In a book published this Wednesday, October 16, four years after the death of her brother, Mickaëlle Paty regrets not seeing the State commit more resources to the fight against Islamist terrorism.
“Neither awakening, nor startle.” Four years to the day after the assassination of history and geography professor Samuel Paty, his sister, Mickaëlle Paty, believes in a book published this Wednesday, October 16 that not all the lessons have been learned following the death of his brother.
“Four years after the assassination of my brother, a great anger resides within me. That of having wasted time, for lack of having been heard. There was neither awakening, nor startle, and our enemies have again gained ground”, states Mickaëlle Paty in her book Mr. Paty’s course (Albin Michel), co-written with the author Emilie Frèche.
She retraces the events leading to the assassination of her brother on October 16, 2020 near the college where he taught, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), 11 days after giving a course on freedom of expression.
“From now on, the alibi of caricatures or the veil is no longer even necessary for them to attack the school, we have had sad proof of this with Dominique Bernard (killed in 2023 in Arras, editor’s note). Being a teacher is enough to put you in the sights of these fundamentalists”, she adds, calling for the establishment of “a real public policy for the promotion of our values, and not only for their defense”.
“Islamism thrives on state disengagement”
For her, Samuel Paty “died because in the face of the Islamist offensive, for years we have only produced a series of renunciations that we thought were unimportant, but which, put end to end, have built a system “.
Gaëlle Paty, another sister of Samuel Paty, also discusses the assassination of her brother in Libération this Wednesday.
“We must not mistake the target, it is Islamist terrorism which killed my brother. He is primarily responsible. The school must remain uncompromising on its rules and the freedom of which it is the vector,” says She.
“But I was also able to see that Islamism thrives on a vacuum, on a disengagement of the State,” she observes.
She says she is ready for the second trial linked to this assassination, from November 4, before the special assize court in Paris where eight people will be tried. She explains that the first trial, that of the college students at the end of 2023, “truly participated in (s)her catharsis”. “It allowed me to stop suffering, and to become an actress in something,” she describes.
Justice seized on State responsibility
In her book, Mickaëlle Paty says “to expect from this judicial moment the re-establishment of the truth about the course of (his) brother, but also the exposure of Islamism as a political project against which we must fight”. Mickaëlle Paty took legal action in July to have the State’s responsibility recognized in the assassination of her brother.
“We will continue, professor, this fight for freedom and for reason of which you have become the face,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X on this anniversary.
A minute of silence was organized on Monday October 14 in middle and high schools in France in memory of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard.
