Samuel Paty’s sister Gaelle Paty (C) arrives Monday morning at a specially formed Paris Assizes court where eight people are facing trial over their involvement in the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty, just outside the capital in October 2020. Photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE
Nov. 4 (UPI) — A trial got underway Monday in Paris of eight people facing a range of charges related to the murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded in an Islamist terror attack outside his school after he he used caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad for a class on free speech.
The assailant, Russian-born Adboullakh Anzorov, 18, was shot and killed by police shortly after the October 2020 murder but the trial is for six people accused of involvement in an online campaign targeting Paty that spurred on Anzorov and of glorifying the attack on social media and two others for helping him acquire weapons.
The former group faces terrorism conspiracy charges related to cyberbullying and misinformation for which they could be sent to prison for up to 30 years while the latter pair are charged with aiding and abetting murder and face a life sentence if found guilty.
Among those on trial Monday is the father of a girl who was convicted of falsely claiming that Paty had discriminated against Muslim students by asking them to leave while he was showing the other students caricatures of Muhammad from the Charlie Hebdo newspaper — which had itself been the target of a terrorist massacre five years previously.
Paty did not send his Muslim students out of the room, instead advising them to turn away to avoid offense.
Brahim Chnina, posted the story online, uploaded videos about Paty and placed a target on his back by publicizing critical personal and location details, according to prosecutors, but was unaware that his daughter was actually suspended from the school and so was not even there.
The prosecution accuses the father of association with a terror organization and being in contact with Anzorov on nine occasions. He denies all the charges.
Fellow defendant Abdelhakim Sefrioui of the Sheikh Yassine collective who helped prepare one of the videos, denied pushing “false and distorted information” intended to stir up hatred, telling police he and Chnina were only trying to get authorities to take disciplinary action against Paty.
The case comes to court in Paris almost a year after six middle school students of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine school, aged 13 to 15, including Chnina’s daughter, were found guilty by a Paris juvenile court of conspiracy charges in the murder.
Five of the six walked free after receiving 14-month suspended sentences, while the sixth was sentenced to two years imprisonment with all but six months suspended, which he was ordered to serve under house arrest while wearing an electronic tag.
One of the students had provided Anzorov, a second-generation Chechen who had become radicalized, with a description of Paty, the route he took home from the school in Bois d’Aulne and recruited classmates as lookouts.
The Paty murder trial, which since France does not have juries will be heard by a panel of judges, is expected to run through Dec. 20.
