A Moroccan man was arrested in Barcelona for praising the beheading of a French schoolteacher outside Paris this month and inciting more attacks, police said on Saturday.
The man, who was not named and detained on Friday, posted messages on social media in support of the Oct. 16 murder of Samuel Paty, Catalan regional police said.
Paty was killed outside his school in a Paris suburb by an 18-year-old terrorist, Chechen, who was incensed by the teacher showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in class. Police shot the attacker dead.
“Police officers from the Mossos d’Esquadra have arrested a man of Moroccan nationality, for an alleged crime of exaltation of terrorism and a crime of incitement to commit terrorist crimes,” Catalan police tweeted.
The suspect appeared before a court in Barcelona on Saturday and was released on condition he surrenders his passport and appears before magistrates every 14 days, police said.
An Islamic terrorist killed three people in a church in Nice on Thursday in France’s second deadly knife attack in two weeks. Three people have been taken into custody.
The attacks came amid growing Muslim anger across the world over France’s defense of the right to publish cartoons depicting Mohammad.
French President Emmanuel Macron has deployed thousands of soldiers to protect sites such as worship and schools, and ministers have warned that other Islamic terrorist attacks could occur.
Police will guard French schools in the Spanish region of Catalonia from next week.
