The assassination of history and geography professor Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020 will be the subject of two trials. The anti-terrorism magistrates ordered this Tuesday, May 16, trials at the assizes for eight adults and before the juvenile court for six adolescents.
On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the Yvelines, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. This radicalized Islamist was shot dead by the police. The 18-year-old reproached the professor for having shown in class, during a lesson on freedom of expression, caricatures of Muhammad.
For this act which had caused a huge stir in France and abroad, in accordance with the requisitions of the anti-terrorist prosecution (Pnat), the investigating magistrates ask that the heaviest offence, complicity in terrorist assassination, be retained for two friends of Abdoullakh Anzorov, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud. They had accompanied him to buy weapons, and the second had also transported him to the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
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 Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, authors of videos on social networks which had stirred up the controversy, had been indicted for complicity in assassination, just like Priscilla Mangel, a convert to Islam linked on Twitter with the assassin the days preceding the attack.
For these three people, as for three other adults implicated to varying degrees, the judges are asking for a trial at the assizes, but for a less serious offense, criminal terrorist association. ” Even if we welcome that the qualification of complicity has been abandoned, we welcome with great disappointment » the dismissal of Abdelhakim Sefrioui for terrorist conspiracy, which « makes no legal sense », estimated his lawyers, Elise Arfi, Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Sefen Guez Guez. They “ intend to appeal the order. »
To date, six of the eight adults involved in the case are still in pre-trial detention.
The magistrates also order 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 near the college and of having appointed Samuel Paty to the assailant. Initially targeted for the crime of complicity in terrorist assassination, they will have to appear for the offense of criminal association with a view to preparing aggravated violence. This requalification is much more appropriate with regard to the elements of the file “, welcomed the lawyer Antoine Ory, who defends a teenager.
The magistrates also order the appearance of the daughter of Brahim Chnina before the juvenile court for slanderous denunciation.
Lawyers for the family of Samuel Paty did not react immediately. Part of the family filed a complaint targeting 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.
► To read also: France: tributes to Samuel Paty two years after his assassination
(With AFP)