The first judicial response to the horror of the murder of Professor Samuel Paty. It started this Monday at the Paris Court trial of six young people In connection with the beheading of the history teacher – all of whom were minors at the time of the events – which occurred on October 16, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the northwest of the Paris region. This was a jihadist attack that shocked French society and still resonates today, as evidenced by the recent murder of Professor Dominique Bernard on 13 October.
A. A total of 14 people are charged Regarding Paty’s death young Chechen jihadist That same fateful afternoon, police shot him dead. Eight adults will sit on the dock by the end of 2024 in the main judicial process regarding this attack. Now the trial of six young people (five boys and one girl) begins. They all studied at the teacher center. They are not being investigated for crimes of a terrorist nature, but rather for ordinary crimes.
“The role of the minors in the process leading to the murder was very important,” lawyer Virginie Le Roy, the parents’ legal representative and the teacher’s sister, told AFP. like they have aged 13 to 15 at the time of the events, hearings are held in a special court for minors, behind closed doors, without the participation of journalists or the public. They may be punished maximum two and a half years imprisonment. In France, people over the age of 13 can go to prison if they commit serious crimes.
Source of the attack: A student’s lie
The only girl judged to be lying Slander campaign against teachers This was before his brutal murder. On October 7, 2020, Paty was supposed to attend a freedom of expression class. cartoons of Muhammad of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. However, he skipped that class voluntarily and was suspended from the center for two days that day for a reason unrelated to that class. To justify his expulsion, he told his parents that he had been disciplined because his teacher had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom while showing the cartoons, and that he had protested against this. This was completely wrong.
Based on this lie – in reality – Paty suggested that Muslim students should not look at the electronic board only if they thought the cartoons might disturb them – his father and his family. Islamist militant Abdelhakim Sefrioui launched a hostile campaign against the professor on social networks. They recorded a video in front of the institute calling for his dismissal. Those messages arrived Abdullah AnzorovHe is 18 years old and has lived in France since childhood, where his family received asylum. This young man, radicalized in Islamic fundamentalism, lived about 80 kilometers from Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, did not know Professor Paty and had no connection with the institute.
“I don’t know how to forgive myself”
When a friend dropped him off in front of the institute, Anzorov asked some students at the center if they could tell him what Professor Paty was like and where he was. He told them he wanted to record it “apologizing for the prophet cartoon.” One of them agreed for 300 euros and he set out with his four other friends on this stupid idea. Now they are being tried for this. The investigating judges considered that these five accomplices were not aware of the jihadists’ true intentions and therefore charged them with a common crime.
“When I saw what was happening, I told myself this was not good. I should have called the police“, one of the young men explained to the judges, who threw the blood-soaked 40 euros he had earned that afternoon into the sewer. During the interrogation, another accused student said, “I don’t know how to forgive myself,” and admitted that he “dreamed of many things” with the money. “Buy video games or digital points for FIFA or Fortnite”. “They absolutely regretted what happened when the worst happened. Dylan Slama, the lawyer representing one of these minors, made his defense in the corridors of the Paris Court.
This hearing, as well as the second of eight coming-of-age hearings in November and December 2024, The third can be celebrated on account of Paty’s death. This is the wish of some of his relatives. They filed a criminal complaint against the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, accusing them of not taking the threats against the teacher seriously enough. The prosecution launched an investigation into this matter in April 2022. Although three years have passed since Paty was beheaded, the wound of the attack has not yet healed.