15 year old tear-gas teacher for criticising Al-Qaeda

LYON, France (AFP) -- A 15-year-old French schoolboy sprayed a teacher with tear gas after she described Al-Qaeda as a "terrorist group", she told AFP yesterday as prosecutors began an investigation.

"I had just explained that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were carried out by the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda, as is written in the text-book," said the history teacher, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"He stood up and declared that Al-Qaeda is not terrorist and that neither is the Taliban," she said, adding that the boy had then pulled out a spray can and doused her and a teaching assistant with tear gas.

Neither victim was seriously hurt.

Al-Qaeda, a loose global organisation of violent Islamist extremists under the nominal leadership of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, boasted of carrying out the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The attacks -- in which hijacked airliners were crashed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania -- killed just under 3,000 people, the vast majority of them American civilians.

Both staff members, who work in the small school in the central French village of Largentiere, made a criminal complaint against the boy, state prosecutors confirmed.

A youth court will be convened in the nearby town of Privas on March 16 to hear the case.