Four years after the assassination of history and geography professor Samuel Paty by a radicalized 18-year-old Chechen, on October 16, 2020, the time for the big trial has arrived. Eight adults, involved to varying degrees in the deadly spiral which led to the decapitation of the teacher as he left his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), are on trial, from Monday November 4, before the special assize court of Paris.
Justice has already ruled for the first time, but partially, on certain responsibilities involved in the mechanics of this attack. Following a closed trial, as provided for by law for minors, six former school students, aged 13 to 15 at the time of the facts, were sentenced by the children’s court on December 8, 2023, to sentences of between fourteen months suspended prison sentence and six months in prison. Five of them were found guilty of “criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing aggravated violence” for having helped the terrorist identify the teacher as he left his college in exchange for a few tickets.
The sixth defendant, the youngest, aged 13 at the time of the events, is the schoolgirl who caused the tragedy, the first cog in the chain. It was his lie aimed at justifying to his parents a two-day exclusion for disciplinary reasons unrelated to Samuel Paty which had opened the trap which closed on the teacher. On October 7, 2020, the teenager told her father that she had been excluded for having stood up the day before to her teacher who, according to her, had asked Muslim students to leave the room before projecting images of the Prophet Muhammad naked in class. .
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The lie was twofold: during this course on October 6, entitled “Dilemma situation: to be or not to be Charlie. A definition of freedom”, that Samuel Paty gave every year without it ever causing the slightest incident, the professor had not asked anyone to leave the room. He had simply suggested to the students who wished to look away while caricatures of the prophet were shown. The schoolgirl was also not present that day: she had called in sick. She was sentenced to eighteen months probation for “slanderous denunciation”.
The father and the Islamist activist
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