Teenagers convicted in France of aiding teacher killer
Six teenagers were convicted by a Paris court on Friday in connection with the attack on Samuel Paty, a history teacher whose killing by an Islamist extremist in 2020 shook France to its core.
Five of the defendants, former high school students at the school where Mr. Paty was teaching, were found guilty of helping the killer identify and track down the teacher, although it was not believed they knew he intended to kill. They were convicted on charges of involvement in a criminal conspiracy in preparation of a violent attack.
Mr Paty, 47, had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during a social studies lesson to illustrate freedom of expression, and was subsequently beheaded for the act on October 16, 2020, near the school where he worked in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a northwestern suburb of Paris.
The attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen descent. He had stalked Mr. Paty’s school on the day of the murder and enlisted the five teenagers’ help in exchange for about $320, telling them he wanted to confront Mr. Paty and force him to apologize. Mr Anzorov was shot dead by police shortly after the attack.
A sixth defendant, a girl who was 13 at the time of the murder, was found guilty of making false accusations against Mr Paty.
All defendants were given short or suspended prison sentences with a range of obligations, including the requirement that they remain in school or get a job for the duration of their suspended sentence and undergo regular medical check-ups.
Officials have not publicly named the suspects, who were tried behind closed doors in a criminal court for minors because they were not adults at the time of the attack. The defendants, five of whom are still minors, walked in and out of the courtroom on Friday wearing masks, hoodies or sunglasses to protect their faces.
Reporters were legally prohibited from revealing their identities or reporting on the proceedings. A separate trial for eight adults charged in the case is expected to take place next year.
Mr Paty’s killing came after much larger terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed hundreds of people. But his murder and the nature of the violence were devastating in other ways and continue to haunt the country.
Teachers in France, who play a crucial role in transmitting the French Republic’s values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism, are seen as the first line of defense of a public school system that many fear is increasingly threatened by Islamic extremism .
These fears have been heightened in recent months by small but deadly Islamist terrorist attacks.
In October, almost three years after Mr Paty’s murder, another teacher was murdered at his school in northern France under ominously similar circumstances. The suspect in that case is a former student of the school, a 20-year-old Russian immigrant who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before suffering a stabbing attack that also injured three other people.
Last week, a man with psychiatric disorders and a history of radicalization killed a German tourist near the Eiffel Tower and injured several other people with a knife and hammer, an attack that further put the country on edge.
In the case involving Mr. Paty, prosecutors had accused five of the defendants of helping Mr. Anzorov identify and track the teacher, including by standing guard outside their school, and also of helping Mr. Telling Anzorov what the teacher looked like, and pointing him out when he left the school.
Defense lawyers argued that their clients, who were 14 to 15 years old at the time of the killing, did not know that Mr. Anzorov intended to kill Mr. Paty.
Mr Paty, who taught social studies, had shown the students caricatures published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – itself the target of a massacre in 2015 – to illustrate the right to blasphemy, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience .
Prosecutors had said that the sixth defendant, the girl, had told her parents at the time that Mr. Paty had singled out Muslim students in the class and asked them to leave before showing the caricatures.
In reality, the girl had not attended that lesson and Mr. Paty had not ordered the Muslim students to leave the classroom. She had been suspended from school for two days for unrelated reasons, but told her parents she had been punished for complaining to Mr Paty about the caricatures.
According to prosecutors, the girl’s false story caused a tragic chain reaction. Her father spread the girl’s claims on social media. When Mr. Anzorov, who lived almost 60 miles away, heard of the controversy, he set out to kill Mr. Paty.