14 people will be in the dock at the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty. Anti-terrorist investigating judges order their referral to trial. Six minors will be tried by a juvenile court, eight adults will appear before a special assize court.
“It’s the next step”that of the trial “looming”, note Tuesday May 16 on franceinfo Me Virginie Le Roy, lawyer for the family of Samuel Paty. 14 people are sent to trial in this case, eight adults before a special assize court for complicity in terrorist assassination or terrorist association of criminals and six teenagers for offenses, before the juvenile court.
“It’s really a family expectation”
This decision paves the way for a trial, “with explanations that are expected, decryption, answers, concrete”, explains Virginie Le Roy. “We all still remember the shock it was to have a teacher beheaded in the street… But when it’s a member of your family, a loved one, imagine the earthquake it is. It is still very present today, the expectation is intense”, points out the lawyer.
For Virginie Le Roy, “the share of things has been made between the implications of each other (…) minors have a special treatment, which is normal given their young age“. But the lawyer points “a complex file” with “responsibilities which add up and which have evolved in different ways”.
“There is already this call for punishment that goes out on social networks, which is extremely instrumental, violent and very effective”she explains. “There is also the participation of middle school students at their level and then the participation of a whole section of people known to the services for their opinions and their actions. Me, that’s what interests me, it’s the answer that the we will be able to provide vis-à-vis these people who represent a real danger.
Unusable data
The lawyer also regrets the deletion of a certain number of data from the respondents: “We know that the cycle which led to the assassination of Samuel Paty happened largely on social networks. It is all probative material which is not exploitable and which could perhaps have allowed to go further in the analysis of what happened and also in the criminal qualifications.”
The magistrates ask that the most serious offense, complicity in terrorist assassination, be retained for two friends of the assailant. On October 16, 2020, 47-year-old history and geography professor Samuel Paty was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. , killed shortly after by the police. The 18-year-old man, radicalized, accused him of having shown caricatures of Muhammad in class. In an audio message in Russian, he had claimed his gesture, congratulating himself on having “avenge the prophet”.