The Paris criminal court will issue its ruling this Friday judgment in the trial of the eight accused of incitement and complicity in the murder high school teacher terrorist Samuel Paty in 2020.
Paty, 47, was murdered with a large knife and then beheaded for a Chechen refugee, Abdoullakh Anzorovas a consequence of a online campaign launched against him.
The campaign was launched after Paty showed her high school students, in a civic behavior class, two caricatures of Muhammad of those published by the satirical weekly ‘Charlie Hebdo’.
Anzorov, 18, died shortly afterwards in a confrontation with the police, following an Islamist murder that caused shock in France, a country where the State is officially secular and the public school tries to instill respect for all opinions on the religion.
After seven weeks of trial, the court’s judges will announce their verdict and possible sentences this Friday, after it was initially scheduled for this Thursday.
Review of downward penalties
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) revised downwards the sentences requested in its request last Monday, and requested one 16 years in prison for the accused.
Two of Anzorov’s friends face the most severe sentences, 14 and 16 years, after the prosecutor acknowledged that there is no evidence that they helped him commit the attack, so the crime is reduced to complicity in a terrorist murder. association of criminals with terrorist purposes.
The petition for penalties has a special chapter against the father of a Paty student, brahim chininaand against the Islamist preacher and activist Abelhakim Sefriouiwhom he accuses of having “orchestrated a campaign” on digital networks against the professor. For Sefrioui, the Prosecutor’s Office requested 12 years in prison, as well as another 10 against Chnina.
The family of the victim expressed his discontent with this reduction in the sentences proposed by the prosecution. “These are scandalous requests,” the lawyer for the parents and a sister of the murdered professor was outraged.
Meanwhile, the defenses of the accused asked for lighter sentences for their clients and, in the case of Chnina, acquittal.
