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Since Monday, November 4, 2024, seven men and one woman have been appearing before the Special Assize Court of Paris in the trial concerning the murder of Samuel Paty. The French secondary school teacher was stabbed and decapitated on October 16, 2020, near his workplace in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
He was targeted by Abdullah Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian from Chechnya, who was subsequently neutralized by police. In search of a target a month before the attack, Anzorov contacted Moroccan Brahim Chnina, the father of a student who claimed to have been removed from the classroom by the teacher, despite actually being absent that day.
Alongside Chnina, French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui has been charged with «terrorist criminal organization» for leading a campaign against the 47-year-old teacher shortly before the incident. Facing up to 30 years in prison, both men accused Paty of showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civics lesson. They also produced several videos posted on social media that stirred up controversy.
At the heart of the campaign against him, Samuel Paty had warned about the risks he faced shortly before his assassination. Given the magnitude of the backlash, he expressed increasing concern for his safety. The deceased's family has since filed legal action against the Ministries of the Interior and Education for «failure to assist a person in danger» and «failure to prevent a crime». This case is now in the hands of the examining magistrate, as reported by Radio France.
The «chronicle of a killing»
According to the prosecution, Brahim Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui «had no knowledge» of Anzorov's plans. However, their concerted actions «contributed to the crime». For the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat), this sequence of events resembles a «chronicle of a killing». Sefrioui's defense team, arguing that their client had no direct contact with the assailant, intends to seek acquittal.
In April 2023, a 541-page indictment issued by two magistrates from the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office highlighted that this act was the result of a «chain of causal factors that were not mutually exclusive». «Although carried out solely by Abdoullakh Anzorov, this crime is, in fact, the outcome of a succession of criminally incriminating behaviors», they noted. In this case, the Pnat has ordered that two of Anzorov's friends be charged with complicity in a terrorist assassination, which could result in life imprisonment in the ongoing trial.
Brahim Chnina's daughter initiated the accusation against the teacher for allegedly showing the controversial cartoons and appeared before a juvenile court last year on charges of slanderous denunciation. The schoolgirl admitted that she had not attended the class and had lied, claiming that Samuel Paty had asked Muslim students to step forward and leave the classroom before displaying the images in question.
