The first trial into the assassination of Samuel Paty opens this Monday, November 27. Six minors involved in the tragedy are on trial and risk up to two and a half years of imprisonment.
This is the first trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty. Six minors are on trial at the Paris children’s court from Monday November 27 until December 8 for their involvement in the case of the death of the history geography teacher which occurred on October 16, 2020. All are former students of the middle school of Bois d’Aulne de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in Yvelines, where Samuel Paty taught. Five of them are appearing for “criminal association with a view to preparing aggravated violence” and the sixth defendant is on trial for “slanderous denunciation”.
Currently at large, the six minors are placed under judicial supervision. They risk up to two and a half years of imprisonment at the end of the trial which is being held behind closed doors, due to the age of the defendants at the time of the assassination of Samuel Paty.
A teenager’s lie at the origin of the tragedy
Aged 13 to 15 at the time of the events, the six minors were in one way or another involved in the assassination of Samuel Paty. The youngest of the defendants is the teenager at the origin of the cycle of violence which took place around the teacher until the terrorist attack. Tried for “slanderous denunciation”, she had accused the teacher of having broadcast “obscene caricatures” of the Prophet Mohammed in class, after having asked the Muslim students to report themselves and leave the class so as not to be shocked. The investigation revealed that it was a lie and that the student had not attended the course she described because she was expelled from the establishment for two days.
The teenager had peddled this lie to her father, Brahim Chnina, who had initiated a campaign of denigration and violence against the professor on social networks. A campaign in which the Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui had joined and which had reached Abdoullakh Anzorov, the attacker of Samuel Paty.
Me Mbeko Tabula, lawyer for the teenager, now 16 years old, assured that his client “could not have imagined that things would degenerate in this way”. “The tragedy of the beheading of Samuel Paty continues to haunt her. She is rebuilding herself and preparing to face a judgment with considerable stakes,” he added.
The role of adolescents in the assassination of Samuel Paty
As for the five other defendants, they had been approached by Samuel Paty’s assailant on the day of the attack. One of them, aged 14, arrested by Abdoullakh Anzorov, agreed to appoint him the teacher in exchange for €300. The teenager had also called the minor author of the accusations against Samuel Paty to confirm the alleged course of the course on caricatures of Mohammed, at the request of the attacker. During the various hearings, the defendant admitted to having understood that the author of the attack wanted to “hit or kill” the teacher: “I suspected that he was going to do something really stupid, because we don’t propose a big mistake. amount of money like that.” But he then said he believed the man “was going to fight [contre Samuel Paty] […] Deep down, I didn’t believe he was going to kill him.”
Having recovered the money, the teenager then asked four of his friends, the co-defendants, to help him keep watch alongside the assailant while waiting for Samuel Paty to leave school. “The teacher is over there!” they had informed the assailant once the teacher was in sight, only a few minutes before the assassination. During their custody, they reported the statements of the attacker who said he wanted to “force” the teacher to “apologize for what he did and humiliate him. […] He didn’t tell us that he wanted to kill him.” However, they admitted to having had doubts and to having “imagined things, that he was going to kill him or kidnap him.”
The Ministry of Education is a civil party to the trial
The Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, announced in a press release the constitution of his ministry as a civil party in the first trial of the assassination of Samuel Paty, on November 27, shortly before the opening of the trial. “This seems essential to me to strongly reaffirm our desire to defend the values of the Republic that Samuel Paty embodied. But also, to express my unwavering support for the entire teaching staff, deeply wounded by the barbaric assassination of their colleague” he added.
A dozen professors, former colleagues of Samuel Paty, also joined as civil parties to be able to attend the trial of the six minors. A teacher who was part of this small group explained on the microphone of franceinfo want to understand the students’ actions: “What made them stay in front of the school, accept money from a stranger to show a teacher they knew? How can we be led to do something so horrible?” The professor also hopes to observe an awareness among the defendants: “Have they become aware of the seriousness of their actions? There is anger, but no desire for revenge.”
After the trial of the six minors, another must open at the Assizes, from November 12 to December 20, 2024 to judge eight adults, including the father of the teenage defendant, Brahim Chnina, and the Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui.