A complaint for “slanderous denunciation” will be filed by the State against the young woman who accused her principal of assaulting her after she refused to remove her veil, the Prime Minister announced Wednesday evening. This comes after the principal of Maurice-Ravel high school in Paris (20th arrondissement) left his position following death threats. The student’s complaint was dismissed for “insufficiently characterized offense,” the prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday.
“The State, the institution, will always stand by its agents,” Gabriel Attal reiterated his support for the principal, whom he met within the afternoon. “The State, the institution, will always stand by its agents, those who are on the front lines facing attacks on secularism, facing attempts of Islamist infiltration in our schools,” emphasized the Prime Minister. “Secularism” is constantly being tested. And we can see that there is a form of Islamist infiltration, especially in our schools,” said Gabriel Attal.
“This infiltration, these attacks, recently claimed two victims within 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.
“I really want to pay tribute to him because he showed great dignity in this ordeal. He was supposed to retire in June. Some advised him, for security reasons, to leave a bit earlier,” explained Gabriel Attal. “He simply did his job.” “He asked a young woman to follow the law, which means to remove her veil in the school. This young woman refused and, worse, she tried to intimidate him by accusing him of assault or violence,” he added.
“These accusations” were then spread on social media, including “by some elected officials, I’m thinking of a lawmaker from France Insoumise,” and led to death threats against the principal,” he recalled.
