France: the trial of 8 people after the assassination of Samuel Paty

The major trial room of the Paris courthouse was full on Monday for the opening of the trial of eight people, including a woman, tried for having contributed to the hate campaign which led to the assassination on October 16, 2020 of Samuel Paty , 47 years old, professor of history and geography in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).

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

The first day of hearings in a trial scheduled to last seven weeks was very formal. After verifying the identity of the accused, the court, composed entirely of professional magistrates, proceeded to call the witnesses.

There are 98 of them in total, including the young girl, a schoolgirl in Samuel Paty’s class, who falsely claimed – she was absent from class – that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his class before showing caricatures of Mohammed. .

The young girl, still a minor, must testify on November 26. Tried with five other ex-college students last fall behind closed doors by the Paris children’s court, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison for slanderous denunciation.

Complicity in terrorist assassination

Before giving the floor to the accused, possibly in the evening, President Franck Zientara was to spend a good part of the afternoon reading the report summarizing the facts. The court will begin the character examination of the accused from Tuesday. The first interrogations of the accused on the facts will begin on November 20.

Among them, 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.

Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan, the father of the schoolgirl who lied about Samuel Paty and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist, are in the box for having massively relayed the teenager’s lies on the networks social networks with the aim, according to the accusation, of “designating a target”, “arousing a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes”. They are both accused of participation in a terrorist criminal association.

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.

A shock wave

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

Francis Szpiner, lawyer for other members of Samuel Paty’s family, hoped “that justice would live up to the crime that was committed, an unprecedented fact in the history of the Republic.”

The trial should 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”

“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.

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