Paris – Six former students will be tried in Paris, behind closed doors, for their involvement in the murder of professor Samuel Paty in 2020, the first of two trials planned in this case. Five teenagers are tried for criminal conspiracy and a sixth for slanderous denunciation.
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This Monday, November 27, the first trial in the case of the 2020 beheading of Professor Samuel Paty at the hands of a young jihadist opened in Paris. Six former students will appear behind closed doors in juvenile court.
A second trial, to try eight adults, will take place before the special court of first instance in Paris at the end of 2024.
The attack, which occurred in a context of great terrorist threat, caused a great commotion in France and abroad. On October 16, 2020, the 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his secondary school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. The 18-year-old radicalized Islamist was killed by the police.
The attacker accused the teacher of showing caricatures of Muhammad during a class on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he congratulated himself for having “avenged the Prophet.”
Five teenagers – 14 and 15 years old at the time of Samuel Paty’s murder – are being tried for criminal conspiracy to prepare acts of aggravated violence. They are accused of having monitored the surroundings of the school and of having pointed out Samuel Paty as the aggressor, in exchange for remuneration.
A sixth teenager, 13 years old at the time of the attack, is being tried for slanderous denunciation. This schoolgirl had wrongly claimed that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to come forward and leave the classroom before showing the Muhammad cartoons. In reality, she had not attended the class.
His lie triggered a violent social media campaign by his father, Brahim Chnina, and an Islamist militant, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who had produced videos drawing attention to the professor. These two men will be tried in the second trial.
The “essential” role of minors
For Samuel Paty’s family, this first “fundamental” trial is eagerly awaited. “The role of minors is essential in the spiral that led to the murder” of the professor, says Virginie Le Roy, who represents his parents and one of his sisters.
The investigation covered how, in the space of ten days, The trap closed on Samuel Paty: from the schoolgirl’s lies to the Internet attacks, to the arrival of the aggressor at the school door October 16th.
“Hey boy, come here, I have something to offer you,” Abdoullakh Anzorov told a teenager, offering him 300 euros to identify Samuel Paty, whom the attacker said he wanted to “film apologizing.”
The schoolboy “bluffed” and accepted the offer, because “he didn’t feel strong enough to do it on his own.” Four others joined him, according to testimonies cited in the order of the investigating judges consulted by AFP.
Some of them shuttled back and forth between the school and Anzorov’s “hideout,” keeping watch or recording themselves with bills.
The aggressor asked one of them to call the teenager who was behind the matter. She repeated her lie, not knowing he was listening.
During the hearings, in which they burst into tears, the students swore that they had imagined that, at most, the professor would be “hung in nets”, perhaps “humiliated”, “beaten”… But that he would “never” arrive. to the death”.
Upon leaving school, the teenagers pointed to Samuel Paty: “He’s here,” they said. He was murdered shortly before five p.m.
Paty’s former colleagues want to act as a civil party
Samuel Paty’s ex-girlfriend “will send a letter to the president,” but will not attend the hearing, declared Francis Szpiner, who is defending her and their son.
The teenagers are now high school students. They face sentences of up to two and a half years in prison.. “It’s complicated,” summarized Dylan Slama, a lawyer for one of them. “For the rest of his life, he will continue to be the boy involved in this case,” he added.
Archive: the impact of the murder of Samuel Paty on the French educational sphere
According to his lawyer, Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, a dozen of Samuel Paty’s fellow teachers intend to register as civil parties when the trial opens, in “support” for the family.
The trial is scheduled to continue until December 8.
With AFP
This article was adapted from its original in French
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