Defendants face verdict over actions that led to beheading

Eight people accused of instigating the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty have been found guilty in a six-week trial at a Paris court.

They include the father of a girl whose lie about Paty’s racism in class led to her beheading in the street in October 2020.

Also on trial are a Muslim militant who led an online campaign against Paty, two young friends of Chechen-born killer Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him obtain weapons, and four radicalized men who shared messages on social media.

Anzorov was gunned down minutes after killing the 47-year-old geography teacher outside his high school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

He was outraged by claims on the internet that days earlier Paty had ordered Muslims to leave his 13-year-old classroom before revealing obscene pictures of the prophet Muhammad.

Instead, Paty was giving a lecture on freedom of expression, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised schoolchildren not to look in their eyes for fear of being offended.

The school girl, named Z. Chnina, had not even come to class when this happened, but she told her father that she was punished for protesting.

The case is centered on legal debate over whether people who had no knowledge of the attack – or in some cases even the perpetrator – can be held guilty of “gang”.

In court briefs this week, prosecutors asked for prison terms of 18 months and 16 years for the defendants, saying their actions led to the abuse.

However, the prosecutor also angered Paty’s family by refusing to press for more sentences, and by downgrading the merits of some of the accused.

During the trial, the court heard the first public testimony from the girl, Z. Chnina, who is now 17 years old.

A year ago he was given a summary suspended sentence because of a complaint by the juvenile court, whose trial was held behind closed doors.

“I want to apologize to all of you [Paty family] because if it wasn’t for my lies, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said with a sigh.

“And I want to apologize to my father because when he made the video it was probably because of my lie.”

In the days following Paty’s free speech class, her father Brahim Chnina made videos criticizing the teacher by name. He also enlisted the help of activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui to spread the campaign through his website.

Chnina and Sefrioui never requested action against Paty, and were unaware of Anzorov’s existence until after the murder.

But for the critics they were guilty of “criminal gang”, because they knew the results of their campaign.

“No one is saying that they wanted the death of Samuel Paty, but by lighting 1,000 digital fuses they knew that one of them would trigger jihadist attacks against the teacher,” according to the hacker’s statement.

What happened in October 2020 was an escalation of jihadist violence, after Charlie Hebdo published controversial cartoons of Muhammad. Five years earlier, most of the magazine’s staff were killed in a jihadist attack on their Paris office.

This week in court the longest prison term was requested for two friends of Anzorov who accompanied him when he bought a fake knife and gun. One of them also drove Anzorov to school on the day of the attack.

None of the defendants is a practicing Muslim, and it was not established in court that they knew about Anzorov’s plans.

That’s why prosecutors downgraded the charge from “participating in a crime” that carries a life sentence.

The other four accused are people Anzorov chats with, without him revealing his intention to kill Paty.

One of these, a convert to Islam named Priscilla Mangel, admitted that she made “provocative” comments online about Paty but said she would not have made them if she had known Anzorov’s intentions.

“To me this was an anodyne conversation with an unknown person.”

For defense lawyers, none of the accused would have been charged for what they said, had it not been for Paty’s murder.

So the main legal question facing the court is whether speech can be illegal based on what follows.