On Monday, six teenagers went on trial in Paris for their alleged involvement in the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty—the initial proceedings in a case that deeply disturbed France.
Upon arriving at the closed-doors juvenile court, the suspects draped their coats over their faces, as reported by a judicial source to AFP.
Stabbed and beheaded, the 47-year-old history and geography teacher met a tragic end near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
The attacker, 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov, met his end as police shot him dead at the scene.
The murder of Paty occurred after messages circulated on social media, suggesting that the teacher had displayed cartoons of Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, with the young radicalized Islamist being the perpetrator.
Paty, in his ethics class, had integrated the magazine to explore the landscape of free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is permitted, and cartoons ridiculing religious figures have a longstanding tradition.
His killing occurred shortly after Charlie Hebdo revisited the cartoons, recalling the tragic events of 2015 when the magazine’s office was attacked by Islamic gunmen, resulting in the deaths of 12 people.
Tragically, in Arras, northern France, last month, another teacher, Dominique Bernard, was killed by a young radicalized Islamist.
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Much like Anzorov, Mohammed Moguchkov, the suspected killer of Bernard, also had ties to Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region.
Five adolescents, aged 14 or 15 at the time of Paty’s murder, are being tried for criminal conspiracy with the aim of inciting violence.
The sixth teenager, who was 13 at the time, is accused of false allegations for incorrectly asserting that Paty had asked Muslim students to identify themselves and exit the classroom before revealing the cartoons.
The charges against them include actively searching for Paty and divulging his identity to the killer in return for monetary gain.
Scheduled for late 2024, a trial awaits the eight adults also implicated in the case.
The trial of the teenagers is viewed as crucial by Paty’s family, as highlighted by Virginie Le Roy, the lawyer representing his parents and one of his sisters.
‘The role of the minors was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his assassination,’ she said.
During questioning, the teenagers swore that at most they thought Paty would be “flagged up on social media”, “humiliated” or maybe “roughed up” but they never imagined ‘it would go as far as murder’.
They now are high school pupils and risk two-and-a-half years in prison.
‘It is complicated,’ said Dylan Slama, the lawyer for one of the accused.
‘He will be associated with this for the rest of his life.’
The trial is expected to last until December 8.