On Monday, November 27, six French teenagers went on trial for their alleged roles in the 2020 beheading of their history and geography teacher.
The juvenile court, where the trial is being held until December 8, 2023, is having closed-door proceedings, with the participants and audience limited to only those people directly affected by the case.
The victim, Samuel Paty, 47, was a secondary school teacher in the Paris suburb Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. He was killed on October 16, 2020, by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, Abdoullakh Anzorov, who was later shot dead by the French police. The murder occurred shortly after Paty showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo during a class on French free speech laws.
Six teens, who were 14 or 15 years old at the time, were charged with participating in the lead-up to Paty’s killing. Five of them are accused of criminal conspiracy intending to incite violence, allegedly identifying Paty to Anzorov in return for money. The sixth accused, a 13-year-old girl at the time, is charged with making false allegations about Paty, disproven by her not being present during the class.
Louis Cailliez, the lawyer for the Paty family, is focused on understanding the teenagers’ actions, which he called “unforgivable.” Antoine Ory, representing one defendant, expressed his client’s regret and apprehension about confronting Paty’s relatives. The accused teenagers, now high school students, did not anticipate that their actions would escalate to murder, expecting at worst social media censure or minor physical repercussions for Paty.
The case is part of a broader inquiry, including trials for eight adults planned for late 2024. The involvement of the minors in the sequence of events resulting in Paty’s death is a central issue in both the teen and adult trials.
Samuel Paty’s murder has brought renewed focus on jihadist violence in France. In October, another teacher, Dominique Bernard, was stabbed, reflecting the ongoing threat of radical Islamist violence.
