Two friends of the assassin of French professor Samuel Paty were found guilty of complicity in the murder on Friday. They receive 16 years of criminal imprisonment. A total of eight people were in the dock. All were convicted.
After seven weeks of hearings, the Paris Special Assize Court handed down severe sentences Friday evening against the defendants involved, to varying degrees, in the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty by a young radical Chechen Islamist in 2020. The murderer was killed by police on the day of the attack.
Two friends of the assassin, aged 22 and 23, were found guilty of complicity in murder and sentenced to 16 years of criminal imprisonment.
The day before the attack, the three young people went to Rouen, in the west of France, to buy a knife (not the one used to decapitate Samuel Paty) which would be found at the crime scene, at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the Paris region.
At the hearing, these two men repeated that the future killer had explained to them that this knife was “a gift” for his grandfather.
Logistics support
On the day of the attack, October 16, 2020, the youngest, the only one who knew how to drive, accompanied the killer to an airsoft gun store then dropped him off near the college where Samuel Paty taught.
If the two young people constituted “the logistical support that the killer needed”, it could not be demonstrated that they had knowledge of his deadly project, indicated the prosecution which abandoned the complicity to retain only the terrorist criminal association (AMT), punishable by 30 years in prison.
“Hate campaign”
The two perpetrators of the “hate campaign” against the teacher, aged 52 and 65, were found guilty of terrorist conspiracy and sentenced respectively to 13 and 15 years of criminal imprisonment.
The first is the father of the schoolgirl who lied when accusing the teacher of having discriminated against Muslim students in his class during a lesson on freedom of expression where he presented a caricature of Mohammed. This man posted messages and a video hostile to the professor as early as October 7.
The other, founder of the (now dissolved) pro-Hamas association “Collectif Cheikh-Yassine”, described Samuel Paty as a “thug” in another video.
Requisitions deemed too lenient
The civil parties had been outraged by the prosecutor's “too lenient” requisitions, while the defense requested the acquittal of most of the accused by contesting the “terrorist intention” of the accused. But the court chose severity.
Four other people, including a woman, appeared for their membership in the “jihadosphere” which was in contact with the killer on social networks. They received suspended sentences of up to five years in prison.
afp/ami
