This Friday, at the end of seven weeks of trial, a criminal court in Paris handed down a sentence against the eight people involved in the murder of Professor Samuel Paty. The eight defendants who have sat in the dock have been sentenced to sentences of between 18 months and 16 years in prison.
A lie, a hate campaign on social networks, the murder of a Geography and History teacher. Over the past few months, the court had examined the gears of the lethal machinery that was set in motion on October 7, 2020 and that led to the death of Samuel Paty on the 16th of that same month.
In the absence of the perpetrator of the events, Abdoullakh Anzorov, killed by the police at the scene, the debates have sought to determine the criminal responsibility of eight people who, in one way or another, could have contributed to the murderer being brought to justice. action.
On October 7, 2020, a 13-year-old student was expelled from the Bois-d’Aulne school, in the French town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, for “incivilities” and repeated “absences.” A sanction that had nothing to do with the class taught the day before by Samuel Paty, on freedom of expression, in which the issue of the caricatures of Muhammad published in the weekly Charlie Hebdo was addressed and to which the student had not responded. attended.
But when he got home he told his parents that he had been expelled for confronting his teacher, who had allegedly asked Muslim students to leave the classroom before showing images of the “naked” Prophet. A version of the events that his father, Brahim Chnina, for whom the prosecution requested ten years in prison, spread that day in several messages on Facebook and WhatsApp.
Chnina and Sefrioui have been sentenced to 13 and 15 years in prison as authors of the “hate campaign” that led to Paty’s murder. For their part, the murderer’s two friends have been sentenced to 16 years.
The morning after the murder, Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, an activist with a long history of religious issues – a “political militant,” he called himself in the trial – went to the center to speak with the director.
In her statement, she told the court that she agreed to receive them in her office to “calm things down,” but that during a conversation, in which “Abdelhakim Sefrioui took the lead,” he became aggressive and accused of “ criminal” to Samuel Paty. The director tried to reason with the two men and “refocus” the debate on what the young student was really accused of.
But that same night, Brahim Chnina published a video about the controversy, followed two days later by another from Abdelhakim Sefrioui. From there the school began to receive threats. The principal alerted the authorities and a police car stood guard in front of the school for a few days. On October 13, the school director accompanied Samuel Paty to the police station to file a complaint.
Three days later, Paty was murdered. “On October 16, 2020 at 4:54 p.m., in the person of Samuel Paty, Islamist terrorism struck the school, the heart of our Republic,” begins the indictment presented by the two representatives of the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office ( PNAT).
“Samuel Paty had not chosen to die in defense of any principle. But, through him, much of who we are as a society was affected.”
Three blocks of accused
In this trial, three “differentiated parts” were analyzed, each with a group of defendants. First of all, Anzorov’s two friends, who provided material assistance; secondly, the father of the student and the “political activist” who started the online campaign; and, in the last, four people who encouraged the murderer on social networks and celebrated his actions. These four have been sentenced to between 18 and five years.
Brahim Chnina’s daughter was tried and convicted by a juvenile court for a crime of slanderous accusation in December 2023.
The investigation established that Anzorov watched several of Chnina’s videos, although it has not been possible to confirm whether he watched Sefrioui’s videos. The responsibility of these two men has been the focus of a good part of the hearings. Brahim Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui did not know each other before October 7, 2020. In the nine days before the professor’s death, the two had about fifty telephone conversations.
In its final argument on Monday, the prosecution requested ten and twelve years in prison, respectively, for the two men, whom it accused of being behind the “hate campaign” against Samuel Paty and which identified the professor as a possible target of an attack “We are not asking that the crime of ‘unlawful association’ be expanded to include Chnina and Sefrioui, but rather that criminal law in its current state be applied to a new situation,” the prosecutors stressed in their conclusions.
The prosecution tried to demonstrate that the campaign against the professor was “concerted,” that it was motivated by the issue of blasphemy – and not by possible discrimination, as the two defendants have defended – and that “it was directed against the professor in a viral manner.” and violent.”
According to prosecutors, Abdelhakim Sefrioui represents an ideology: political Islam. With a The “underlying” discourse in the content in which he called for violence played a “central role” in the death of Samuel Paty. Two investigators from the Anti-Terrorism Subdirectorate (SDAT) detailed before the court a method of action based on “threats”, “manipulation” and “mediatization”.
All of this in a context of the terrorist threat present in France after the republication of the Muhammad cartoons by Charlie Hebdo on September 1, 2020. Hence, the sentence required was higher than that of the student’s father.
The two friends
The harshest sentences requested by prosecutors focused on the “logistical” responsibility of two friends of the terrorist, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov. The two young people initially faced life imprisonment for “complicity in terrorist murder,” although the prosecutor’s office finally reduced the requests to 14 and 16 years, respectively, for “terrorist criminal association,” a reclassification criticized by the lawyers representing the family. Patty.
The difference between these crimes lies in the degree of knowledge on the part of those accused of the attack. Both admit to having accompanied Anzorov to buy a knife, compressed air pistols and taking him to the scene of the crime. “Complicity in murder” presupposes knowledge of the attack, “criminal association” only implies that they were aware of the perpetrator’s radicalization. Throughout the trial, both defendants, who do not have radicalized profiles, maintained that Anzorov told them that he needed the weapons because of a gang problem.
Apology and incitement
The other four defendants are people who came into contact with Abdoullakh Anzorov on social networks, mainly on Snapchat and Twitter (today X) in groups that mainly talked about Islamist terrorism. The prosecution admits that its role was “more limited” in planning the attack.
The PNAT requested sentences for two of them, Ismaël Gamaev and Louqmane Ingar, for terrorist association: five years in prison, with eighteen months suspended, for the first and three years in prison, two suspended, for the second, for criminal association. . This week, the charges against the other two were requested to be reclassified, requesting an eighteen-month suspended prison sentence against Priscilla Mangelm for incitement to terrorism and a one-year prison sentence against Yusuf Cinar for advocating terrorism.
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