The Paris court convicted the eight people accused of complicity in the murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded in his secondary school on the outskirts of Paris in 2020, with sentences that reach up to 16 years for the two accomplices of the crime.
The perpetrator of the murder, Abdoullakh Anzorov, 18, was shot dead by the police at the time of arrest. In most cases, the judges handed down sentences above those demanded by the Prosecutor’s Office, which had received harsh criticism from Paty’s family, considering that it had fallen short of what they deserved.
In addition to the two accused of complicity in the crime, the judges They sentenced the father of one of Paty’s students and a preacher who orchestrated a campaign on social networks against the teacher, who during a course on freedom of expression had shown his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, who They accompanied Anzorov to buy a knife They were sentenced to 16 years in prison, in the case of the second the sentence that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested, but in the case of the first, who was the one who led the murderer to the vicinity of the school on the afternoon of October 16, 2020, he imposed two years more than what the Public Ministry had claimed.
The court was also more severe with Brahim Chnina, the father of Paty’s student who said the teacher discriminated against Muslim students and who launched a campaign on social networks. He was sentenced to 13 years in prisonthree more than requested.
Abdelhakim Sefraoui, an Islamist preacher who contributed to that campaign through the networks, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, three more than requested. During the reading of the verdict accused the court of having “played politics” and “not having courage”, while stating right there that he will appeal the sentence. Chnina and Sefraoui went to the school a week before the crime to threaten the teacher and protest his behavior.
All of them appeared for complicity in a terrorist murder, but the Prosecutor’s Office changed the classification during the trial to that of association of criminals with terrorist purposesa decision that caused incomprehension in Paty’s family.
The court did not admit the change in the crime and convicted them of complicity in terrorist murder. Sentences were lighter for other defendantswho were in the dock for provocation to terrorism by spreading Islamist messages through social networks and for having been in contact with Anzorov.
This is the case of Ismail Gamaev, the only one of the accused who admitted his guiltsentenced to five years in prison with 30 months exempt from compliance. Priscilla Mangel was sentenced to three years in prison, Louqmane Ingar to three years in prison, two of which were exempt, and Yusur Cinar to one year in prison.
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