiting Seoul to ask for weapons aid, media reports say

Ukrainian delegation visiting Seoul to ask for weapons aid, media reports say
  • The group was expected to meet their South Korean counterparts as early as Wednesday, according to the report

SEOUL: A Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is visiting South Korea this week to ask for weapons aid to be used by Kyiv in its war with Russia, according to media reports.
The delegation had met with South Korea’s National Security Adviser Shin Won-sik to exchange views on the conflict in Ukraine, the DongA Ilbo newspaper reported on Wednesday, without giving a source.
In an interview with South Korean broadcaster KBS in October, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv would send a detailed request to Seoul for arms support including artillery and an air defense systems.
The South China Morning Post also reported this week that a Ukrainian delegation was due to visit South Korea to request weapons aid, citing an informed source.
The group was expected to meet their South Korean counterparts as early as Wednesday, according to the report.
A spokesperson for South Korea’s defense ministry declined to confirm when asked whether a Ukrainian delegation had arrived in Seoul during a regular media briefing on Tuesday.
Seoul, which has emerged as a leading arms producer, has been under pressure from some Western countries and Kyiv to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons but has so far focused on non-lethal aid including demining equipment.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, asked earlier this month whether Seoul would send weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea aiding Russia, said all possible scenarios were under consideration and Seoul would be watching the level of participation by North Korean troops in Russia and what Pyongyang received from Moscow in return.


Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief

Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief
Updated 27 November 2024
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Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief

Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief
  • The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data

