The special Paris Assize Court on Friday found guilty and sentenced the eight people involved, to varying degrees, in the assassination of professor Samuel Paty, beheaded by a radical Chechen Islamist, shot dead by the police shortly after his act, on October 16, 2020.
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The two friends of the assassin of Professor Samuel Paty, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, were found guilty of complicity in assassination and sentenced to 16 years of criminal imprisonment.
The verdict was greeted with screams and tears from the family of 22-year-old Naïm Boudaoud.
“Tonight, it is the Republic which has won,” said Thibault de Montbrial, lawyer for Mickaëlle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered professor.
The court also declared the two authors of the “hate campaign” who made Samuel Paty a “target” guilty of terrorist conspiracy. Brahim Chnina, 52, and Islamist preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65, received 13 and 15 years of criminal imprisonment respectively.
“I understand that you have been involved in politics,” Mr. Sefrioui exclaimed from his box before being curtly interrupted by the president, while the family of Brahim Chnina, very numerous on the public benches, burst into tears and cries of despair.
Vincent Brengarth, one of Mr. Sefrioui's lawyers, immediately announced that his client was appealing his conviction. Ouadie Elhamamouchi, another of the preacher's lawyers, said his client was now “a political prisoner.” “I dissociate myself from these comments”, however qualified Me Brengarth, showing flaws in the preacher's defense.
If the quantum of the sentences is not very different from what the prosecution demanded, the court chaired by Franck Zientara chose to maintain the offense of “complicity” for the two friends of Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radical Chechen Islamist from 18 years old, shot dead by the police shortly after his act.
The four other defendants, including a woman, belonging to the “jihadosphere” who was in contact with Anzorov on social networks, were also all sentenced to fixed or suspended prison sentences.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) had requested sentences of between 18 months suspended prison time and 16 years of criminal imprisonment against the eight accused aged between 22 and 65.
The day before the attack, the three young people went to Rouen, in the west of France, to buy a knife (not the one used to decapitate Samuel Paty) which would be found at the crime scene. At the hearing, Mr. Boudaoud and Mr. Epsirkhanov repeated that the future killer, Abdoullakh Anzorov, had explained to them that this knife was “a gift” for his grandfather.
On the day of the attack, October 16, 2020, Naim 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.
“Awareness of radicality”
The two young people “were aware of Anzorov’s radicalism” and “that he had the desire to attack the physical integrity of a third party,” the court said.
However, President Zientara emphasized, “it has not been demonstrated that [les deux jeunes gens] were informed of Anzorov's intention to kill Samuel Paty.
The Pnat magistrates had requested 14 years' imprisonment with a two-thirds security period against Boudaoud and 16 years' imprisonment also with a two-thirds security period against Epsirkhanov.
The court did not retain the two-thirds security period against them.
Brahim Chnina, father of the schoolgirl who lied when accusing the teacher of having discriminated against Muslim students in his class during a lesson on freedom of expression where he presented a caricature of Mohammed, posted messages and a video hostile to the professor from October 7.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, founder of the (now dissolved) pro-Hamas association “Collectif Cheikh-Yassine”, described Samuel Paty as a “thug” in another video.
But there is no proof that Anzorov saw Mr. Sefrioui's video, his lawyers stressed, adding that they had not met Samuel Paty's killer either.
Brahim Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui who went together to Samuel Paty's college on October 8 would not have acted together, their lawyers also put forward to contest the accusation of AMT against them.
“The court considered that [MM. Chnina et Sefrioui] had prepared the conditions for a terrorist act,” said Mr. Zientara.
The court also sentenced Priscilla Mangel, 36, to 3 years in prison for inciting terrorism and Yusuf Cinar, 22, convicted of advocating terrorism, to one year in prison.
The court sentenced Ismaël Gamaev, 22 years old, (the only one of the eight accused to have admitted his guilt) to 5 years in prison including 30 months suspended and to 3 years in prison including 2 suspended Reunionese Louqmane Ingar.
