An eight-year-old boy has been interrogated by police in France after his school reported him for “praising terrorism.”
The child – called Ahmed – allegedly refused to take part in a minute’s silence at his school, in Nice, on January 8 in honour of the victims of the attacks in Paris earlier this month, according to Marcel Authier, head of the region’s public security.
The boy’s teacher said the child also expressed “solidarity” with the gunmen, who shot dead 12 at the offices of the racist, Islamophobic newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7.
The child was questioned by police for half an hour on Wednesday. Mr Authier, who said no complaint has been filed against the child, said: “In the current context, the principal of the school decided to report to police what had happened. We summoned the child and his father to try and comprehend how an eight-year-old boy could hold such radical ideas.”
He added: “Obviously, the child doesn’t understand what he’s saying.”
Sefen Guez Guez, who is the boy’s lawyer, wrote on Twitter that the child admitted saying the words: “I am with the terrorists.” But when police asked him what “terrorism” meant, he said: “I don’t know.”
The Collective Against Islamophobia group, in a statement, said: “Father and son are deeply shocked by their treatment which illustrates the collective hysteria that has engulfed France since early January.”
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They added that police questioned the boy, who suffers from sleep disorder and behavioural problems for up to two hours.
The group said the boy, being a Muslim, naively said he was with the terrorists because he opposed the satirical cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in the magazine.
The murders at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters led to three days of terror attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead.
