Man jailed after threatening to kill son's teacher in French village
The father had threatened to behead a female primary school teacher near Toulouse.
Man jailed after threatening to kill son's teacher in French village
A man in France has been handed a six-month prison sentence after threatening to kill a female primary school teacher who had disciplined his son at a village primary school.
He was convicted in a fast-track hearing on Thursday, six days after the incident in Le Fauga, a village of about 2,600 people just outside the southwestern city of Toulouse.
The teacher has been placed under official protection and has taken sick leave.
French Education Minister Edouard Geffray said: "No teacher should be afraid to do their job. Attacking one of them is attacking the entire institution."
During the summer, Geffray pushed through a law designed to protect staff from a "significant risk" to their safety or health posed by a member of a student's family.
The minister said this case would be one of the first to activate the decree.
The case brings back painful memories in France of the beheading of a teacher in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine six years ago. Samuel Paty was killed outside his school by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee.
In Le Fauga, the teacher's colleagues stayed away from work on Monday because of what had happened the previous Friday.
According to Toulouse education chief Karim Benmiloud, the threat came after the man had been summoned for a discussion with the school.
Le Fauga Mayor Jean-Marie Puig told BFMTV that the man's son had been disruptive in class and that the teacher had sent him to another class to calm down, though he continued to misbehave.
BFMTV reports that the teacher in that class was said to have told the child to "stop acting like a little bully".
She was then threatened by the father, who, according to the mayor, had waited for her "outside the school and apparently threatened to cut off her head if she'd been a man".
The parent later apologised, but a judicial complaint was filed and he appeared before the prosecutor in Toulouse on Thursday afternoon.
The decree adopted in July allows a student to be moved to another school in a case involving significant risk to staff, where education authorities have intervened.
It is believed the boy and a younger sister may now be transferred to another school outside Le Fauga.