The assassination in France of Professor Samuel Paty, which had caused an international shock wave in 2020, could be the subject of two trials: the anti-terrorist prosecution requested the dismissal of eight adults before an assize court and requested that six college students are tried in juvenile court.
On October 16, 2020, this 47-year-old teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian refugee of Chechen origin, killed in the process by the police.
This young radicalized assailant accused him of having shown caricatures of Muhammad in class during a lesson on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he claimed responsibility for his action, congratulating himself on having “avenge the prophet”.
This crime, source of immense turmoil in France and abroad, “although executed by Abdoullakh Anzorov alone”, is “the result of a succession of criminally incriminable behavior”, believe the two magistrates of the national prosecutor’s office anti-terrorist (PNAT) in their requisitions, of which AFP has taken note.
Accusations of complicity in terrorist assassination
The PNAT is asking for a trial at the assizes and that the most serious offense be retained, complicity in terrorist assassination, against two friends of the assailant, who would then incur life imprisonment.
Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud are suspected of having accompanied him to buy weapons, and, for the second, of having gone with him to the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, being “fully aware of [son] ideological regimentation of jihadist inspiration”.
The PNAT also requested the referral to the assizes, for criminal terrorist association, of six suspects. Among them are Brahim Chnina, father of a schoolgirl who wrongly claimed to have attended the course where the cartoons were shown, and the sulphurous Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui.
Both had published videos on social networks which had fueled controversy but should, according to the PNAT, escape the qualification of complicity in terrorist assassination, for which they were indicted.
The investigation “did not make it possible to establish that they had precisely intended to favor the assassination of Samuel Paty, this crime being only one of the possible and foreseeable consequences of their actions, in the same way as other crimes of attack on the physical integrity or the life”, according to the requisitions.
The anti-terrorism prosecution is also asking that this count of complicity be dropped in the case of a 34-year-old woman converted to Islam, Priscilla Mangel, who had been linked on Twitter with the assassin before the attack. According to the public prosecutor, his actions are also part of the criminal terrorist conspiracy.
“Slanderous denunciation”
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office is also asking for a trial in the juvenile court for five college students, to answer for the offense of criminal association with a view to preparing for aggravated violence. By appointing Samuel Paty, their help was “decisive” for Anzorov, decided the PNAT.
Nevertheless, the public prosecutor considered that the minors were not aware that Anzorov was going to assassinate Samuel Paty and that his act was part of a terrorist project. And no one saw the assailant’s weapons.
On the other hand, they had understood that the Chechen wanted “at least” to attack the teacher, according to the indictment.
The PNAT requires that the schoolgirl at the origin of the case, the daughter of Brahim Chnina, also appear before this juvenile court, for slanderous denunciation.
Then excluded for indiscipline, she admitted not having attended the course of Mr. Paty and having lied by affirming that the professor had asked the Muslim students to report themselves and leave the class.
It is now up to the counter-terrorism investigating judges to make a final decision on whether to commit these people to trial.
Before his assassination, the professor had felt “a deep concern […] in front of the extent and the aggressiveness of the controversy “which aimed at him, according to a summary report at the end of the investigation.
Part of the family filed a complaint against the ministries of the Interior and National Education, alerted to threats against the professor but accused of not having taken sufficient account of the danger.
A separate investigation has been open in Paris since April 2022 for failure to assist a person in danger and failure to prevent a crime.