The verdict was delivered during a final, tense hearing. Friday, December 20, the atmosphere was electrified when the Special Assize Court of Paris found guilty the eight people involved, to varying degrees, in the assassination of professor Samuel Paty, killed by a radical Chechen Islamist, shot dead by the police shortly after his act, on October 16, 2020.
A climate such that Mickaëlle Paty, the sister of the murdered professor, had to hastily leave the courtroom, under police escort, she said in an interview with Le Figaro, this Sunday, December 22.
“It’s his fault”
When the verdict was announced, “there was shock in the room. The relatives of the accused formed a huge block in the courtroom, they became more and more noisy,” she said. 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 first “punched his fist against the window of the defendant’s box”, while the second “collapsed with a crash into his chair”, continued Mickaëlle Paty. Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the 65-year-old Islamist preacher who was sentenced to 15 years of criminal imprisonment, shouted that it was a “political” verdict, she added.
According to the sister of the murdered professor, the family of Brahim Chnina, 52, sentenced to 13 years in prison, directly blamed her: “It's her fault, she goes on TV every day this morning she was on BFM! », shouted the relatives of the accused, who headed towards her. “The gendarmes, who were three times more numerous than usual to secure the audience, intervened”, before saying to him: “We will take you out through another door”, according to his account.
“We are going to experience a remake of these last few weeks”
After leaving the courtroom through a back door, Mickaëlle Paty was “exfiltrated” from the courthouse. “The gendarmes did not leave us until we were in the taxi,” she told our colleagues. Samuel Paty's sister was therefore not able to speak to journalists at the end of the hearing, as is customary to do at the end of a trial, unlike her sister Gaëlle.
Nevertheless, Mickaëlle Paty says she is “relieved”, all of the eight accused having been found guilty. The sentences handed down range from three years of suspended prison time to sixteen years of criminal imprisonment. “Justice was fair. She had to be,” she said.
Three of the defendants have already announced their intention to appeal. “The main protagonists will therefore return to the dock, and we will experience a remake of these last weeks,” continued Mickaëlle Paty, who believes that they “only hope to come across more lenient judges”.
