Assassination of Samuel Paty: trial of eight people involved opens

Eight adults, seven men and one woman, accused of having contributed to the hate campaign which led to the assassination on October 16, 2020 of Samuel Paty, 47, professor of history and geography in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (F ), are on trial from Monday before the special assize court of Paris.

The assassin, Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young 18-year-old Russian radical Islamist of Chechen origin, beneficiary of asylum seeker status in France, will be largely absent from the trial: he was killed by the police shortly after having stabbed and decapitated the professor.

Two young friends of the attacker must answer for “complicity in terrorist assassination”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The six other accused, three of whom, under judicial supervision, appear free, are on trial for participation in a criminal terrorist association, a crime punishable by 30 years of criminal imprisonment.

Among the accused are Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan, the father of the 13-year-old schoolgirl who falsely claimed – she was absent from class – that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his class before showing caricatures of Mohammed, and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist.

These two men, in pre-trial detention for four years, massively relayed the teenager’s lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designating a target”, “arousing a feeling of hatred” and “thus prepare several crimes.

They are both accused of participation in a terrorist criminal association.

Brahim Chnina’s daughter 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. .

Anzorov’s two friends, Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and the Russian of Chechen origin Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, who face life imprisonment for complicity in a terrorist assassination, are notably accused of having accompanied Anzorov in a Rouen cutlery the day before the attack.

“Nearly three years of judicial information have never made it possible to establish that Naïm Boudaoud had knowledge of the slightest criminal project of the assailant”, declared to AFP Messrs Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah who contest “the complicity” of their customer.

The assassination of Samuel Paty – which occurred in the middle of the trial of the attacks of January 7, 2015 against the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo – constituted a shock wave in French society.

“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 our society to become aware of a mortal danger,” wish Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, Mickaëlle’s lawyers. Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered professor.

The hearing chaired by Franck Zientara, an experienced magistrate who notably led the trial of the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray attack, must begin at 10 a.m. in the “grand trials” room of the Paris courthouse, there where the attacks of November 13 and July 14 in Nice took place.

The special court is composed solely of professional magistrates. The public prosecutor will be represented by two attorneys general: Nicolas Braconnay and Marine Valentin, respectively first vice-prosecutor and vice-prosecutor of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office.

The trial will also be an opportunity to evoke the figure of 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. At no time will the threatened teacher benefit from police protection.

He, who was used to returning home on foot, asked colleagues to take him home by car the four days before his assassination. Except October 16, the day before school holidays, when no motorized teacher is available.

A sad symbol of the feeling of insecurity that inhabited him, a paltry hammer was discovered in his backpack after his assassination.

The trial is scheduled until December 20.