Six teenagers on trial for role in beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty

In the first of two trials of people involved in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb in 2020, six teenagers will appear Monday in juvenile court.

A portrait of Samuel Paty on a wall of a high school in southwestern France as students pay tribute on the first anniversary of his murder, in October 2021. © Bob Edme/AP

Five of the teenagers have been charged with criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence for having accepted money to identify Paty to Abdoullakh Anzorov, who then stabbed and him near the school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Anzorov, who was 18 at the time and shot dead by police at the scene, murdered Paty after messages spread on social media that the history and geography had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his class during a discussion on free speech laws in France.

The sixth student has been charged with false accusation, for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to identify themselves and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons.

The defendants, who were 13- to 15-years-old at the time of the murder, will be tried behind closed doors in juvenile court.

A lawyer representing Paty’s parents and one of his sisters said this trial is crucial for the family, as their role “was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his murder".

The teenagers have said they had thought their role would result in Paty being humiliated on social media, or even roughed up, but they never imagined it would lead to his murder.

The trial is scheduled to run through 8 December, and the teenagers, who are now high school students, face up to two-and-a-half years in prison.

Eight other people will be tried at a later date. The defendants include two of Anzorov's friends who allegedly accompanied him to buy the murder weapon.

(with AFP)