The Paris court has sentenced the eight people accused of complicity in the murder of French professor Samuel Paty in 2020 to sentences of up to 16 years.
The teacher was beheaded in his secondary school on the outskirts of Paris by a Russian citizen of Chechen origin Abdoullakh Anzorov, 18, who was killed by the police at the time of arrest.
In most cases, the judges handed down sentences above those demanded by the Prosecutor’s Office, which had received harsh criticism from Paty’s family, considering that it had fallen short of what they deserved.
In addition to the two accused of complicity in the crime, who have received sentences of 16 years, the judges sentenced the father of one of Paty’s students and a preacher who orchestrated a campaign on social networks against the teacher, who during a course on freedom of expression had shown his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, who accompanied Anzorov to buy a knife, were sentenced to 16 years in prison, in the case of the second the sentence that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested, but in the case of the first, who was the one who led the murderer to the vicinity from school on the afternoon of October 16, 2020, imposed two more years than the Public Ministry had claimed.
The court was also more severe with Brahim Chnina, the father of Paty’s student who said the teacher discriminated against Muslim students and who launched a campaign on social networks. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, three more than requested.
Abdelhakim Sefraoui, an Islamist preacher who contributed to that campaign through the networks, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, three more than requested. During the reading of the verdict, he accused the court of having “played politics” and of “not having courage”, while at the same time he indicated that he would appeal the sentence.
Chnina and Sefraoui went to the school a week before the crime to threaten the teacher and protest his behavior.
All of them appeared for complicity in a terrorist murder, but the Prosecutor’s Office changed the classification during the trial to association of criminals for terrorist purposes, a decision that caused incomprehension in Paty’s family.
The court did not admit the change in the crime and convicted them of complicity in terrorist murder.
The sentences were lighter for other defendants, who were indicted for provocation to terrorism by spreading Islamist messages through social networks and for having been in contact with Anzorov.
This is the case of Ismail Gamaev, the only one of the accused who admitted his guilt, sentenced to five years in prison with 30 months exempt from compliance.
Priscilla Mangel was sentenced to three years in prison, Louqmane Ingar to three years in prison, two of which were exempt, and Yusur Cinar to one year in prison.
