At the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty, Brahim Chnina, an accused incapable of introspection

Brahim Chnina regrets “infinitely”, recognizes that his messages fell into the hands of “the wrong people” and that after the broadcast of his video, “things went wrong”. The person who faces thirty years of criminal imprisonment recognizes his responsibility in the “causal chain” but insists, he is not “a terrorist” and has never been linked to a terrorist criminal association. Nothing, moreover, has ever demonstrated the slightest sign of radicalization in this man accused of having partly orchestrated the campaign of hatred, based on the lie of his daughter, which led to the assassination of Samuel Paty , beheaded on October 16, 2020 by an 18-year-old Chechen.

Questioned about the facts on Monday, December 2, the 52-year-old accused – who appears to be ten years older, after four years of pre-trial detention – still does not really explain why he acted as he did; “That day, I still don't know what happened to me,” he said, in a low voice, hunched behind the glass box. The prosecution accuses him in particular of four messages, sent to around 1,500 contacts on WhatsApp, and yet another published on Facebook, in which he accused the teacher, by giving his name, of having discriminated against Muslim students by asking them to leave. class as he was about to show images of the naked Prophet. Her 13-year-old daughter had claimed to have attended this course to cover up an exclusion pronounced due to her behavior. The beginning of the infernal spiral.

The same evening of the publication of his messages on social networks, Brahim Chnina will be contacted by Abdelhakim Sefrioui, an Islamist agitator always eager to find “causes” to get involved in. Together, they will go the next day to the Bois d'Aulne college, where Samuel Paty taught, to demand sanctions against the professor, calling him a “thug”. The two men will then each publish a video, in turn amplifying the controversy. Videos, which, according to the prosecution, made Samuel Paty a target.

“I wanted to protect my daughter and I did wrong”

“I made the mistake of believing my daughter and I regret it,” begins Brahim Chnina, who claims to have been more “hurt” by the alleged discrimination suffered by his daughter than by the projection of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. “What hurt me first was the sanction, second, it was the discrimination and third, it was the caricatures. I wanted to protect my daughter and I acted badly,” he said, wanting at all costs to distance himself from questions relating to blasphemy, much more problematic for him than those concerning discrimination, to the extent that they would bring him into the spotlight. slippery slope of ideology.

ALSO READ At the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty, the factory of fearIf he recognizes that without his messages, “Mr. Paty would still be here, doing his lesson”, the accused swears two things: the first, he never considered that his daughter could have lied to him. The second, he never thought that anyone could harm the teacher. If he wrote the messages, it was, listening to him, with the sole aim of warning about the discrimination experienced by Muslim students. At most, he hoped that parents would contact the rectorate to express their disapproval and give weight to his message.

“Do you realize that this caricature story is an extremely sensitive area, that it can get out of hand and that there are weak minds who can think of something other than a simple letter? » asks the president. “I never wanted to target Mr. Paty, rest his soul. The idea of ​​someone coming to spit on him, insult him, hit him… It slipped my mind. Otherwise I would never have made the message,” swears Brahim Chnina.

The role of Abdelhakim Sefrioui minimized

Under the barrage of questions from the president, the man with graying hair and a white beard admits that with his messages and his video, he contributed “to provoking the facts”. “What I did is irreparable, unforgivable,” he said, sounding sincerely contrite. Brahim Chnina assumes, therefore. But only part of the facts. If he wants to bear the burden of responsibility, it is limited to having made the mistake of believing his daughter “100%”. “She completely manipulated you?” » asks the president. “On this story, yes, but I was also fooled by myself,” the accused tries, without ever explaining the fundamental reasons which pushed him to take his daughter's word for it, as incapable of a true introspection, preferring victimization.

On the role of Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who must in turn be questioned this Tuesday, Brahim Chnina also wants to be very careful. Would he have gone to college without the preacher's intervention? “I intended to go,” assures Brahim Chnina, who goes so far as to say that he regrets having involved him: “he is incarcerated because of me.” Would he have filed a complaint against the professor if Abdelhakim Sefrioui had not whispered to him? “He advised me to do it, but it’s not just him, it’s one element among others,” assures Brahim Chnina.

Half-heartedly, the accused admits that it is indeed the founder of the Cheikh Yassine collective – named after the founder of Hamas – who will encourage him not to go to college alone, that without him, he would not have never pushed his daughter to testify in a video as she did in front of Sefrioui's lens and that if he had found himself alone in the principal's office, things would “perhaps not have happened like that “. “But we were both virulent,” continues Brahim Chnina, who held Abdelhakim Sefrioui in high esteem. To him, as to the principal of Bois d'Aulne, the Islamist activist always presented himself as a representative of the imams of France. “At home, we respect imams, mosque staff, people older than us, so I respected him a lot,” he says.

“A few words would have been enough to save Mr. Paty’s life”

Brahim Chnina is much more severe towards the principal of the college, whom he criticizes for never having told him that his daughter was not present during the course on freedom of expression taught by Samuel Paty. During the nine days during which the affair cruelly escalated, the principal did not share this information – which she had obtained from Samuel Paty himself – to the father of the schoolgirl storyteller. “If she had told me 'your daughter wasn't in class,' I might have backed out, but instead she kicked me out of a meeting. If she had told me, I could have made other messages, I would have spoken to my daughter, we would have apologized, she would have done her two days of exclusion and Mr. Paty would still be doing its course,” pleads the accused before daring: “A few words would have been enough to save Mr. Paty’s life. »

To Discover

Kangaroo of the day

Answer

Accusations which are not to the taste of the civil parties, and which also clash with reality according to the public prosecutor. “You don't listen to any of the warnings addressed to you, you say that you are overwhelmed by the messages after the publication of your video, in your bubble… How can we believe that you would have listened to the principal if she had told you that your daughter was absent from class? » asks the general advocate. “If she had told us that she was absent, there would have been no complaint, no video and none of this would have happened,” says Brahim Chnina.

A little earlier, the president had however pointed out to him that during the interview that they imposed on him with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the principal had tried to explain to them that the schoolgirl had been excluded for reasons completely unrelated to Samuel's course. Paty. The latter had also reported to them all the behavioral problems and delays alleged against the young girl. “We didn't believe her, because I completely believed my daughter,” admitted Brahim Chnina, making the rest of his explanations very unbelievable.