The teacher was killed outside his school in Paris in 2020 after sharing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class.
Six teenagers have been tried behind closed doors in connection with the beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty.
The murder, which shocked the country, occurred in 2020 after the teacher showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to his students in a lesson on freedom of expression.
Paty, 47, was killed outside his school in a Paris suburb by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old attacker of Chechen origin who was shot dead by police shortly afterwards.
The six teenagers cannot be identified due to their age. They entered court Monday wearing hoodies to hide their faces.
Five of the six, aged 14 to 15 at the time, face up to 2.5 years in prison for criminal conspiracy with intent to commit violence. They are accused of having identified the teacher and the murderer in exchange for money.
The other defendant, a 13-year-old girl at the time, is said to have told her parents that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the room before showing the cartoons. However, she was not in class at the time.
Consumed with regret
When questioned, the teens swore that at most they thought Paty would be “reported on social media,” “humiliated” or perhaps “beaten up,” but never thought “it would go as far as murder.”
“He is filled with regret and is very afraid of the confrontation with Paty’s family,” Antoine Ory, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said on Monday before the hearing began.
Paty’s sister Mickaelle said in a statement through lawyer Louis Cailliez that her brother would still be alive without a “deadly combination of small cowardices and big lies.”
“The role of the minor was crucial in the sequence of events that led to his murder,” said a lawyer for Paty’s family.
The hearings, which are scheduled to last until December 8, will take place behind closed doors. Eight adults are also charged and must appear before a special criminal court.
Last month, nearly two years after Paty’s murder, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed teacher Dominique Bernard and seriously injured two other people in an attack on a school in northern France.
Like Anzorov, Bernard’s alleged murderer, Mohammed Moguchkov, also came from the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia.
Anzorov targeted Paty after reports spread on social media that the teacher had shown the cartoons to his class. They were first seen in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 and sparked a deadly attack by gunmen.