EIGHT PEOPLE WENT on trial in France today charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old Islamist radical of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.
Seven men and one woman are appearing in court in the trial, set to last until December, over the murder of 47-year-old Paty, a teacher of history and geography.
The trial began with the defendants confirming their identity.
Perpetrator Abdoullakh Anzorov, who had requested asylum in France, was killed by police shortly after he murdered Paty near the latter’s school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine west of Paris.
The teacher, who had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, is regarded as a free speech hero by the French authorities and his school is now being named after him.
Six defendants, three of whom are under judicial supervision, are being tried for participation in a criminal terrorist act which is punishable by 30 years in jail.
They include Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan.
He is the father of a schoolgirl, then aged 13, who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
She was not in the classroom at the time.
Also on trial is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist.
He and Chnina spread the teenager’s lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designating a target”, “provoking a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes”.
Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.
Between 9 and 13 October, Chnina spoke to Anzorov nine times by phone after he published videos criticising Paty, the investigation showed.
Sefrioui posted a video criticising Islamophobia in France and describing Paty as a “teaching thug”, but told investigators he was only seeking “administrative sanctions”.
Two young friends of the attacker are facing even graver charges of “complicity in terrorist murder”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.
Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, a Russian of Chechen origin, are accused of having accompanied Anzorov to a knife shop in the northern city of Rouen the day before the attack.
“Nearly three years of investigation have never managed to establish that Naim Boudaoud had any knowledge of the attacker’s criminal plans,” his lawyers Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah told AFP.
Boudaoud is accused of going with Anzorov to buy two replica guns and steel pellets the day of the attack.
Epsirkhanov admitted he had received €800 from Anzorov to find him a real gun but had not succeeded.
Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.
His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.
After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people.
Four other defendants interacted with Anzorov online.
Yusuf Cinar, a 22-year-old Turkish national, shared a jihadist Snapchat account with him, that later published images of Paty’s killing.
Ismail Gamaev, a 22-year-old Russian of Chechen origin with refugee status, and Louqmane Ingar, also 22, exchanged jihadist content on a Snapchat group with Anzorov.
The first posted an image of Paty’s head with smiley faces after the killing.
The only woman to be on trial is 36-year-old Priscilla Mangel, a Muslim convert since the age of 16, who conversed with Paty’s killer on X, describing the teacher’s class as “an example of the war waged by (France’s) Republican institutions against Muslims”.
Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers for Mickaelle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered teacher, said his killing had highlighted the “depth of Islamist infiltration in France”.
The trial should in particular “allow our society to become aware of a mortal peril”, they added.
The trial is scheduled to last until 20 December.
Six former high school students were sentenced in December 2023 to terms ranging from 14 months suspended to six months in prison, following a closed-door trial before the juvenile court.
Those sentenced to prison, however, will not in the end serve jail time.
Chnina’s daughter was sentenced in that trial to 18 months’ probation after being convicted of slander in her denunciation of Paty.
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