The national anti-terrorism prosecution requested this Monday, December 16, sentences ranging from one year to sixteen years in prison against the eight defendants involved, to varying degrees, in the assassination of the professor on October 16, 2020.
At the trial of the assassination of Samuel Paty, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office requested this Monday, December 16, sentences ranging from eighteen months in prison to sixteen years of criminal imprisonment against the eight accused involved, at varying degrees. various, in the assassination of the professor on October 16, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
The highest sentence was requested against the Russian of Chechen origin Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, tried for complicity in terrorist assassination, but for whom the prosecution asked the court to reclassify as a terrorist criminal association .
In the morning, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office had not included in its requisitions the “complicity in terrorist assassination” against the only two defendants who were prosecuted for this offense, punishable by life imprisonment, at the trial for the assassination in October 2020 of Professor Samuel Paty. The prosecution had estimated that Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, respectively 22 and 23 years old, friends of the assailant Abdoullakh Anzorov, were guilty of terrorist criminal association, a crime which makes them incur 30 years of imprisonment, but not of complicity. “They were fully aware of his jihadist beliefs and provided him with the material conditions to implement them”insisted General Advocate Marine Valentin, believing that they “voluntarily associated themselves with his deadly enterprise.”
Accused of having helped Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen radical Islamist, to obtain weapons and, concerning Boudaoud, of having led him to the area around the college on October 16, 2020, the two young people claimed at the hearing to have completely unaware of their friend's murderous intentions and have never stopped proclaiming their innocence.
Update : at 5:11 p.m., with the modification of the lowest required sentence, from one year in prison to eighteen months suspended, due to an error by the AFP.
