The Paris Special Assize Court convicted and sentenced, Friday December 20, the eight people involved, to varying degrees, in the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty, beheaded by a radical Chechen Islamist on October 16, 2020. Both friends of the assassin of Professor Samuel Paty, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, were found guilty of complicity in assassination and sentenced to 16 years of criminal imprisonment. The verdict was greeted with screams and tears from the family of 22-year-old Naïm Boudaoud.
“Tonight, it is the Republic which has won,” said Thibault de Montbrial, lawyer for Mickaëlle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered professor. The court also declared guilty of terrorist criminal association the two authors of the “hate campaign” which made Samuel Paty a “target”: Brahim Chnina, 52, and the Islamist preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65, sentenced to 13 and 15 years of criminal imprisonment respectively.
“I understood that you did politics, not justice,” Abdelhakim Sefrioui exclaimed from his box, before being curtly interrupted by the president, while the family of Brahim Chnina, very numerous on the public benches, burst into tears and cries of despair. Vincent Brengarth, one of the Islamist preacher’s lawyers, immediately announced that his client was appealing his conviction. Ouadie Elhamamouchi, his other lawyer, said his client was now “a political prisoner”. “I dissociate myself from these comments,” however, qualified the first, showing flaws in the preacher’s defense.
“Justice has been served”
Lawyer for Samuel Paty’s partner and their son, present at the hearing, Francis Szpiner welcomed a “balanced verdict”. Samuel Paty’s son, only 9 years old, understood that “justice has been done for his father”, he added. If the quantum of the sentences is not very different from what the prosecution demanded, the court, chaired by Franck Zientara, chose to maintain the offense of “complicity” for the two friends of Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radical Chechen Islamist 18-year-old, shot dead by police shortly after his act.
The four other defendants, including a woman, belonging to the “jihadosphere” who was in contact with Anzorov on social networks, were also all sentenced to fixed or suspended prison sentences. For two of them (Ismaël Gamaev and Louqmane Ingar), the court found terrorist criminal association. She convicted Priscilla Mangel of inciting terrorism, and Yusuf Cinar of advocating terrorism.
The day before the attack, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov had accompanied Anzorov to Rouen to buy a knife (not the one used to decapitate Samuel Paty) which would be found at the crime scene. At the hearing, Boudaoud and Epsirkhanov repeated that Anzorov had explained to them that this knife was “a gift” for his grandfather. On the day of the attack, October 16, 2020, Boudaoud, the only one who knew how to drive, accompanied the killer to an airsoft gun store then dropped him off near the college where Samuel Paty taught.
“Awareness of radicality”
The two young people “were aware of the radicalism” of Anzorov, and that he “had the desire to attack the physical integrity of a third party”, estimated the court. However, underlined President Zientara, “it has not been demonstrated that (the two young people) were informed of Anzorov’s intention to kill Samuel Paty.” The Pnat magistrates had requested 14 years’ imprisonment with a two-thirds security period against Boudaoud and 16 years’ imprisonment also with a two-thirds security period against Epsirkhanov. However, the court did not retain the two-thirds security period against them.
Brahim Chnina, father of the schoolgirl who lied when accusing the teacher of having discriminated against Muslim students in his class during a lesson on freedom of expression where he presented a caricature of Mohammed, had posted messages to him and a video hostile to the professor from October 7. As for Abdelhakim Sefrioui, founder of the (now dissolved) pro-Hamas association “Collectif Cheikh-Yassine”, he described Samuel Paty as a “thug” in another video. But there is no proof that Anzorov had seen his video, his lawyers emphasized, adding that their client had not met the assassin of Samuel Paty.
“The court considered that Messrs. Chnina and Sefrioui had prepared the conditions for a terrorist act,” said President Zientara.