In the first of two trials in a case that shocked France, six youths were put on trial in Paris on Monday for their roles in the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty.
A judicial source told AFP that the suspects entered the juvenile court behind closed doors with their coats pulled over their faces.
The 47-year-old Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Paris suburbia history and geography teacher was stabbed, then beheaded, close to his secondary school.
Police shot and killed his attacker, 18-year-old Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Chechen refugee, on the spot.
After social media posts claimed that Paty’s teacher had shown him cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the young radicalized Islamist killed him.
Since blasphemy is tolerated in France and there is a long tradition of religious figure caricatures, Paty had used the magazine to explore the country’s free speech rules during an ethics lesson.
After Charlie Hebdo republished the caricatures, he was killed a few weeks later. Twelve people were slain by Islamic gunmen who broke into the magazine’s office in 2015, the year the photos were launched.
In Arras, northern France, last month, a young, radicalized Islamist killed another teacher, Dominique Bernard.
As with Anzorov, Mohammed Moguchkov, the man suspected of killing Bernard, was a native of the mostly Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia.
“The minors’ role” –
Held on charges of criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence, five of the teenagers on trial were 14 or 15 years old when Paty was killed.
They contend that in exchange for money, they identified Paty to the murderer while keeping an eye out for him.
When a sixth adolescent, who was thirteen at the time, allegedly stated that Paty had ordered Muslim pupils to identify themselves and leave the classroom before he exhibited the cartoons, she was lying and making up accusations.
Eight adults who are also involved in the case will be on trial in late 2024.
According to Virginie Le Roy, a lawyer who represents Paty’s parents and one of his sisters, the adolescents’ trial is important to Paty’s family.
According to her, “the minors’ role was fundamental in the series of events that led to his assassination.”
The adolescents testified during interrogation that they never believed Paty would be “roughed up,” “humiliated,” or “flagged up on social media,” but that at most was how they thought it would end.
They could spend 2.5 years in prison as high school students right now.
Dylan Slama, the attorney for one of the defendants, stated, “It is complicated.”
“For the rest of his life, he will be connected to this.”
December 8 is when the trial is supposed to end.
