At least four of the eight convicted of complicity in the murder of French high school teacher Samuel Paty will appeal the sentences handed down on December 20 by a special criminal court in Paris. These appellants are the four individuals who received the most serious sentences, some of which exceeded the requests of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Among the first to announce their intention to appeal are Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, friends of the perpetrator of the murder, Abdoullakh Anzorov, who was killed by the police after stabbing and beheading Paty on October 16, 2020.
Boudaoud and Epsirkhanov accompanied Anzorov to buy the knife with which the crime was committed, and Both were sentenced to 16 years in prison. Epsirkhanov’s sentence coincided with the Prosecutor’s request, but Boudaoud’s was two years harsher than requested.
Likewise, Brahim Chnina, the father of a Paty student who promoted a hate campaign against the teacher after accusing him of discriminating against Muslim students, was sentenced to 13 years in prison, three more than the Prosecutor’s Office had requested.
Abdelhakim Sefraoui, Islamist preacher who He also contributed to the hate campaign through social networks, He received a sentence of 15 years in prison, three more than what had been requested. Lawyers for Chnina and Sefraoui have confirmed that they will appeal the sentences, arguing that they are legally unacceptable and politically motivated.
The rest of those convicted were sentenced to lesser sentences. for crimes of incitement to terrorism, related to the dissemination of Islamist messages and his connection with Anzorov.
Who was Samuel Paty?
On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a high school teacher in Éragny, a city located on the outskirts of Paris, was murdered and beheaded in an Islamist terrorist attack.
In her class on freedom of expression, Paty had shown her students a caricature of Muhammad, part of a debate on Charlie Hebdo publications, in relation to the attack that occurred in 2015, and invited students who felt uncomfortable with the topic to leave the classroom.
The school reportedly began receiving “threatening calls” in the days after the incident. Samuel Paty, who lived near the educational center and used to cross a forest to get home, decided to modify his usual route, choosing a path that passed through a busier residential area, because it was felt threatened.
Days after the incident, the aggressor committed the homicide, decapitating Samuel Paty with a 30 cm knife. After the attack, shared an image of the victim’s head on Twitterstating that he had done it “in the name of Allah” and pointing out that the teacher had disrespected Muhammad.
The aggressor found out about the content of the class thanks to a video that Brahim Chnina, the father of a student, had posted on the internet. The young woman, who had been expelled for inappropriate behavior, had lied to her father, claiming that she had been disciplined for opposing Samuel Paty’s request that Muslim students leave the classroom.
The perpetrator, 18 years old, a Russian refugee of Chechen originwas shot down by the police while they were trying to arrest him.
