Assassination of Samuel Paty: eight people in the dock

Four years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, the history-geography professor from Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, beheaded by a young Islamist of Chechen origin, on October 16, 2020, the trial of eight people opens today in Paris before the Assize Court specially set up to judge terrorism cases. The perpetrator of the assassination was shot dead by the police. The eight accused, seven men and one woman, will have to answer for complicity or terrorist criminal association. Seven full weeks of hearing and among the issues of this trial, the court will have to question the involvement and role of social networks in this attack.

On the bench of the civil parties, the family of Samuel Paty presents itself determined. Those close to him did not hide their disappointment in December 2023, at the end of the first trial which brought together – behind closed doors in the case of minors – six former college students, the teenage student of Samuel Paty for slanderous denunciation, sentenced to 18 months in prison with suspended probation and five young boys, sentenced to sentences of between 14 months and 6 months, for having named the professor as his murderer, for 300 euros.

The attack took place outside the Bois d'Aulne college, in a very tense context, since the controversy launched on social networks by the young girl's father, supported by a very virulent Islamist propagandist. Together, they came to demand sanctions against the professor who had presented caricatures of Mohammed in a course on freedom of expression. The teenager, absent from the class in question, had falsely indicated that Samuel Paty had asked the Muslim students to report themselves and leave. The two men then, in turn, each published a video on social networks. The first, that of the father, was entitled “Don't touch my children” the second “Islam and its prophet insulted in a public college”.

The terrorist threat also increased further at the time of the attack, thanks to the trial of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which began in September. The weekly republished the cartoons and the terrorist organizations and broadcast several threatening messages. On September 25, a young Pakistani committed an assassination attempt very close to the newspaper's former premises.

Abdoullah Anzorov, the assassin of Samuel Paty, is a young 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin whose family took refuge in France. Out of school teenager, violent and brawling, fan of combat sports, anchored in radicalization since the summer of 2020, as evidenced by numerous investigative elements. Since September, his internet searches reveal that he was also looking for a target. The young terrorist will make telephone contact with Brahim Chnina, the young girl's father after watching his video. He would have assured him of his support. No trace, however, of contact with activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, whose lawyers have already deployed their line of defense several weeks before the start of the trial. They plan to plead for acquittal.

The two men, initially indicted for complicity in assassination, will be tried at the assizes for terrorist conspiracy, a crime punishable by 30 years in prison. The prosecution believes that they had no knowledge of the assassin's plans, but that their concerted actions contributed to the commission of the facts, which the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office described as the “chronicle of a to death.”

They appear detained, just like two relatives of Abdullah Anzarov, childhood friend Azim Epsirkhanov, since their college years in Evreux. He was with him, the day before the events, during the purchase of the knife which was going to be used in the assassination of Samuel Paty in a store in Rouen. He claims to have known nothing of his friend's criminal intentions, any more than Naïm Boudaoud, the friend from the gym who accompanied him, the morning of the attack, to buy two steel ball guns in an armory before dropping it off in front of the Bois d'Aulne college. They are the only defendants tried for complicity and, as such, face life imprisonment.

There still remain four people, prosecuted for terrorist criminal association, who will appear free, three men and a woman, in whom the investigators saw active members of the “jihadosphere” and whose relations, always via various social networks with the terrorist would have could have contributed to promoting his radicalization and his taking action.

The trial will last seven weeks, until December 20. Furthermore, the family of Samuel Paty filed a complaint against the Ministries of the Interior and National Education for “failure to assist a person in danger” and “failure to prevent a crime”. An investigation is still underway on this aspect, now in the hands of an investigating judge.