Before his death, Samuel Paty, 47, professor at the Bois-d’Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), was the target of an intense cyberharassment campaign.
A lie originally
Originally, there was the lie of a 13-year-old student wrongly accusing Professor Paty of discrimination against Muslims. In reality, she had not attended the history-geography class and her lie, taken up massively on social networks by unscrupulous adults, led to her “killing”, in the words of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office ( Pnat), by Samuel Paty.
The young girl and five other ex-college students were sentenced last fall to sentences ranging from 14 months suspended to two years including six months suspended following a closed trial before the children’s court.
Virginie Le Roy, lawyer for the Paty family, regretted a “disappointing” hearing with “answers (which) the families lacked”. Will the trial which opens on Monday bring more?
“Awareness”
“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 exposition in public hearing must not only result in the severe condemnation of those who participated in it, but also allow an awareness of our society in the face of a mortal danger”, wish Messrs Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers of Mickaëlle Paty, the sister of the murdered professor.
The schoolgirl’s father, Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan, will be one of the main accused alongside the Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65 years old.
The two men, in pre-trial detention for four years, relayed, according to the prosecution, the teenager’s lies on social networks, triggering a surge of hatred against the professor. Prosecuted for terrorist conspiracy, they face 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
“My client intends to explain the merits of the case and demonstrate that he has absolutely no link, directly or indirectly, with this heinous attack that he has condemned since the first day,” explains Me Ouadie Elhamamouchi, the lawyer. by Abdelhakim Sefrioui.
Complicity to assassination
Two friends of Anzorov, Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and the Russian of Chechen origin Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, are appearing for complicity in terrorist assassination, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.
The day before the attack, they notably accompanied Anzorov to a cutlery in Rouen to purchase a knife corresponding to the one found near his corpse. Naïm Boudaoud was also with Anzorov for the purchase, a few hours before the crime, of two Airsoft pistols and steel balls in a store in Cergy.
“Nearly three years of judicial investigation have never made it possible to establish that Naïm Boudaoud was aware of the slightest criminal plan of the attacker,” Messrs Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah, who contest “complicity” told AFP. of their customer.
“The distorted analysis of the case which has taken place until now will not be able to withstand the objective evidence which will be debated at the hearing”, believe the lawyers.
The court will also try three people who belonged to Snapchat groups revolving around Abdoullakh Anzorov.
The Turk Yusuf Cinar, the Russian of Chechen origin Ismaïl Gamaev and the Reunionese Louqmane Ingar, all three aged 22, according to the accusation exchanged messages with jihadist content with Anzorov.
Yusuf Cinar was at the time of the events “a young man of 18, out of school and in a very fragile state. Not only was he never aware of the terrorist’s plan, but he never approved the act committed, nor shared any radical ideology,” indicates his lawyer, Me Lucile Collot.
The only woman among the accused, Priscilla Mangel, 36, known to belong to the radical Islamist movement, “confirmed” Anzorov in his project even if she did not know its nature, assures the prosecution.
A scared teacher
The trial will also be an opportunity to discuss Samuel Paty, a man “lonely, frightened, in dire straits”, according to the investigating magistrates.
“I am threatened by local Islamists,” he wrote to his colleagues on October 10, 2020, four days after his course on freedom of expression.
