The event had stunned France, and shocked the world. The ination of Professor Samuel Paty will ultimately be the subject of two trials. Anti-terrorism magistrates ordered, on Tuesday, trials at the izes for eight adults and before the juvenile court for six teenagers.
On October 16, 2020, the 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. This radicalized Islamist was shot dead by the police.
The 18-year-old accused the teacher of having shown in cl, during a lesson on freedom of expression, caricatures of Muhammad. In an audio message in Russian, he claimed responsibility for his action, congratulating himself on having “avenge the Prophet”.
This attack takes place in a particular context, “while the trial of the January 2015 attacks was taking place, particularly within the premises of Charlie Hebdo […] and in the context of very high terrorist threats in France”, underline the investigating judges in the indictment order. Two other attacks took place during this period, at the beginning of September in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and at the end of October at the basilica of Nice.
” Revenge “
For the magistrates, Abdoullakh “Anzorov, already rooted in violence from a young age with regard to the procedures highlighted, was strongly radicalized in the summer of 2020”. At the time of his act, the ailant was “driven by the conviction” that Samuel Paty had “imposed on the sight of his young students […] at least one of the caricatures of the Prophet published by the Charlie Hebdo newspaper”.
For the judges, the “motive” of the ailant was thus “revenge for an offense which he considered to have been done to his Prophet, which deserved a death sentence for the professor, desired by his god and his religion”.
For this act which had caused a huge stir in France and abroad, the investigating magistrates ask that the heaviest offence, complicity in terrorist ination, be retained for two friends of Anzorov, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud , who had accompanied him to buy weapons. The second had also transported it to the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
Criminal Terrorist Conspiracy
Brahim Chnina, father of the schoolgirl at the origin of the controversy for having lied about the content of a course which she had not attended, and the sulphurous Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, authors of videos on social networks which had stirred up the controversy, had been indicted for complicity in ination, just like Priscilla Mangel, a convert to Islam linked on Twitter with the in the days preceding the attack.
For these three people, as for three other adults implicated to varying degrees, the anti-terrorism judges are asking for a trial at the izes but for a less serious offense, criminal terrorist criminal ociation, according to the order.
Requalification
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 around the college and of having appointed Samuel Paty to the ‘ailant. They will have to appear for ociation of criminals in order to prepare aggravated violence, an offense, whereas they were initially also targeted by the offense of complicity in terrorist ination.
These magistrates also order that the daughter of Brahim Chnina also appear before the juvenile court, for slanderous denunciation. In their order, the magistrates point out that the judicial inquiry “stumbled on the deletion and erasure by all of the respondents of their data and social network applications […] immediately after the commission of the facts”. To date, six of the eight adults involved in the case are still in pre-trial detention.
Ongoing investigation
Prior to his ination, Professor had felt “a deep concern […] in front of the extent and the aggressiveness of the controversy “which aimed at him, according to a summary report at the end of the investigation. Contacted, the lawyers for the family of Samuel Paty did not react immediately.
Part of the family filed a complaint against the Ministries of the Interior and National Education, accused of not having taken sufficient account of the danger. A separate investigation has been open in Paris since April 2022.
With AFP