Even if it has not been demonstrated that they wanted the fatal outcome, “they prepared the conditions for committing a terrorist act”, estimated the magistrates of the Special Assize Court of Paris at subject of Brahim Chnina and Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who initiated the hate campaign on social networks leading to the assassination of Samuel Paty. On December 20, the father of the adolescent author of the initial lie told against the professor and the Islamist preacher were found guilty of terrorist conspiracy and respectively sentenced to 13 and 15 years of criminal imprisonment.
The six other people involved, to varying degrees, in the attack were also found guilty and received sentences ranging from three years in prison to 16 years in prison. Before announcing the verdict, the president of the court, Franck Zientara, claimed to have taken into account “the exceptional seriousness of the facts regarding the assassination of a teacher leaving (a) college by decapitation by means of a bladed weapon. Before emphasizing that “these absolutely barbaric facts constitute an irremediable attack on the values of the Republic and secularism”.
The historian Valérie Igounet, author with Guy Le Besnerais, of the graphic novel Black Pencil. Samuel Paty, story of a teacher (StudioFact editions, 2023), looks back on these seven weeks of debate at the end of which the unprecedented verdict rendered by the Court will serve as jurisprudence.
L’Express: The weight of the rumor has been at the center of the debates before the Special Assize Court of Paris over the past seven weeks. Isn’t the great merit of this trial to have shed light on the cascade of lies uttered against Samuel Paty?
Valérie Igounet : Certainly. The founding lie of this whole affair is that of Z. Chnina, this schoolgirl who explains to her father that she attended a moral and civic education course taught by Samuel Paty when in reality she was not there. The teenager made her family believe that the teacher had targeted Muslim students by asking them to leave under the pretext that he was about to show caricatures of Mohammed and claimed discrimination against them. “Target”, “caricature”, “discrimination”… So many keywords which will be taken up by his father Brahim Chnina and which will run on repeat on social networks for several days. The same evening, the latter points the finger at Samuel Paty, names him and designates the Bois d’Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine where he teaches. He was quickly joined by Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a professional Islamist propagandist.
From there, the wave will continue to grow. Some parents will believe this rumor, like many students and even some teachers. In our book Black Pencil, the rumor is symbolized by black drops which accumulate and which lead to a double page, this time completely black symbolizing the death of Samuel Paty. “It represents Samuel Paty who closes his eyes forever,” very rightly commented one of the students we met, with my co-author Guy Le Besnerais, as part of one of our interventions in middle schools.
You have heard a lot of testimony during this trial. What were the most memorable for you?
There are a lot of them but I think first of all of the family of Samuel Paty, and in particular of his mother Bernadette who expected from justice that these lies be recognized and that the convictions reflect the facts. The professor’s ex-partner, his two sisters Gaëlle and Mickaëlle insisted on this: even if the killer Abdoullakh Anzorov is the murderer in the literal sense of the term, the other actors having participated to varying degrees in this fatal spiral had to answer for their actions and be judged accordingly. If some of the accused adopted a victim attitude, Z. Chnina took responsibility for the initial lie she had uttered, even going so far as to say that it was she who should have been in the box in their place.
“Tonight, it was the Republic that won”
The other testimony that really struck me was that of Ismaïl Gamaev, the first member of the “jihadosphere” to have been questioned on the merits, Tuesday December 10, and accused of “terrorist criminal association” for having exchanged at length with another co-accused, Louqmane Ingar, and with Abdoullakh Anzorov through a Snapchat discussion group called “medical students”. But he is the only one to have admitted his guilt. The 22-year-old young man told the bar of his sudden radicalization in the middle of the Covid crisis during which he was prey to great loneliness, but also this addiction to social networks to which he devoted more than 12 hours a day. A terrain, again, conducive to all rumors, disinformation and deadly accusations.
Wasn’t the other interest of this trial to reestablish the truth about the man and the professor who was Samuel Paty?
I think that, well before the trial, the general public was able to form a fairly accurate image of Samuel Paty through the numerous articles, books or television or radio programs which were devoted to him. With Guy Le Besnerais, we also endeavored to describe the teacher that Samuel Paty was without doing so in the form of a hagiography. There was absolutely no question of it, firstly because he was a discreet man who did not like to put himself forward.
All the testimonies that I was able to collect say to what extent he was a great teacher but also a unique professional who was keen to open his students to the outside world, for example by organizing visits to the Institut du Monde Arab, and which was committed to the transmission of values such as those of secularism or freedom of expression. He organized a lot of debates in class and was very careful with his students. Paradoxically, this is what backfired when he asked those who wanted to come out while he showed the caricatures as part of his course on freedom of expression. Z. Chnina, excluded from her school for two days for reasons of indiscipline, used this pretext to justify her sending her back to her parents. On Friday, justice was done, the truth was restored for the civil party. “Tonight, the Republic won,” said one of the family’s lawyers.
The Court found the perpetrators of the online campaign against the history professor guilty of criminal terrorist associations. Doesn’t this unprecedented court decision also have an educational interest?
Of course, the verdict not only demonstrated the weight of rumor but also the impact of certain words which can go as far as murder. This is the message we try to convey when we go to colleges with this feeling of sowing little stones, just like the teachers who were waiting for the outcome of the trial. Some of the students we meet have experienced incidents of harassment and we all know that this type of incident can lead very far, sometimes even to suicide. This is why it is important to think twice before posting certain messages or images which can very quickly be multiplied and reach thousands of people with no possibility of going back. In any case, it’s a subject that fascinates the teenagers we meet. Most of the time the questions pile up. It is very rare that we deal with a silent class.
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