DETROIT: If Donald Trump makes good on his threat to slap 25 percent tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, the price increases that could follow will collide with his campaign promise to give American families a break from inflation.
Economists say companies would have little choice but to pass along the added costs, dramatically raising prices for food, clothing, automobiles, booze and other goods.
The president-elect floated the tariff idea, including additional 10 percent taxes on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to halt the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the US But his posts Monday on Truth Social threatening the tariffs on his first day in office could just be a negotiating ploy to get the countries to change behavior.
High food prices were a major issue in voters picking Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, but tariffs almost certainly would push those costs up even further.
For instance, the Produce Distributors Association, a Washington trade group, said Tuesday that tariffs will raise prices for fresh fruit and vegetables and hurt US farmers when other countries retaliate.
“Tariffs distort the marketplace and will raise prices along the supply chain, resulting in the consumer paying more at the checkout line,” said Alan Siger, association president.
Mexico and Canada are two of the biggest exporters of fresh fruit and vegetables to the US In 2022, Mexico supplied 51 percent of fresh fruit and 69 percent of fresh vegetables imported by value into the US, while Canada supplied 2 percent of fresh fruit and 20 percent of fresh vegetables.
Before the election, about 7 in 10 voters said they were very concerned about the cost of food, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters.
“We’ll get them down,” Trump told shoppers during a September visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store.
The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data.
People looking to buy a new vehicle likely would see big price increases as well, at a time when costs have gone up so much they are out of reach for many. The average price of a new vehicle now runs around $48,000.
About 15 percent of the 15.6 million new vehicles sold in the US last year came from Mexico, while 8 percent crossed the border from Canada, according to Global Data.
Much of the tariffs would get passed along to consumers, unless automakers can somehow quickly find productivity improvements to offset them, said C.J. Finn, US automotive sector leader for PwC. That means even more consumers “would potentially get priced out,” Finn said.
Hardest hit would be Volkswagen, Stellantis, General Motors and Ford, Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska wrote Tuesday in a note to investors. “A 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada would severely cripple the US auto industry,” he said.
The tariffs would hurt US industrial production so much that “we expect this is unlikely to happen in practice,” Roeska said.
The tariff threat hit auto stocks on Tuesday, particularly shares of GM, which imports about 30 percent of the vehicles it sells in the US from Canada and Mexico, and Stellantis, which imports about 40 percent from the two countries. For both, about 55 percent of their lucrative pickup trucks come from Mexico and Canada. GM stock lost almost 9 percent of its value, while Stellantis dropped nearly 6 percent.
It’s not clear how long the tariffs would last if implemented, but they could force auto executives to move production to the US, which could create more jobs in the long run. However, Morningstar analyst David Whiston said automakers probably won’t make any immediate moves because they can’t quickly change where they build vehicles.
Millions of dollars worth of auto parts flow across the borders with Mexico and Canada, and that could raise prices for already costly automobile repairs, Finn said.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the US said tariffs on tequila or Canadian whisky won’t boost American jobs because they are distinctive products that can only be made in their country of origin. In 2023, the US imported $4.6 billion worth of tequila and $108 million worth of mezcal from Mexico and $537 million worth of spirits from Canada, it said.
“Tariffs on spirits products from our neighbors to the north and south are going to hurt US consumers and lead to job losses across the US hospitality industry,” it added.
Electronics retailer Best Buy said on its third-quarter earnings conference call that it runs on thin profit margins, so while vendors and the company will shoulder some increases, Best Buy will have to pass tariffs to customers. “These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” CEO Corie Barry said.
Walmart also warned last week that tariffs could force it to raise prices.
Tariffs could trigger supply chain disruptions as people buy goods before they are imposed and companies seek alternate sources of parts, said Rob Handfield, a professor of supply chain management at North Carolina State University. Some businesses might not be able to pass on the costs.
“It could actually shut down a lot of industries in the United States. It could actually put a lot of US businesses out of business,” he said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who talked with Trump after his call for tariffs, said they had a good conversation about working together. “This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau said.
Trump’s threats come as arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling. But arrests for illegally crossing the border from Canada have been rising over the past two years. Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico, and seizures have increased.
Trump has sound legal justification to impose tariffs, even though they conflict with a 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump with Canada and Mexico, said William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Clinton administration trade official. The treaty, known as the USMCA, is up for review in 2026.
In China’s case, he could simply declare Beijing hasn’t met obligations under an agreement he negotiated in his first term. For Canada and Mexico, he could say the influx of migrants and drugs are a national security threat, and turn to a section of trade law he used in his first term to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The law he would most likely use for Canada and Mexico has a legal process that often takes up to nine months, giving Trump time to seek a deal.
If talks failed and the duties were imposed, all three countries would likely retaliate with tariffs on US exports, said Reinsch, who believes Trump’s tariffs threat is a negotiating ploy.
US companies would lobby intensively against tariffs, and would seek to have products exempted. Some of the biggest exporters from Mexico are US firms that make parts there, Reinsch said.
Longer term, Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the threat of tariffs could make the US an “unstable partner” in international trade. “It is an incentive to move activity outside the United States to avoid all this uncertainty,” she said.
Trump transition team officials did not immediately respond to questions about what he would need to see to prevent the tariffs from being implemented and how they would impact prices in the US
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own. Sheinbaum said she was willing to talk about the issues, but said drugs were a US problem.


US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case

US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case
Updated 27 November 2024
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US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case

US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case
  • The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment

WASHINGTON: An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request by prosecutors to drop the case against US President-elect Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had asked the court on Monday to dismiss the case because of a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
A Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida threw out the documents case earlier this year, but Smith had appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment.
Smith is continuing, however, to pursue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants, his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump, 78, was accused of removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House at the end of his first term and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
The former president was also accused by the special counsel of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. A judge on Monday granted a request by Smith to drop that case.
The special counsel paused both federal cases this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.


Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it

Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it
Updated 26 November 2024
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Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it

Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it
  • Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories

