Four people who were imprisoned for their involvement in the murder of a French teacher in October 2020 will be back in court in Paris on Monday to appeal their convictions. Samuel Paty was beheaded by a Chechen Islamist, following an online campaign of hatred and intimidation.
At the end of the initial trial, in November and December 2024, the seven men and one woman who appeared in court were found guilty and sentenced to between one and 16 years in prison.
Samuel Paty's killer, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police immediately after the killing on 16 October, 2020 outside the Bois-d'Aulne secondary school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris, where Paty taught history and geography.
Four of the eight have appealed their convictions: two friends of Anzorov, Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, sentenced to 16 years for complicity in murder; and Brahim Chnina and Islamist preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who were sentenced to 13 and 15 years respectively for criminal association with a terrorist group.
Their cases will be heard before the special court of appeals in Paris, until 27 February.
The four individuals who did not appeal belonged to the so-called "jihadosphere" and were in contact with Anzorov on social media.
Sharing a lie
The events that unfolded began with a lie told by a 13-year-old pupil, the daughter of Chnina, who accused Paty of discriminating against Muslim students in his class during a lesson on freedom of expression in which he had shown a satirical cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.
In reality, she had not attended the class, but her lie was widely shared on social media by her father and Sefrioui.
After several days of a virulent campaign targeting the 47-year-old teacher, he was stabbed and beheaded by Anzorov, a radical Chechen Islamist.
In their initial verdict, judges admitted that Chnina and Sefrioui did not know the murderer.
French court issues severe sentences to those linked to beheading of teacher Samuel Paty
However, according to the judges: "The two defendants knowingly took the risk, despite the danger and threats to Samuel Paty, that a violent and radicalised third party, who became their armed wing, would deliberately harm him physically."
They added that they "contributed to creating a state of mind conducive to inciting the crime" by "stoking the anger and hatred of a radicalised mind".
At the appeal trial, Chnina's lawyers, Franck Berton and Louise Tort, want their client's role to be "put into perspective", saying "he never participated in any terrorist activity".
Vincent Brengarth, one of Sefrioui's lawyers, said it was his client's "last chance".
"We do not understand why the court of first instance did not draw conclusions from the factual reality of this case, namely that Mr Sefrioui did not know Anzorov and that there is nothing linking him, directly or indirectly, to the latter's crime," he said.
'Popular and media pressure'
The lawyers requested that Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez and former justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti be summoned as witnesses to hear their testimony "on the failures that led to the assassination".
For Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers for Mickaëlle Paty – one of the victim's sisters – even if there were failures, "it is difficult to see how they would diminish the criminal responsibility of their client".
As for the two individuals convicted of complicity in terrorist murder, the trial judges found that they were "perfectly" aware of their friend's dangerous nature, yet had nevertheless helped him, particularly in his search for weapons.
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For Hiba Rizkallah and Martin Méchin, lawyers for Naïm Boudaoud, he "was convicted on the basis of fragile and hazardous interpretations, without any evidence of criminal intent".
They have called on the court of appeal not to "give in to emotion or to popular and media pressure".
Paty's family hopes that the original verdict will be confirmed and "that the facts will be recognised and that each step in the chain of events will be judged," said Virginie Le Roy, lawyer for the parents and another sister of Paty.
(with AFP)
