Principal threatened with death at Ravel high school: the State will file a complaint against the student for “slanderous denunciation”

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: SERGE TENANI / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 9:29 p.m., March 27, 2024, modified at 9:31 p.m., March 27, 2024

The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, announced Wednesday that the State "was going to file a complaint" for "slanderous denunciation" against the student who had accused the principal of her Parisian high school of having assaulted her after her refusal to remove her veil . “The State, the institution, will always be alongside its agents, those who are on the front line facing these attacks on secularism, facing these attempts at Islamist entryism into our educational establishments,” argued the head of government on TF1, the day after the announcement of the departure of the principal of the Maurice-Ravel high school, who has been threatened with death since the incident. “I decided that the State was going to file a complaint against this young woman for slanderous denunciation,” declared Gabriel Attal. The student's complaint was dismissed for "insufficiently characterized offense", the prosecution announced on Wednesday.

Secularism “constantly put to the test”

“Secularism” is “constantly put to the test. And we see, there is a form of Islamist entryism which manifests itself in particular in our educational establishments,” declared Gabriel Attal. “This entryism, these attacks recently caused two victims in the National Education family, Dominique Bernard and Samuel Paty,” he said. These two teachers were killed in Islamist attacks, Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in October 2020 and Dominique Bernard in Arras, in October 2023.

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On Wednesday afternoon, the Prime Minister received the principal of the Maurice-Ravel high school for an hour. “I really want to pay tribute to him because he has great dignity in this ordeal. He was due to retire in June. (...) Some advised him, for security reasons, to leave a little further early,” said Gabriel Attal. He “simply did his job.” "He asked a young woman to apply the law, that is to say, to remove her veil in the school establishment. This young woman refused him and, worse still, she sought to intimidate him by 'accusing her of molestation or violence,' he said. “These accusations” were “then relayed on social networks”, including “by certain elected officials, I am thinking of a member of France insoumise”, and “gave rise to death threats against this principal ", he said.