Five of the defendants were on trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated violence. A sixth teenager appeared for slanderous denunciation. A second trial, to try eight adults, will take place at the end of 2024.
At the end of a two-week trial, the six former college students tried at the Paris children’s court were sentenced to sentences ranging from 14 months in prison to six months in prison, placed under an electronic bracelet, this Friday 8 December for their involvement in the 2020 assassination of professor Samuel Paty by a young jihadist.
Sentences ordered with regard to “the seriousness of the facts”, their “personality” and “evolution”, and while the offenses are “perfectly established”, declared the children’s court in its judgment, read in public hearing after two weeks of a closed-door trial.
The president called the teenagers, now aged 16 to 18 years old, to the stand one by one to detail their convictions, which generally complied with the requirements of the anti-terrorism prosecution.
The teenager who named Samuel Paty as the convicted assailant
Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed then beheaded in October 2020 near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin killed in the process by the police. The young 18-year-old radicalized Islamist criticized the professor for showing caricatures of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression.
The teenager, aged 13 at the time of the facts, who was appearing for slanderous denunciation, was sentenced to 18 months in prison with suspended probation. She wrongly claimed that Samuel Paty had asked the Muslim students in the class to signal themselves and leave the class before showing the caricatures of Mohammed. She hadn’t actually attended this class.
The five other defendants, aged 14 and 15, were on trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated violence. The one who had kept watch and designated Samuel Paty as the attacker was sentenced to 24 months in prison, including six months under an electronic bracelet.
The four other young people were sentenced to sentences ranging from 14 months with suspended probation, that is to say accompanied by a series of obligations, in particular to follow education or training and to be followed by professionals of childhood, at 18 months with probationary suspension.
A trial under strict closed doors
This first trial was held strictly behind closed doors due to the young age of the defendants at the time of the events. Only people directly concerned by the case were able to attend the hearing.
The press did not have access to the room, guarded by police officers, and it is forbidden to report, even through the words of lawyers, what was said during the debates, or what the anti-terrorism prosecution requested.
A second trial will be organized at the end of 2024 to try eight adults accused of being involved in the professor’s assassination.