Conflans attack: seven people indicted, including six for "complicity in terrorist assassination"

The parent of student Brahim Chnina and the sulphurous Islamist Abdelhakim Sefrioui were indicted Wednesday for "complicity in terrorist assassination" in the investigation into the death of teacher Samuel Paty in the Yvelines, announced the national prosecutor anti-terrorism.

Two friends of the assailant, Naim B. (18) and Azim E. (19), were also indicted on the same charge.

A third close relative, Yussuf C., is being prosecuted for "terrorist association with a view to committing crimes against persons".

All have been remanded in custody except Brahim Chnina, who has however been detained pending a debate on this issue.

The two 14 and 15-year-old college students, accused of having appointed the teacher to the assailant for remuneration, were also indicted for "complicity in murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise", but they were however left free under judicial supervision.

The anti-terrorism prosecution had requested the placement in detention for at least one of the college students, against the advice of the investigating judges.

Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) was beheaded on Friday by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old refugee of Chechen Russian origin, for showing caricatures of Muhammad during two courses in early October on the freedom of expression.

Brahim Chnina, 48, and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 61, are accused of having "named as a target on social networks the teacher of history and geography" by means of a maneuver and a reinterpretation of the facts ", underlined the anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

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A "context of calls for murders"

"There are sponsors who are behind this attack and who are certainly delighted to see that the investigation is focused on peripheral accomplices, who never wanted such a horror", reacted the lawyer of Abdelhakim Sefrioui.

"He had no idea what was going to happen, there was no contact between them, nothing even says that Anzorov saw his video," he said.

According to the lawyer, "the dangerous people, who trained Anzorov, are safe and will train others".

In a message sent on social networks after posting the photo of his victim, Anzorov announced in a hesitant Russian that he had "avenged the prophet", accusing the professor of having "shown him in an insulting manner".

The assassination of Samuel Paty is part of a "context of calls for murders" launched since the republication of the cartoons of Muhammad by

early September, before the opening of the trial of the January 2015 attacks in Paris, stressed the anti-terrorism prosecutor.