Terrorism in France: Samuel Paty, adults at the helm

It was in stony silence that the President of the Court read the long investigation report in the large courtroom of the Paris courthouse, known as the “Grands Procès”. A reading that takes the audience back to the chilling story of Samuel Paty, or how a teacher from a college in Yvelines was beheaded in the street following a lie that became a rumor.

“He was worried”

This October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, 47 years old, knows he is in danger. And for good reason: for several days a rumor has been growing about a class where he allegedly showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and asked Muslim students to leave if these drawings offend them. A young girl then became outraged and was excluded from school for two days.

In reality, the young girl in question was not present that day and the teacher simply suggested that the students look away if they were shocked by the caricatures, without provoking any reaction from them. Unfortunately, this lie, relayed by the young girl’s father and by an Islamist preacher, grew on social networks and in the school, to the point that Samuel Paty was confronted by his principal as well as by parents of students and that he suffered threats.

This October 16, several of his colleagues told the investigating judge that they found him “worried”, visibly concerned by this affair which, moreover, disturbs all teachers. For several days, the professor, whose private address has circulated on social networks, has asked to be taken home by car. That day, the colleague from whom he asked for this service could not do it. Samuel Paty leaves the school on foot, hood on his head. A few meters further on, his assassin first stabs him in the back, attacks him and, in the ultimate horror, decapitates him.

The father and the preacher

Six minors, including the young girl at the origin of the deadly rumor, have already been sentenced at the end of 2023 to sentences ranging from 14 months suspended prison sentence to 6 months for their participation in this assassination. The question now is the role that the adults accused in this case played in the terrible spiral that led to this action.

There are eight in all. Two risk life imprisonment for “complicity in terrorist assassination”. Now aged 22 and 23, they were friends of the murderer and are accused of having helped the latter to develop his action, in particular by accompanying him in the purchase of the weapon which was used to kill Samuel Paty. Both claim to have been unaware of his plans.

And then there are the other six defendants. All are judged for having encouraged the killer in his action, notably via social networks, but without having participated directly. Among them, the father of the young girl who started this whole affair. Behind the glass of the accused box, he keeps his head down. At 52, the man with gray hair and a quavering voice is accused of having published a video recounting his daughter’s lie, giving the name of the professor and the address of her college, before removing this information.

But if the rumor has gained momentum, it is also because of the action of another man who, himself, remains with his head held high during the president’s reading, then, glasses on his nose, takes notes. He is the 65-year-old Islamist preacher who spread the rumor through his radical social networks. Networks which acted as a sounding board, to the point of alerting the future murderer and pushing him to contact the young girl’s father, assuring him of “his support” in his fight against Samuel Paty. The father and the preacher risk 30 years of criminal imprisonment for “criminal terrorist association”.

Importance of context

Their line of defense will be more or less the same: they never literally called for Samuel Paty to be killed and were unaware of the murderer’s plans. But the investigation report recalls that the context was particularly flammable.

At the beginning of September, to mark the opening of the trial of the “Charlie Hebdo” attacks, the caricatures which had led killers to the premises of the satirical newspaper were republished, triggering calls from Al-Qaeda to carry out attacks in France. A few days before the assassination of Samuel Paty, a man tried to kill two passers-by in front of the former premises of the weekly.

It is in this context that a young radicalized Chechen was looking for a target to express his anger and violence. Social media brought it to him on a platter. More than 90 witnesses must be heard. The verdict on the responsibilities of each party is expected on December 20.

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