Eight convicted in France for actions that led to the beheading of a teacher

A French court sentenced seven men and one woman to prison for their role in a hate campaign that led to the October 2020 murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb.

The sentences imposed range from three to 16 years.

The attack took place following social media posts that falsely claimed Paty had shown her students obscene photographs of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on freedom of expression.

Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radicalized Muslim born in Chechnya, murdered Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, at a secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

Anzorov was shot dead at the scene by police minutes after killing the 47-year-old man.

He was inflamed by claims circulating on the Internet that a few days earlier Paty had ordered Muslims to leave a class of 13-year-olds before showing images of the Prophet Muhammad.

In fact, Paty had been giving a lesson on freedom of expression, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, she advised the students to look away if they feared being offended.

In the absence of the murderer, this trial was against people who provided him with support, moral or material.

For seven weeks the court heard how a 13-year-old schoolgirl’s lie spiraled out of control thanks to social media.

Among those sentenced Friday was Brahim Chnina, the schoolgirl’s father.

Chnina started an online campaign against the teacher and was helped by radical Islamic activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who has also now been convicted.

Two friends of the murderer who were with him when he bought weapons, as well as four people with whom he shared messages in a radical chat, were also found guilty.

The defense had argued that none of the eight had any idea of ​​Anzorov’s intentions, and that his words and actions only became criminal when he carried out his act.

But the judge decided that lack of prior knowledge was no defense, because what they did had the effect of incitement.