Abdoullakh Anzorov was 6 years old when he left Russia with his parents to settle in France. He was 18 when he beheaded Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020, before being shot dead by the police officers he had rushed towards, weapons in hand. What happened, during these twelve years spent on the benches of the Republic school, for this young Chechen refugee to end up murdering a history and geography teacher?
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Neither he nor the members of his family – most of whom left France after the attack – were able to provide any answers before the special criminal court in Paris. But two witnesses, an investigator and a researcher, heard during the second week of the trial of the assassination of Samuel Paty, analyzed the « court-circuit » identity which was able to fuel its murderous explosion for years, like in a pressure cooker.
Like many Chechen refugees, Abdoullakh Anzorov is the heir of two decades of war of independence against the Russian army, which transformed the Chechen Republic, where he was born, into a land of desolation and a field of jihadist experimentation. “This is a population that has experienced a lot of conflict, a lot of trauma which will have an impact on current actions”explained to the court the historian Anne-Clémentine Larroque, who worked on this case as a specialist assistant for anti-terrorism justice.
“A fear of acculturation”
According to information provided by the family, Abdoullakh Anzorov's father was detained by the Russian authorities in 2005 for having hosted jihadist fighters, reports an investigator from the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT). And it was to flee the persecution of the pro-Russian regime of Ramzan Kadyrov that the family settled in France in 2008, where they obtained refugee status three years later.
The father, mother and their sons settled in Evreux (Eure) in 2012. The family, closed in on itself and practicing rigorous Islam, stood out, including within the Chechen diaspora. One of the accused, Azim Epsirkhanov, the killer's best friend and himself the son of Chechen refugees, told the court of his astonishment when he went to the Anzorovs' home: the youngest children assiduously practiced religion, music was prohibited and the mother was forbidden to leave the apartment alone. “ It was very different from home »he clarified.
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