By Ségolène Le Stradic
Paris: Eight people have gone on trial in Paris in connection with the murder of Samuel Paty, a history teacher whose beheading by an Islamic terrorist in 2020 shocked France and put the nation on edge.
Paty was stabbed and decapitated in October 2020 near his school north-west of Paris by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen descent angered by the teacher’s display of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to illustrate free speech in a civics class.
The portrait of slain teacher Samuel Paty is displayed on the steps of the National Assembly in Paris during a vigil in 2020.Credit: AP
Anzorov, who was shot and killed by police shortly after the violent assault, had learnt about Paty through an online smear campaign. Most of the defendants in the trial that began on Monday are accused of driving that campaign, of encouraging Anzorov’s attack or of glorifying it on social media. They are charged with participating in a criminal terrorist conspiracy and could face up to 30 years in prison.
Two of the defendants – Nabil Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23 – were friends of Anzorov and are accused of helping him procure a knife and two pellet guns for the attack. They could face life in prison if convicted on charges of complicity in the murder.
France was hit by Islamic terror attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed more than 200 people. Paty’s murder heaped more trauma on the country, where secularism and freedom of speech are considered fundamental values, best taught and defended by its public-school teachers.
“A professor was murdered because he was teaching freedom of expression,” Francis Szpiner, a lawyer for some of Paty’s relatives, told reporters at the packed courthouse, calling the attack “a defiance of the Republic.”
Parisian crowds gather in tribute to murdered history teacher Samuel Paty in 2020. Credit: Getty Images
Paty had shown the students caricatures published by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – itself the target of a massacre in 2015 – to illustrate the right to free speech. He became a national hero after his death, while the attack amplified concerns about the threat of Islamic extremism.
After the murder, the government launched a broad crackdown against what Gerald Darmanin, then the interior minister, called “the enemy within” of Islamic extremism. In 2021, it adopted a law to combat that threat. The legislation included a provision inspired by Paty’s death that criminalises the act of publishing someone’s private information online if there is clear intent to put them in harm’s way.
The government also promised to reinforce security in schools. But nearly three years to the day after Paty’s death, another teacher was killed in an eerily similar attack. That teacher, Dominique Bernard, who gave French literature classes at a school in northern France, was killed by a former student of Russian origin who had pledged allegiance to IS and who had expressed hatred of France’s secular values.
The court proceedings are the second trial in connection with the murder of Paty, who was 47 when he died. Six former students at his school were convicted last year for playing a role in the killing. Five were found guilty of helping Anzorov identify and track Paty in exchange for money, though they were not thought to have known that Anzorov intended to kill.
The sixth, a girl, was convicted of making false allegations about the teacher. She had not attended his class but had falsely told her parents he had ordered Muslim students to leave the room when he displayed the caricatures.
Officials did not name those former students, who were minors at the time of the attack. But the girl’s father, Brahim Chnina, 52, is one of the main defendants in the second trial.
He and another defendant, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65, an Islamic activist, are accused of spreading false claims and personal information about Paty online, feeding an online frenzy that ultimately caught the attention of Anzorov, who lived about 80 kilometres away.
Lawyers for some of the defendants accused of fuelling the online smear campaign have argued their clients had never called for his death and had no knowledge of Anzorov’s murderous plot.
Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer for Sefrioui, told reporters Monday that the charges against his client were tied to “political and moral considerations that are unrelated to any actual participation in a terrorist organisation.”
“If you are going to apply the law, an acquittal is necessary,” he said.
But prosecutors say that the context at the time of the attack was key. A month before Paty was killed, Charlie Hebdo had republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. That led to new terrorist threats against France and a knife attack occurred that month near the satirical newspaper’s offices — making it clear to the defendants, prosecutors argued, that targeting Paty online could put the teacher’s life in danger.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.