Terrorism: Trial for the murder of teacher Samuel Paty started in Paris

Four years after the Islamist-motivated murder of teacher Samuel Paty in France, the trial of eight suspected supporters has begun before a Paris jury. On October 16, 2020, the 47-year-old history teacher was killed and beheaded by an 18-year-old in a Paris suburb on his way home near school. The police shot the perpetrator, who has Russian-Chechen roots, just minutes later.

The crime was classified as an Islamist-motivated act of terrorism and sparked international outrage. France, already traumatized by terror, was hit to the core by the barbaric act.

Before the attack, there was agitation against the teacher on the Internet because he had shown controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in class on the subject of freedom of expression. This incitement is said to have driven the attacker to his crime.

Eight adults are said to have supported the perpetrators

Seven men and one woman are accused, including two friends of the perpetrator who, according to the prosecution, were privy to his plans. Both are said to have accompanied him when he bought weapons and one is also said to have driven him to the crime scene. You are accused of being an accessory to a terrorist murder. You face life imprisonment.

The other defendants also include the father of the student who circulated false accusations against Paty, as well as a man who is said to have posted videos of this on social networks. These defendants must answer for forming a criminal terrorist organization. You face up to 30 years in prison. The process, which started amid great media interest, will last until December 20th.

At the start of the trial, the court first looked at how the shocking crime occurred. The defendants, three of whom are at large, were sat opposite a number of relatives and colleagues of the murdered teacher in the courtroom.

The student triggered the crime with false accusations

Almost a year ago, six students were convicted in a separate trial for their involvement in the dramatic lead-up to the bloody act. Five of them received suspended sentences and one student was sentenced to six months in prison. They helped the assassin identify the teacher immediately before the crime.

A then 13-year-old student who triggered the crime with a false accusation received an 18-month suspended prison sentence. She is said to have talked about a presentation of the controversial cartoons at home, even though she wasn’t in class that day.

Another fatal attack on teachers

Old wounds were reopened in France last year when, almost exactly three years to the day after the attack on Paty, there was another fatal attack on a teacher. On October 13, 2023, an Islamist radicalized 20-year-old stabbed a teacher to death in a school in Arras, northern France.

Here too, the attacker came from Chechnya. Before the knife attack in Arras, the perpetrator claimed responsibility for the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia. As with the brutal attack on Paty, France saw its secular state under attack and, in particular, a key pillar of it, the national education system.