Sentences of 14 months in prison suspended to six months in prison – placed under an electronic bracelet – were handed down Friday in Paris against six ex-college students tried for their involvement in the assassination of professor Samuel Paty by a young jihadist in 2020.
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Sentences ordered with regard to “the seriousness of the facts”, their “personality” and “evolution”, and while the offenses are “perfectly established”, declared the children’s court in its judgment, read in public hearing after two weeks of a closed-door trial.
The president called the teenagers, now aged 16 to 18 years old, to the stand one by one to detail their convictions, which generally complied with the requirements of the anti-terrorism prosecution.
“Do you understand?” she asked everyone.
The trial was held strictly behind closed doors given their young age at the time of the events – between 13 and 15 years old.
Five of the teenagers, aged 14 and 15, were on trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated violence. They are accused of having monitored the surroundings of the college and designated Mr. Paty as the attacker, for remuneration.
This “while you were aware of the criticisms made”, at the college “and on social networks” against Samuel Paty, the president told them. The heaviest sentence, two years in prison including six months under an electronic bracelet, was handed down against the former schoolboy approached by the attacker Abdoullakh Anzorov.
“You communicated to the assailant the physical and clothing description” of the professor and his “usually taken route”, “you stayed for several hours” with him and “favored” his “concealment”, the court told him.
“You recruited other college students in order to designate” the teacher, organized “surveillance” around the school “for several hours” and finally “designated Samuel Paty at the end of the school”.
Four other young people were sentenced to sentences ranging from 14 months with suspended probation (that is to say accompanied by a series of obligations, in particular to follow education or training and to be followed by professionals of childhood) at 18 months with probationary suspension.
“Persistent lie”
A sixth teenager, aged 13 at the time of the facts, was sentenced to 18 months of probation for slanderous denunciation. This schoolgirl had wrongly claimed that Mr. Paty had asked the Muslim students in the class to report and leave the class before showing the caricatures of Mohammed. She hadn’t actually attended this class.
The court highlighted before her “the existence of a persistent lie” that the teenager “recognized” and which had been “materialized” by filing a complaint against Samuel Paty.
His lie was at the origin of a violent campaign fueled on social networks by his father, Brahim Chnina, and by an Islamist activist, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, author of videos which had drawn attention to the professor. They will be tried in a second trial with six other adults, before the special assize court in Paris at the end of 2024.
The defendants arrived at court wearing surgical masks, some of them, or a hood over their heads which they removed when entering the courtroom at the request of the bailiffs, before sitting in the front row.
This affair caused immense excitement in France and abroad. Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed then beheaded in October 2020 near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin killed in the process by the police.
The young 18-year-old radicalized Islamist criticized the professor for showing caricatures of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he claimed responsibility for his action by congratulating himself on having “avenged the Prophet”.
The investigation traced how, in ten days, the trap had closed on Samuel Paty: from the lie of the schoolgirl to the attacks on the internet, until the arrival of the assailant on October 16 in front of the school where he had gave 300 euros to students to identify the teacher.