The defendants will face judgment for actions that led to the beheading of the French teacher

Eight people accused of involvement in the jihadist murder of French teacher Samuel Paty will learn their fate after a six-week trial in a Paris court.

They include the father of a schoolgirl who lied about Patty’s alleged discrimination against Muslims in class, who was involved in a series of incidents leading to her beheading on a street in October 2020.

Also on trial are a Muslim activist who led an online campaign against Patty, two childhood friends of Chechen-born killer Abdullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him acquire weapons, and four radicalized people. With whom he exchanged messages on social media.

Anzorov was shot dead by police minutes after killing the 47-year-old history-geography teacher outside his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

He was angered by claims circulating on the internet that Patty had ordered Muslims to leave his class of 13-year-olds days before exposing obscene images of the Prophet Muhammad.

In fact Patty was conducting a lesson on freedom of expression, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised pupils to look away if they feared being offended. Get it done.

The schoolgirl, identified as Z Chnina, was not even in class when the incident happened, but told her father that she had been punished for objecting.

The trial focuses on legal arguments over whether people who had no prior knowledge of the attack – or in some cases even of its perpetrator – could still be guilty of “terrorist association” by their words. .

Arguing in court this week, prosecution lawyers sought a suspended sentence of 18 months and 16 years’ jail for the accused, saying their actions had indirectly led to the atrocities.

However, prosecutors also angered Patty’s family members by refusing to push for the maximum sentence and downplaying the merits of some of the charged crimes.

During the trial, the court heard the first public testimony of the girl, Z Chnina, now 17.

A year earlier he had been given a short suspended sentence for slander by a juvenile court, the hearing of which was held behind closed doors.

“I want to apologize to everyone (the Patty family) because if I hadn’t lied, they wouldn’t be here today,” she said, sobbing.

“And I want to apologize to my father because it was partly because of my lies when he made the video.”

In the days after Patty’s freedom of speech class, her father Brahim Chnina made videos denouncing the teacher by name. He also enlisted the help of activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui to spread the campaign through his social media networks.

Chnina and Sefrioui never sought action against Paty, and were unaware of Anzorov’s existence until the murder occurred.

But for the prosecution they were still guilty of “terrorist association”, because they were aware of the possible consequences of their campaign.

According to the prosecution’s argument, “Nobody is saying they wanted Samuel Paty dead, but in lighting 1,000 digital fuses they knew one of them would fuel jihadist violence against the teacher.”

The October 2020 context was one of heightened tension over jihadist violence after Charlie Hebdo republished some controversial cartoons of Muhammad. Five years ago most of the magazine’s staff were killed in a jihadist gun attack on their Paris office.

The longest prison sentence was requested in court this week for two of Anzorov’s friends, who were with him when he bought the knife and fake gun. One of them even drove Anzorov to school on the afternoon of the attack.

None of these defendants are radical Muslims, and it was not established in court that they knew about Anzorov’s plans.

That’s why prosecutors reduced the charge against him to “engagement in a terrorist attack,” which carries a possible life sentence.

The four other accused are people with whom Anzorov had communicated on the chatline, yet without disclosing his intention to kill Patty.

One of them, a convert to Islam named Priscilla Mangel, admitted to making “inflammatory” comments online about the Patty case, but said she would never have done so if she had known Anzorov’s intentions.

“For me it was an informal discussion with an unknown person.”

For defense attorneys, if Patty had not been murdered, none of the accused would have faced criminal proceedings for what they said.

Therefore the main legal question before the court is whether the statements can be illegal on the following grounds.