Four years after the assassination of history and geography professor Samuel Paty by a young radical Islamist, the Paris Special Assize Court will judge from Monday seven men and a woman involved in the campaign of hatred and intimidation which preceded the crime.
The assassin, Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, beneficiary of asylum seeker status in France, will be largely absent from the trial: he was killed by the police shortly after his act.
Before his death, Samuel Paty, 47, professor at the Bois-d’Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), was the target of an intense cyberharassment campaign.
Originally, there was the lie of a 13-year-old student wrongly accusing Professor Paty of discrimination against Muslims. In reality, she had not attended the history-geography class and her lie, taken up massively on social networks by unscrupulous adults, led to the “killing”, in the words of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office ( Pnat), by Samuel Paty.
The young girl and five other ex-college students were sentenced last fall to sentences ranging from 14 months suspended to two years including six months suspended following a closed trial before the children’s court.
“The tragic mechanism which resulted in the martyrdom of Samuel Paty reveals the depth of Islamist entryism in France, and its porosity with terrorism. Its exposition in detail in public hearing must not only result in the severe condemnation of those who committed it. competed, but also allow an awareness of our society in the face of a mortal danger”, wish Mes Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers of Mickaëlle Paty, the sister of the murdered professor.
The trial is scheduled until December 20.
Belgium
