Murder of Samuel Paty: eight adults and six teenagers sent to trial

Samuel Paty, a professor of history and geography, was murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a course on freedom of expression, October 16, 2020. AP - Lewis Joly

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The murder of history and geography professor Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020, will be the subject of two trials. Anti-terrorist magistrates ordered trials on Tuesday, May 16, for eight adults and before the juvenile court for six teenagers.

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On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and beheaded near his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Yvelines, by Abdullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. This radicalized Islamist had been shot dead in the wake by the police. The 18-year-old accused the teacher of showing caricatures of Mohammed in class during a class on freedom of expression.

For this act, which had caused a great stir in France and abroad, in accordance with the requisitions of the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office (Pnat), the investigating magistrates requested that the heaviest offence, complicity in terrorist murder, be retained for two friends of Abdullakh Anzorov, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud. They had accompanied him to buy weapons, and the second had also transported him to the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Brahim Chnina, father of the schoolgirl at the origin of the controversy for lying about the content of a course she had not attended, and the Islamist militant Abdelhakim Sefrioui, authors of videos on social networks that had stirred up the controversy, had been indicted for complicity in murder, as well as Priscilla Mangel, a convert to Islam linked on Twitter with the assassin in the days before the attack.

For these three persons, as for three other adults implicated to varying degrees, the judges request a trial at the assizes, but for a lesser offense, criminal terrorist criminal association. "Even if we welcome that the qualification of complicity has been abandoned, we welcome with great disappointment" the dismissal of Abdelhakim Sefrioui for terrorist criminal association, which "makes no legal sense," said his lawyers, Elise Arfi, Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Sefen Guez Guez. They "intend to appeal the order.

To date, six of the eight adults involved in the case remain in pre-trial detention.

The magistrates also ordered a separate trial before the juvenile court for five teenagers, aged 14 and 15 at the time of the events, accused in particular of having carried out surveillance near the college and having designated Samuel Paty to the assailant. Initially targeted for the crime of complicity in terrorist murder, they will have to appear for the offence of criminal association with a view to preparing aggravated violence. This requalification "is much more appropriate in view of the elements of the file," said lawyer Antoine Ory, who defends a teenager.

The magistrates also ordered Brahim Chnina's daughter to appear before the juvenile court for slanderous denunciation.

Lawyers for Samuel Paty's family did not immediately react. Part of the family filed a complaint against the Ministries of the Interior and National Education, accused of not having sufficiently taken into account the danger. A separate investigation has been open in Paris since April 2022.

► Read also: France: tributes to Samuel Paty two years after his assassination

(With AFP)

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