Threatened French teacher offered top-level state protection

PARIS (AP) - French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Thursday a state school teacher who allegedly received death threats after writing an open letter on the threat of radical Islam to teachers has been offered the highest level of state protection.

Didier Lemaire had already been under some degree of police protection in the Yvelines area, southwest of Paris.

On Thursday, Darmanin said the highest level of protection -- usually accorded to high-profile politicians -- was offered to him. It could include a driver and one or more personal bodyguards. The minister did not specify whether the teacher had accepted the offer.

Lemaire, a philosophy teacher, said he received death threats after he wrote an open letter saying the state did not do enough to protect teacher Samuel Paty.

Paty was beheaded last October by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, after he showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a class on freedom of expression. Anzorov was shot dead by police shortly after.

French prosecutors are investigating the alleged threats against Lemaire.