Eight on trial in France in connection with murder of teacher Samuel Paty

Samuel Paty was attacked and beheaded outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine near Paris in 2020.

Eight people have gone on trial in France charged over their alleged roles in events that led to the murder of a teacher in 2020.

Days after Samuel Paty, 47, showed his pupils the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech, an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin stabbed him repeatedly and beheaded him outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine near Paris.

Abdoullakh Anzorov, who had requested asylum in France, was killed by police shortly after he murdered Paty.

Seven men and one woman appeared in court on Monday for a trial that is set to last until December. Three of them are under judicial supervision and are being tried for participation in a “criminal terrorist act” which is punishable by 30 years in jail.

They include Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan. He is the father of a schoolgirl, then aged 13, who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet. She was not in the classroom at the time.

Chnina at the time published a series of videos on social media, accusing Paty of disciplining his daughter for complaining about the class, giving Paty’s name and identifying the school.

Prosecutors accuse Chnina of collaborating with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan activist, to incite hatred towards the middle school teacher. Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad blasphemous.

Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.

Between October 9 and 13, Chnina spoke to Anzorov nine times by phone after he published videos criticising Paty, the investigation showed.

Sefrioui posted a video criticising Islamophobia in France and describing Paty as a “teaching thug”, but told investigators he was only seeking “administrative sanctions”.

Two young friends of the attacker are facing charges of “complicity in terrorist murder”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.

Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, a Russian of Chechen origin, are accused of having accompanied Anzorov to a knife shop in the northern city of Rouen the day before the attack.

“Nearly three years of investigation have never managed to establish that Naim Boudaoud had any knowledge of the attacker’s criminal plans,” his lawyers Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah told the AFP news agency.

Boudaoud is accused of going with Anzorov to buy two replica guns and steel pellets on the day of the attack.

Epsirkhanov admitted he had received 800 euros (about $870 at the current exchange rate) from Anzorov to find him a real gun but had not succeeded.

Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.

His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. After the magazine used the images in 2015, gunmen stormed its office, killing 12 people.

Four other defendants interacted with Anzorov online.

Yusuf Cinar, a 22-year-old Turkish national, shared an armed group’s Snapchat account with him that later published images of Paty’s killing.

Ismail Gamaev, a 22-year-old Russian of Chechen origin with refugee status, and Louqmane Ingar, also 22, exchanged content on a Snapchat group with Anzorov. The first posted an image of Paty’s head with smiley faces after the killing.

Priscilla Mangel, 36, conversed with Paty’s killer on X, describing the teacher’s class as “an example of the war waged by [France’s] Republican institutions against Muslims”.