Six college students are being tried behind closed doors from Monday in Paris for their involvement in the jihadist assassination of professor Samuel Paty in 2020, the first of two trials planned in this case which caused an international shock wave.
The 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded in October 2020 near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the Paris region, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin, shot dead in the process by the police.
The young radicalized 18-year-old Islamist criticized the professor for showing caricatures of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he congratulated himself on having “avenged the Prophet”.
The attack took place against a backdrop of a high terrorist threat, while the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdodecimated by a jihadist attack in January 2015, had republished caricatures of Mohammed a few weeks earlier.
The emotion provoked by this crime was recently rekindled by the assassination, in mid-October, of another professor, Dominique Bernard, killed in Arras in the north of France by a young radicalized Islamist.
Five of the teenagers, aged 14 and 15 at the time, will be tried before the children’s court 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.
A sixth teenager, aged 13 at the time of the events, will appear 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.
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.
These two men will be judged during a second trial at the assizes, at the end of 2024, with six other adults.
For Samuel Paty’s family, this first, “fundamental” trial is eagerly awaited: “The role of minors is essential in the process which led to the assassination” of the professor, says Maître Virginie Le Roy, who represents his family. parents and one of his sisters.
” He’s there “
The investigation traced how, in ten days, the trap had closed on Samuel Paty: from the lie of the schoolgirl to the online attacks, until the arrival of the attacker in front of the school on October 16.
“Hey kid, come see, I have something to offer you,” Abdoullakh Anzorov said to a teenager, offering him 300 euros to identify Mr. Paty, whom the assailant said he wanted to “film apologizing” .
The schoolboy “boasts” and relays the proposition, not “feeling like he’s doing it alone”. Four others join him.
Some go back and forth between the college and Anzorov’s “hideout”, keep watch, or film themselves with tickets.
The assailant asks one of them to telephone the teenager who started the affair. She repeats her lie, without knowing that he was listening, she assures.
During auditions where they collapsed in tears, the college students swore that they had imagined that the professor would at most be “posted on the networks”, perhaps “humiliated”, “hit”… but “never” more than that would go “until death”.
At the end of class, Samuel Paty is designated by the teenagers: “He is there”.
He will be assassinated shortly before 5:00 p.m.
“There have been a lot of statements, we are now waiting to see what will be said at the bar,” says Me Francis Szpiner, lawyer for the ex-partner of Samuel Paty and their son. His client will “send a letter to the president” but will not attend the hearing.
The teenagers are now high school students. They face two and a half years of imprisonment. “It’s complicated,” summarizes Me Dylan Slama, lawyer for one of them. “All his life he will remain this kid involved in this affair.”
It’s “a heavy weight on his shoulders”, adds Me Antoine Ory, lawyer for another defendant.
The trial is scheduled until December 8.