Trial of the assassination of Samuel Paty: the accused who denounced an Islamophobic France and described the professor as a “thug teacher” declares to have “no link with this crime”

Seven men and one woman have been appearing before the Paris Special Assize Court since Monday, November 4, as part of the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty.

Justice accuses them of having helped to varying degrees the Chechen terrorist Abdoullakh Anzorov to equip himself and then find Samuel Paty, professor of history and geography, before assassinating him on October 16, 2020 in front of his college near Conflans-Sainte -Honorine (Yvelines).

Two of them are at the heart of the accusation, tried for having massively relayed the lies of a 13-year-old schoolgirl on social networks with the aim, according to the accusation, of “designating a target”, “arousing a feeling of hatred” and “thus prepare several crimes”.

This teenager had falsely claimed – she was absent from class – that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his class before showing caricatures of Mohammed.

These two men are Brahim Chnina, the father of the schoolgirl, a 52-year-old Moroccan, and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan. The study of the latter's personality takes place this Thursday, November 7.

“Crime barbare”

According to the TF1 report on the trial, the accused was directly questioned, since he refused to meet a personality investigator in detention so that the latter could write a report on his life journey.

This Islamist activist is the founder of the pro-Hamas collective Cheikh Yassine, dissolved on October 21, 2020. Five days before the professor's assassination, he published a video in which he denounced an Islamophobic France and described Samuel Paty as a “thug teacher” .

He explained during an interrogation that he would never have posted his video if he could have imagined “a billionth chance of this happening”, maintaining that he was “just looking for administrative sanctions”.

Asked whether he recognizes the facts with which he is accused, he declared that he had “no link with this crime or with its environment”, emphasizing a “barbaric crime” that his “whole being rejects in every sense “.

It should be noted that Abdelhakim Sefrioui was in the past an economics teacher in the public sector and in professional high schools.