The trial of eight adults, accused of being involved in the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty by a young jihadist in 2020, will be held before the Special Assize Court of Paris at the end of 2024, from November 12 to December 20, AFP learned on Friday from a judicial source.
In this case which caused immense excitement in France and abroad, six minors also involved will also be tried before the children’s court from the end of November this year.
Complicity in terrorist assassination
Adults will appear before the specially composed assize court. In the front row: the two friends of the attacker Abdoullakh Anzorov – who was killed by the police -, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud, suspected of having had precise knowledge of Anzorov’s terrorist project, and who will answer for complicity in Terrorist assassination, the heaviest offense.
These two residents of Evreux (Eure) had accompanied him to buy weapons, and Naïm Boudaoud had also transported him to the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine college on the day of the events.
Brahim Chnina, father of the schoolgirl at the origin of the controversy over lessons taught by Samuel Paty and his presentation of caricatures of Mohammed, and the Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, author of videos on social networks which had drawn attention to the professor, will for their part be tried for criminal terrorist association.
Four adults tried for criminal conspiracy
Four other adults will also be tried for criminal terrorist association: Priscilla Mangel, a woman converted to Islam linked on Twitter with the assassin in the days preceding the attack, and three other men implicated to varying degrees.
On October 16, 2020, the 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin. This 18-year-old radicalized Islamist was killed immediately by the police.
Abdoullakh Anzorov criticized the professor for having shown caricatures of Mohammed in class, during a course on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he took responsibility for his action, congratulating himself on having “avenged the Prophet”.
The eight minors tried behind closed doors at the end of 2023
The anti-terrorism magistrates had estimated in their indictment order that his “motive” was “revenge for an offense that he considered to have been done to his Prophet, which deserved a death sentence for the professor, desired by his god and his religion.”
The six minors involved in the case will be judged soon, behind closed doors, from November 27 to December 8, 2023 by the children’s court. Five of them will appear for conspiracy to commit aggravated violence. Brahim Chnina’s daughter will be tried for slanderous denunciation.