France: Child questioned by police for "supporting terror"

France: Child questioned by police for "supporting terror"

PARIS -- An eight-year-old boy in France was questioned by police on Wednesday after he allegedly made comments in praise of terrorists, police said.

AFP is reporting that "the child triggered concern" when he refused to take part in a minute's silence at his school in Nice after Islamist gunmen shot dead 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

The boy's teacher said the child also expressed "solidarity" with the gunmen.

"In the current context, the principal of the school decided to report to police what had happened," said Marcel Authier, in charge of the region's public security, who "stressed no complaint had been filed against the boy."

"We summoned the child and his father to try and comprehend how an eight-year-old boy could hold such radical ideas. Obviously, the child doesn't understand what he's saying," he said.

The boy's lawyer Sefen Guez Guez posted on Twitter hat the child admitted to police saying the words: "I am with the terrorists," yet when police asked what the word "terrorism" meant, he replied: "I don't know."

The Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) in a statement that "father and son are deeply shocked by their treatment which illustrates the collective hysteria that has engulfed France since early January."