Defendants face verdict for actions resulting in beheading

Eight folks accused of complicity within the jihadist assassination of French trainer Samuel Paty should know their destiny following a six-week trial earlier than a Paris courtroom.

Amongst them, the daddy of a schoolgirl whose lie about Paty’s alleged discrimination in opposition to Muslims in school chained the occasions that led to his beheading in a road in October 2020.

Additionally on trial are a Muslim activist who led an internet marketing campaign in opposition to Paty, two childhood mates of the Chechen-born killer Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him purchase weapons, and 4 radicalized males with whom he exchanged messages on social networks.

Anzorov was shot useless by police minutes after killing the 47-year-old historical past and geography trainer exterior his highschool in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, a Paris suburb.

He was excited by claims circulating on-line that, days earlier, Paty had ordered Muslims to depart his class of 13-year-olds earlier than revealing obscene images of the Prophet Muhammad.

In reality, Paty was educating a category on free speech and, earlier than displaying one of many controversial pictures first revealed by Charlie Hebdo journal, he suggested college students to avert their eyes in the event that they feared be offended.

The schoolgirl, named Z. Chnina, wasn’t even in school when it occurred, however she advised her father that she was punished for elevating an objection.

The trial targeted on authorized arguments over whether or not individuals who had no data of the assault – or in some circumstances its perpetrator – may however, by their feedback, be responsible of “affiliation terrorist”.

Summing up in courtroom this week, prosecutors requested jail sentences starting from 18 months suspended to 16 years for the defendants, saying their actions not directly led to the atrocities.

Nonetheless, the prosecution additionally angered members of Paty’s household by refusing to demand most sentences and downgrading the characterization of among the crimes charged.

In the course of the trial, the courtroom heard the primary public testimony from the woman, Z. Chnina, now 17 years previous.

A yr in the past, she was given a brief suspended sentence for defamation by a juvenile courtroom, whose hearings occurred behind closed doorways.

“I want to apologize to everybody [Paty family] as a result of with out my lies, they wouldn’t be right here immediately,” she stated, sobbing.

“And I wish to apologize to my father as a result of when he made the video, it was partly due to my mendacity.”

Within the days following Paty’s freedom of expression course, his father Brahim Chnina made movies denouncing the trainer by identify. He additionally referred to as on activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui to unfold the marketing campaign on his social networks.

Chnina and Sefrioui by no means referred to as for motion in opposition to Paty and so they had been unaware of Anzorov’s existence till the homicide occurred.

However for the prosecution, they had been however responsible of “terrorist affiliation”, as a result of they knew the doable penalties of their marketing campaign.

“Nobody stated they wished Samuel Paty useless, however by lighting 1,000 digital detonators, they knew that certainly one of them would result in jihadist violence in opposition to the trainer,” in line with the prosecution.

The context of October 2020 was that of elevated tensions linked to jihadist violence, after Charlie Hebdo republished among the controversial caricatures of Mohammed. 5 years earlier, a lot of the journal’s employees had been murdered throughout an armed jihadist assault of their Paris places of work.

In courtroom this week, the longest jail sentences had been sought in opposition to Anzorov’s two mates who accompanied him when he purchased a knife and a pretend weapon. Certainly one of them additionally drove Anzorov to high school on the afternoon of the assault.

None of those defendants are radicalized Muslims and it was not established in courtroom that they had been conscious of Anzorov’s plans.

For this reason the prosecution reclassified the costs in opposition to them as “complicity in a terrorist assault”, punishable by life imprisonment.

The opposite 4 accused are folks with whom Anzorov conversed on social networks, once more with out him ever revealing his intention to kill Paty.

Certainly one of them, Priscilla Mangel, a convert to Islam, admitted to creating “provocative” remarks on-line in regards to the Paty affair, however stated she would by no means have made them if she had recognized in regards to the Anzorov’s intentions.

“For me, it was a innocent dialogue with an nameless particular person.”

For protection legal professionals, not one of the accused would have been topic to prison prosecution for his or her feedback, with out Paty’s homicide.

The principle authorized query going through the courtroom is subsequently whether or not the remarks can grow to be unlawful based mostly on what follows.