between thirteen and sixteen years of criminal imprisonment for the four main accused

The two friends of the assassin of Professor Samuel Paty, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, were found guilty of complicity in assassination and sentenced, Friday, December 20, to sixteen years of criminal imprisonment by the special assize court of Paris.

The two authors of the hate campaign against the professor, Brahim Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, were for their part found guilty of a terrorist criminal association (AMT) and sentenced respectively to thirteen and fifteen years of criminal imprisonment.

The other four defendants received sentences ranging from one year to five years in prison.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) had requested sentences of between 18 months suspended prison sentence and 16 years of criminal imprisonment against the eight accused, aged between 22 and 65. They were appearing for their involvement, to varying degrees, in the assassination of Samuel Paty by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young radical Chechen Islamist, in 2020. The civil parties had been outraged by requisitions which they considered “too lenient”.

The day before the attack, Naïm Boudaoud, 22 years old, Azim Epsirkhanov, 23 years old, and Abdoullakh Anzorov went to Rouen to buy a knife (not the one used to decapitate Samuel Paty) which will be found at the crime scene . At the hearing, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov repeated that Abdoullakh Anzorov had explained to them that this knife was “a gift” for his grandfather. On the day of the attack, October 16, 2020, Naïm Boudaoud, the only one who knew how to drive, accompanied the killer to an airsoft gun store then dropped him off near the college where Samuel Paty taught.