Four teenagers have been charged in connection with the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was beheaded outside his secondary school in a Paris suburb in October.

The 47-year-old history and geography teacher was killed after showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson about free speech.

Three of the students have been charged with allegedly pointing out the teacher to his killer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, while three other pupils were charged with complicity to the killing earlier this month.

Anzorov is said to have tracked Paty down and beheaded him in the street, before he was shot dead by anti-terrorist police.

Three teenagers, who are all between the ages 13 and 14, have been charged with ‘complicity in a terrorist murder’, the Guardian reports. The fourth teenager is the daughter of Brahim Chnina, who led a hate campaign against the teacher.

The girl been charged with ‘slanderous denunciation’ of Paty, after she claimed to have been in class when Paty showed the cartoons, only for it to be revealed that she was lying.

Chnina was among seven people who were arrested following the heinous attack on October 16, as it’s claimed he was communicating with Anzorov on WhatsApp in the days leading up to the killing.

Two teenagers were also charged after they were given £300 to identify Paty to the killer. The 14- and 15-year-olds are said to have stayed with the killer for around two hours as they waited for the father-of-one to leave the school.

The killer reportedly sent a video of himself holding a knife and a gun shortly before the killing, before messaging the teens to say, ‘Say prayers for me, I will go through trials today and I hope that thanks to Allah’s help I will succeed.’

Paty had showed the cartoons, which had previously been printed in Charlie Hebdo, as part of a lesson on free speech. However, he quickly became the subject of an online hate campaign from Muslim parents, who were furious their children had been shown the illustrations.

It’s reported that he first asked Muslims to leave the room before showing the images, in an attempt to avoid causing any offence.

The killing has caused an uproar in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to take on a strict new line on Islamic extremism.

In response, another terrorist killed three people before being shot dead in a church in Nice.

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