The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that led the recent overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria has been tied to the terrorist beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty.
Potentially undermining claims from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Mohammed al-Joulani that his organisation has moderated from its jihadist past, having been formed originally as an offshoot of al-Qaeda, the organisation has been tied to the brutal beheading of Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb in 2020 with a meat cleaver after he was accused of blasphemy for showing students in a class on freedom of expression a caricature of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
According to a 2020 article from Le Parisien published shortly after the beheading, the Russian-born Chechen attacker Abdoullakh Anzorov sent a message containing a picture of Paty’s severed head to an account on Instagram alongside an audio message: “I beheaded the teacher, now I’m going to wage jihad in France.”
The account replied with a message: “Allah Akbar! May the peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you.” Shortly after the exchange, Anzorov was shot and killed by police.
Le Figaro reports that Anzorov’s contact was later revealed to have been Tajikistan-national Faruq Shami, who posed as an independent reporter in Syria but was later revealed by French anti-terror police to have had an active “role in the media jihad and in the propaganda of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.” Shami was said to have had regular contact with radicalised Muslims in France.
The 18-year-old Chechen terrorist, who came to France as a refugee, was also reportedly in contact with another Syrian jihadist who served for HTS as a “sniper”.
Just 12 days before the fatal attack on Paty, Anzorov celebrated the HTS group on his Snapchat account, saying: “There is no doubt that what is happening in Idlib is the real jihad where Allah chooses the shuhada (martyrs, editor’s note) from among his servants, and the best current group to join is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.”
When pressed on the apparent connections with the beheading of Paty by France24 journalist Wassim Nasr, an HTS spokesman denied involvement while refusing to condemn the attack.
“We live in an open world; everyone can contact everyone; we do not know the Chechen student, and his act is the responsibility of the French president who provoked and accused Islam in a majority of his speeches. The student lived in France and his interactions are more important with his direct environment. What he did is the result of what is happening in France and not in Idlib,” the spokesman said.
It comes as the Biden administration in the United States and the left-wing Labour Party government of Sir Keir Starmer in Britain are considering removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from their respective terrorist lists. The European Union said that currently, Brussels is not engaging with HTS or its leaders, with a Commission spokesman saying Monday: “As HTS takes on greater responsibility, we need to assess not only their words but also their actions.”
