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| - France will pay tribute on Wednesday to a history teacher beheaded for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed in a lesson on free speech, an attack that has shocked the country and prompted a government crackdown on radical Islam. Seven people, including two schoolchildren, will appear before an anti-terror judge for a decision on criminal charges over the killing of 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty on Friday. Police have carried out dozens of raids since the crime, and the government has ordered the six-month closure of a mosque outside Paris and plans to dissolve a group it said supported Palestinian militant group Hamas. "Our fellow citizens expect actions," Macron said on Tuesday. Paty was attacked on his way home from the junior high school where he taught in the suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine outside Paris. He had been the subject of an online hate campaign after showing pupils the cartoons during a civics class -- the same images that unleashed a bloody assault on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo five years ago. A photo of Paty and a message admitting to his murder were found on the cellphone of his killer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, originally from the Russian region of Chechnya. Anzorov tweeted images of the teacher's decapitated body before he was shot dead by police. On Wednesday evening, Macron was to attend an official memorial with Paty's family and some 400 guests at the Sorbonne university in Paris, where he will posthumously award the teacher France's highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour. Nine of 16 people held over the murder were released from custody late on Tuesday, including four members of Anzorov's family and three school pupils. Among those due to appear Wednesday was a disgruntled parent from Paty's school, who had fired up anger about his lesson through messages on social media, urging "mobilisation" against the teacher. The parent had exchanged messages with Anzorov via WhatsApp in the days leading up to the murder. The material he uploaded was widely shared, including by a mosque in the northern Paris suburb of Pantin, which the government will close Wednesday for six months for spreading material likely to provoke "hatred and violence". Macron has also announced that a pro-Hamas group called the Sheikh Yassin Collective would be dissolved for being "directly implicated" in the murder. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has accused the group's founder Abdelhakim Sefrioui -- an Islamist radical currently in custody -- and the school parent of having issued a "fatwa" against Paty. Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday it had "no links" to the collective, which is named after Hamas's founder. The French government has earmarked for dissolution more than 50 other organisations it accuses of having links to radical Islam. Darmanin has started defamation proceedings over a blog post on the website of news site Mediapart that accused the police of barbarism for having executed Paty's killer. Mediapart later amended the post, conceding it had been overly provocative and wrong to use the phrase "police barbarism". Paty's beheading was the second knife attack in the name of avenging the Prophet Mohammed since a trial started last month over the Charlie Hebdo killings in 2015 when 12 people, including cartoonists, were gunned down. Also in custody are three of Anzorov's friends -- one of who allegedly drove him and another who allegedly accompanied him to buy a weapon. The two pupils held are suspected of having pointed Paty out to his killer in exchange for payment. The killing has prompted an outpouring of emotion and solidarity in France, with tens of thousands taking part in rallies countrywide over the weekend. Thousands more took part in a silent march in the teacher's honour in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Tuesday. France's sports ministry said Wednesday that participants in all professional sporting events this weekend -- football, basketball, handball, rugby and ice hockey and volleyball -- would observe a pre-match minute of silence for Paty, and wear black arm bands for matches scheduled for next week. burs-mlr/jh/jxb
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