Six college students will be tried behind closed doors in Paris starting Monday for their involvement in the 2020 jihadist killing of Professor Samuel Paty. This is the first of two trials planned in the case, which caused an international shockwave.
The 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in the Paris region in October 2020 by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin who was shot dead by police.
The 18-year-old radicalized Islamist criticized the professor for showing cartoons of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he congratulated himself on “avenging the Prophet.”
The attack came against a backdrop of high terrorist threat, while the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, decimated by a jihadist attack in January 2015, had republished Muhammad cartoons a few weeks earlier.
The emotions that this crime aroused were recently rekindled by the murder of another professor, Dominique Bernard, in mid-October in Arras, northern France, by a young radicalized Islamist.
Five of the young people, aged 14 and 15 at the time, are charged in the children’s court with conspiracy to commit serious violence. They are accused of surveilling the college’s surroundings and naming Mr. Paty as an attacker for money.
A sixth teenager, 13 years old at the time of the crime, will appear on charges of defamatory denunciation. This student had falsely claimed that Mr. Paty had asked the Muslim students in the class to come forward and leave the class before they showed the cartoons of Muhammad. She hadn’t actually taken this course.
His lie was the origin of a violent campaign on social networks fueled by his father Brahim Chnina and an Islamist activist named Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the author of videos that brought attention to the professor.
These two men will be tried in a second trial along with six other adults in late 2024.
For the family of Samuel Paty, this first, “fundamental” trial is eagerly awaited: “The role of minors is crucial in the chain of events that led to the murder of the professor,” says Maître Virginie Le Roy, his represents family. parents and one of his sisters.
“He’s here”
The investigation chronicled how Samuel Paty trapped himself over a ten-day period: from the student’s lie, to the online attacks, to the attacker’s arrival outside the school on October 16.
“Hey boy, come over, I have something to offer you,” Abdoullakh Anzorov said to a teenager, offering him 300 euros for identifying Mr Paty, whom the attacker allegedly wanted to “film to apologize”.
The student “brows” and passes on the suggestion without “feeling like he is doing it alone.” Four more join him.
Some shuttle back and forth between the college and Anzorov’s “hideout,” watching or filming themselves with tickets.
The attacker asks one of them to call the teenager who started the affair. She repeats her lie, not knowing he was listening, she assures.
During the audition, during which they burst into tears, the college students swore that they had imagined that at most the professor would be “flaunted on the networks,” perhaps “humiliated,” “beaten”… but ” “never” that it would happen “until death”.
At the end of the lesson, Samuel Paty is referred to by the young people: “He’s here.”
He is murdered shortly before 5:00 p.m.
“There have been a lot of statements, we are now waiting to see what is said at the bar,” says Me Francis Szpiner, lawyer for Samuel Paty’s ex-partner and her son. His client will “send a letter to the president” but will not attend the hearing.
The teenagers are now high school students. You face two and a half years in prison. “It’s complicated,” summarizes Me Dylan Slama, a lawyer for one of them. “He will remain that boy involved in this matter for the rest of his life.”
It is “a heavy burden on his shoulders,” adds Me Antoine Ory, lawyer for another defendant.
The trial is scheduled until December 8th.