There will be 14 of them who will have to answer for their actions before the courts. The Paris Court of Appeal on Wednesday validated the trials ordered before the special assizes for eight adults and before the children’s court for six adolescents, all implicated in the investigation into the 2020 assassination of Professor Samuel Paty.
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 radicalized Islamist was shot dead immediately by the police.
Three of the main accused, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, Naïm Boudaoud and Brahim Chnina had appealed against the order of the anti-terrorism magistrates signed in mid-May, but the last had finally withdrawn his appeal, while the National Anti-terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) had appeals for all those indicted, for procedural reasons. In its decision rendered on Wednesday, the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed “in all its provisions” the order issued by the investigating judges, according to the judicial source.
Five teenagers sent to juvenile court
Eight adults will therefore be judged by the specially composed assize court. In the front row: Abdoullakh Anzorov’s two friends, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud, suspected of having had precise knowledge of Anzorov’s terrorist project, and who will appear for complicity in terrorist assassination, the most serious 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, and the Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, authors of videos on social networks which had fueled the controversy, will be tried for criminal terrorist association.
Five teenagers will be tried before the children’s court for criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing aggravated violence, for having carried out surveillance near the school and for having named the teacher as the murderer.