The killers in the 2015 shooting were against "Charlie Hebdo"'s 2012 cartoons showing Muhammad. After Paty showed these cartoons in a class about freedom of speech, an Islamist imam wrote a "fatwa" ("an opinion on Muslim law") against Paty which called for his punishment. Anzorov killed Paty and put a picture of his head on Twitter. Many of Paty's students saw the picture. Anzorov said that he had "executed" Paty and addressed his words and the picture of Paty's head to Emmanuel Macron, the president of the French Republic. The police shot Anzorov dead a few minutes after the murder.