Of the eight accused in the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty, Azim Epsirkhanov is undoubtedly one of the least suspected of harboring Islamist sympathies. However, he is one of those who faces the heaviest sentence: life imprisonment for “complicity in terrorist assassination”. This young 23-year-old Chechen is accused of having helped, without success, the killer (his childhood friend Abdoullakh Anzorov) to obtain a firearm and of having accompanied him to buy a knife, the day before the attack .
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He was the first, Wednesday November 20, on the twelfth day of the hearing, to be questioned on the merits of the case. Subjected to the rolling fire of questions from the court, the public prosecutor, the civil party lawyers and the defense for nearly ten hours, the young man, with his chin high and his words as neat as his midnight blue suit, has continued to repeat what he says since he spontaneously went to the police station on the evening of the attack, October 16, 2020: he knew nothing of his friend's criminal designs.
Since the start of the trial, Azim Epsirkhanov has been portrayed as the exact opposite of Abdullakh Anzorov. The two friends have in common that they are Chechen refugees, but the comparison ends there. The first appeared to be perfectly integrated, intelligent and ambitious, not radicalized, barely practicing, while the killer was as violent as he was religiously rigorous. And we wondered why this boy with a bright future would have become complicit, at the dawn of his adult life, in a jihadist attack.
“Weapon, knife, alert!” »
But the facts are there. The day before the attack, Abdoullakh Anzorov, who lived in Evreux, went by car with another friend, Naïm Boudaoud, to Rouen, to ask Azim Epsirkhanov to ask his cousin if the latter had a pistol to sell him . Azim Epsirkhanov therefore went to his cousin, who told him that he did not have any, and the three friends then had “shot in car”, “ate at McDonald’s”before finally going to a cutlery to buy a knife for Anzorov.
Sure of his facts and knowing his case perfectly, the accused has an explanation for everything. The search for the weapon? He believed that his friend wanted to acquire a means of defending himself, a few weeks after the murder of a young Chechen by a ” Noir » of a gang reputed to be violent, a tragedy which had triggered a wave of paranoia within the Chechen community of Evreux. The knife? Anzorov told him he wanted to do ” gift “ to his grandfather.
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