There are eight of them, seven men and one woman, tried before the special assize court of Paris from this Monday, accused of having contributed to the hate campaign which led on October 16, 2020 to the assassination of Samuel Paty.
The 47-year-old professor of history and geography in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was murdered by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian radical Islamist of Chechen origin and beneficiary of asylum seeker status in France, largely absent from trial since killed by the police shortly after stabbing and beheading the professor.
Will appear:
2 friends of the attacker who will have to answer for “complicity in terrorist assassination”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment, for having accompanied Anzorov to a cutlery in Rouen the day before the attack.
The six other accused, three of whom are under judicial supervision, and who appear free, are on trial for participation in a criminal terrorist association, a crime punishable by 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
Among them, Brahim Chnina, father of the 13-year-old schoolgirl at the time, who falsely claimed that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the class before showing caricatures of Mohammed.
At his side, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist, in pre-trial detention like Brahim Chnina for four years, who massively relayed the teenager's lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designate a target”:
Both are accused of participation in a terrorist criminal association.
As a reminder:
Brahim Chnina's daughter and five other ex-college students have already been sentenced after a closed trial before the children's court to sentences ranging from 14 months suspended to two years including six months suspended.
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“The tragic mechanism which resulted in the martyrdom of Samuel Paty reveals the depth of Islamist entryism in France and its porosity with terrorism. Its detailed presentation in public hearing must not only result in the severe condemnation of those who participated in it, but also allow our society to become aware of a mortal danger,” declared Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers of Mickaëlle Paty, sister of the professor.
