France’s anti-terrorism court sentenced eight people on Friday for their involvement in the decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty outside his school near Paris four years ago, a horrible death that shocked the country.
Paty, 47, was killed by an Islamic extremist outside his school on October 16, 2020, days after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The attacker, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot dead by the police.
Those on trial on terrorism charges in a special court in Paris since late November were accused, in some cases, of aiding the perpetrator and, in others, of organizing an online hate campaign before the murder took place. .
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
The 540-seat courtroom was packed for the verdict, which marked the final chapter of Paty’s trial. Intense surveillance was maintained and more than 50 police officers monitored the process.
Sitting in the front row was Paty’s 9-year-old son, accompanied by family members. As the chief judge, Franck Zientara, handed down sentences one after another, emotions in the courtroom ran high.
“I am moved and relieved,” said Gaëlle Paty, Samuel Paty’s sister, as she addressed a crowd of journalists after the verdict. “Hearing the word ‘guilty,’ that’s what I needed.”
“I spent this week listening to a lot of rewrites of what happened, and it was hard to hear, but now the judge has declared what really happened, and it feels good,” he added, his voice breaking as tears filled his eyes.
The families of the accused reacted with gasps, cries, screams and ironic applause, prompting the judge to pause several times and ask for silence.
“They lied about my brother,” a relative shouted. Another woman, sobbing, exclaimed, “They took my baby away from me,” before being escorted away by police officers.
The seven-judge panel met or exceeded most of the terms requested by prosecutors, citing “the exceptional seriousness of the facts.”
Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, friends of the attacker, were found guilty of complicity in the murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison each. Neither man can be paroled for two-thirds of his sentence, about 10 years. Boudaoud was accused of taking the attacker to the school, while Epsirkhanov helped him get weapons.
Brahim Chnina, 52, the Muslim father of the schoolgirl whose lies sparked the events that led to Paty’s death, was sentenced to 13 years for association with a terrorist enterprise. Prosecutors had asked for 10 years for him.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Muslim preacher, was sentenced to 15 years for organizing an online hate campaign against Paty.
The shocking death of the 47-year-old teacher left an indelible mark on France, with several schools now bearing his name.
The trial had begun at the end of November. The defendants were accused of assisting a perpetrator or organizing an online hate campaign before the murder.
At the time of the attack, there were protests in many Muslim countries and online calls for violence against France and the satirist French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper had republished its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad a few weeks before Paty’s death to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attacks on its newsroom by Islamic extremists.
The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who considered them sacrilegious. But the consequences of Paty’s murder reinforced the French state’s commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life.
Chnina’s daughter, who was 13 at the time, claimed that she had been excluded from Paty’s class when he showed the cartoons on October 5, 2020.
Chnina sent a series of messages to her contacts denouncing Paty, saying that “this sick man” needed to be fired, along with the management of the school in the Paris suburb of Conflans Saint-Honorine. In reality, Chnina’s daughter had lied to her and had never attended the lesson in question.
Paty was teaching a class ordered by the Ministry of National Education on freedom of expression. In this context, he talked about the cartoons and said that students who did not want to see them could temporarily leave the classroom.
An online campaign against Paty snowballed, and 11 days after the lesson, Anzorov attacked the teacher with a knife as she walked home and showed the teacher’s head in a social media post. Police later shot Anzorov dead as he advanced toward them armed.
Chnina’s daughter was tried last year in juvenile court and was given an 18-month suspended sentence. Four other students from Paty’s school were convicted of participation and received suspended sentences; a fifth, who pointed Paty to Anzorov in exchange for money, received a 6-month sentence with an electronic bracelet.
Sefrioui, the accused preacher, had presented himself as spokesman for the imams of France, although he had been removed from that position. He had filmed a video in front of the school with the student’s father. He referred to the teacher several times as a “bully” and tried to pressure the school administration through social media.
Some of the defendants expressed regret and asserted their innocence on the eve of the verdict. They did not convince Paty’s family.
“It’s something that really shocks the family,” said lawyer Virginie Le Roy before the verdict was announced. “It seems that those in the box are not at all willing to admit any responsibility.”
“Apologies are useless, they will not bring Samuel back, but explanations are precious to us,” Le Roy said. “We have not had many explanations of the events.”
