French justice opened this Monday the trial of eight other people accused of inciting hatred in relation to the murder of professor Samuel Paty in 2020 at the hands of an Islamist teenager of Chechen origin, a case which shocked society French.
The accused, seven men and a woman, will be tried in the coming days for the murder of the former history and geography teacher at the Conflans Sainte Honorine school, located in Yvelines.
All are between 22 and 65 years old and will begin appearing throughout the day before a special court in Paris, the capital, for their alleged involvement in what happened that day, when the 18-year-old , identified as Abdulaj Anzorov, beheaded Paty.
Two of the accused are also on trial for complicity in murder, classified as a terrorist act and punishable by life imprisonment. The six others are charged with the offense of terrorist association and could be sentenced to sentences of up to thirty years in prison, according to information from the BFM TV channel.
Several of them were accused of having broadcast videos aimed at stigmatizing the teacher and designating him as a target. Thus, they would have given precise information about their identity and their place of work. Many of these videos presented “false or distorted” data that only sought to incite a feeling of hatred towards the teacher, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In December 2023, six other defendants, all teenagers, were found guilty of false accusations and of organizing a criminal conspiracy with the aim of provoking violence.
Four of them identified the teacher when Anzorov asked about him before committing the crime, in response to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad taught in class in the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, drawings which have been repudiated several times. taken up by the Muslim world.
