The Paris Special Assize Court heard as a witness the young girl who accused Samuel Paty of having shown caricatures of Mohammed and asking Muslim students to leave class, when she was not present in class this that day.
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She arrived at court this Tuesday, November 26 under a large black cape to hide from view. Already sentenced to 18 months in prison for slanderous denunciation, the former student of Samuel Paty, now 17 years old, admits to the court: indisposed by stomach aches, she was not at school on Tuesday October 6, 2020, the day the teacher showed the caricatures.
She then admits to having lied for days to those around her, a process which will be at the origin of the assassination of Samuel Patty.
On the stand, the former schoolgirl who was 13 years old at the time of the events, asked for forgiveness from the relatives and family of Samuel Patty: “I would like to apologize to the family, because today I destroyed your life. I know my excuses are hard to hear.“
And to continue: “I wanted to apologize to the teachers for my behavior and my lie which brought us all back here”, “to the people who are in the box because without my lie, they would not be here”, adds the young girl, crying.
Not enough to convince Gaël Paty, one of the sisters of the beheaded professor who, in anger, highlights the contradictions of the young schoolgirl: “How do you accept an apology from someone who doesn't show sincerity?”
Virginie Le Roy, one of the lawyers for Samuel Paty's family, also questions the sincerity of the young girl's apologies, “which had not arrived” in 2023 before the juvenile court.
Also read: Assassination of Samuel Paty. Roles, complicity, links: who are the eight accused tried before the special assize court?
From the accused box, his father, Brahim Chnina, listens, without a gesture, without a word. He faces 30 years in prison. He is being prosecuted for criminal terrorist association. It was he and Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui who launched the cyberharassment campaign against Samuel Paty. He published two videos which stigmatized Samuel Paty, on October 7 and 8, 2020, including precise information on the identity of the teacher and the address of the college.