WASHINGTON: It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump’s support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency.
In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds.
But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.
Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected.
There were some notable pieces to how Trump’s victory came together:
Trump took a bite in Northern metros
Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden’s total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden’s mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
It wasn’t only Harris’ shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.
Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County.
It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states.
Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states’ broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs.
Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories.
When James Blair, Trump’s political director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties.
“The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said.
AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45.
Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.
Trump gained more than Harris in battlegrounds
Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.
In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania.
In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump’s support grew by more — in some states, significantly more.
That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains.
In the three largest suburban Milwaukee counties — Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha — which have formed the backbone of GOP victories for decades, Harris performed better than Biden did in 2020. She also gained more votes than Trump gained over 2020, though he still won the counties.
That made Trump’s focus on Rock County, a blue-collar area in south central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home of the former automotive manufacturing city of Janesville, than he did in 2020, while Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 total by seven votes. That helped Trump offset Harris’ improvement in Milwaukee’s suburbs.
The focus speaks to the strength Trump has had and continued to grow with middle-income, non-college educated voters, the Trump campaign’s senior data analyst Tim Saler said.
“If you’re going to have to lean into working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We saw huge shifts from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.”
Trump boosted 2020 totals as Arizona turnout dipped
Of the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in the number of votes cast in the presidential contest — slightly more than 4,000 votes, in a state with more than 3.3 million ballots cast.
That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits to Arizona by Trump, Harris and their running mates and more than $432 million spent on advertising by the campaigns and allied outside groups, according to the ad-monitoring firm AdImpact.
Arizona, alone of the seven swing states, saw Harris fall short of Biden across small, midsize and large counties. In the other six states, she was able to hold on in at least one of these categories.
Even more telling, it is also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every single county.
While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous as the home to Phoenix, dipped slightly from 2020 — by 14,199 votes, a tiny change in a county where more than 2 million people voted — Trump gained almost 56,000 more votes than four years ago.
Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden’s total, contributing to a shift significant enough to swing the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.
Rightward shift even in heavily Democratic areas
The biggest leaps to the right weren’t taking place exclusively among Republican-leaning counties, but also among the most Democratic-leaning counties in the states. Michigan’s Wayne County swung 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican-leaning Antrim County for the largest movement in the state.
AP VoteCast found that voters were most likely to say the economy was the most important issue facing the country in 2024, followed by immigration. Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris’, the survey showed.
“It’s still all about the economy,” said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won North Carolina’s governorship on Nov. 5 as Trump also carried the state.
“Democrats have to embrace an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in the kind of terms that people get, rather than giving them a dissertation of economic policy,” he said.
Governor’s elections in 2026 give Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the past and winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego this year.
“So there’s an opportunity to really make sure people, who governors have a connection to, are feeling some specificity and clarity with the Democratic economic message,” Omero said.

 


Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher’s class says ‘sorry’

Samuel Paty. (Photo credit: @Ch_Capuano)
Samuel Paty. (Photo credit: @Ch_Capuano)
Updated 26 November 2024
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Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher’s class says ‘sorry’

Samuel Paty. (Photo credit: @Ch_Capuano)
  • Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history

PARIS: A teenager whose lies about her teacher are accused of contributing to the educator’s murder by an Islamist radical apologized to his family in a French court on Tuesday.
Eight people have been on trial since early November, charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.
They include Brahim Chnina, the 52-year-old Moroccan father of the adolescent testifying Tuesday.
Then aged 13, the adolescent falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
She was not in the classroom at the time.
“I would like to apologize to the family,” the 17-year-old, who has not been named, told the court. “I destroyed your lives, I am sorry.”
Also on trial is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old French-Moroccan Islamist activist.
He and Chnina spread the teenager’s lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designating a target,” “provoking a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes.”
Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.
The teenager told the court that she lied to her mother to justify why she had been suspended from school for two days over her behavior and repeated absences.
“I was in panic and stress,” she said. “I told her I had been in class and that I wasn’t happy with what went on there and that the teacher excluded me. That we looked at cartoons.”

Sefrioui posted a video describing Paty as a “teaching thug.”
He also staged an “interview” with the teenager outside the school, whispering to her what to answer. The adolescent dutifully reiterated the falsehoods.
“I thought somebody would stop me in my lying, but nobody ever said that I wasn’t in class,” she told the court Tuesday.
She stuck to her story even after Paty’s death. Only following her arrest and 30 hours of interrogation did she admit to investigators that she had made it all up.
The teenager, whose delivery in court was matter-of-fact, showed emotion only when she talked about her father.
“Without my lies, none of us would be here,” she said, sobbing. “I used my father’s naivete and kindness.”
She added that “my father says you must always respect teachers,” a remark that prompted an astonished “really?” interjected by the court’s presiding judge.
The teenager was sentenced to 18 months of probation in December 2023 after being convicted of slander.
Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.
His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people.