PARIS: Six teenagers are set to go on trial in Paris for their involvement in the shocking 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, marking the beginning of two trials linked to the case that deeply unsettled France.
Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and beheaded near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. The assailant, 18-year-old ethnic Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov, was promptly shot dead by police.
The act was committed after social media messages alleged that Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in his class.
The trial will focus on five adolescents, aged 14 or 15 at the time of the murder, who will be judged behind closed doors in juvenile court for criminal conspiracy with the intent to cause violence. They are accused of scouting for Paty and identifying him for the killer in exchange for money. A sixth teenager, aged 13 at the time, faces charges of false accusation for wrongly claiming that Paty had asked Muslim students to identify themselves and leave the classroom before showing the cartoons.
Paty’s family considers the trial of the teenagers pivotal, given their alleged crucial role in the events leading to his assassination. Virginie Le Roy, a lawyer representing Paty’s parents and one of his sisters, emphasized the fundamental role played by the minors in the sequence of events.
During questioning, the teenagers asserted that they believed, at most, Paty would be “flagged up on social media,” “humiliated,” or perhaps “roughed up,” never anticipating that it would escalate to murder. Now high school pupils, they face a potential two-and-a-half years in prison.
The trial is scheduled to run until December 8.
