Six teenagers will go on trial in Paris on Monday in connection with events leading to the beheading of Samuel Paty in 2020, in a case that horrified France.
The 47-year-old history teacher was stabbed and then decapitated near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radicalised 18-year-old who arrived in France aged six with his Chechen parents and had been granted asylum.
Anzorov, who was later shot dead at the scene by police, killed Paty after messages spread on social media that the teacher had shown his class cartoons of the prophet Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Paty had used the magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France. Weeks before the class, Charlie Hebdo had republished the cartoons. The magazine had first published the images in 2012. In 2015 radicalised gunmen stormed its Paris office, killing 11 people inside, and a police officer outside, in coordinated terrorist attacks which also resulted in a second police officer being killed and four hostages murdered at a kosher supermarket.
The teenagers will be tried behind closed doors in juvenile court, without the media present.
One of the teenagers on trial is a girl, who was 13 at the time of Paty’s death, who has been seen as central to the events.
She is accused of making a “false accusation” for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to identify themselves and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. She later told investigators she was not in the classroom that day, French media reported, citing the investigation. Paty had not asked children to leave but said they could turn away if they felt they would be offended by the cartoons shown.
Eight adults will face a different trial next year at a special criminal court in the case, including the girl’s father, who is accused of having posted videos on social media that called for mobilisation against the teacher, as well as an activist who is accused of helping him disseminate messages naming Paty.
Five of the teenagers on trial on Monday, who were aged between 14 and 15 at the time of Paty’s murder, are accused of criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence.
The five teenagers are alleged to have helped point out Paty to Anzorov. They said they never thought it would lead to his murder.
Virginie Le Roy, a lawyer representing Paty’s parents and one of his sisters, said the Paty family saw the trial of the teenagers as crucial.
“The role of the minors was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his assassination,” Le Roy told AFP.
They are now high school pupils and could face two-and-a-half years in prison.
“It is complicated,” said Dylan Slama, a lawyer for one of the accused. “He will be associated with this for the rest of his life.”
The trial is scheduled to last until 8 December.
