(Adnkronos) – The trial of the eight instigators, seven men and one woman, of the murder of Samuel Paty, the history and geography teacher stabbed and beheaded on 16 October 2020 at the high school where he taught by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old radicalised Russian of Chechen origin, begins today at the Special Assize Court in Paris. Two of the defendants are on trial for complicity in terrorist murder, a crime punishable by life imprisonment, the other six for terrorist criminal association, for which they risk thirty years in prison.
In the dock will be Brahim Chnina, 52, father of the student of Moroccan origin at the origin of the controversy over Paty’s lessons and his presentation of the cartoons of Mohammed. Co-founder of Aide-Moi, an association that helps people with reduced mobility to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, he is accused of having launched, together with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a vast cyberbullying campaign against the professor. He has been in pre-trial detention since 21 October 2020 and claims to be a victim, not guilty.
The defendants also include Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan, Islamist activist and founder of the pro-Hamas collective Cheikh Yassine, which was dissolved on 21 October 2020. He is accused of having participated with Chnina ”in the creation and dissemination of videos with false or distorted information to incite hatred” against Paty. The two risk thirty years in prison.
Naim Boudaoud, a 22-year-old Frenchman, is one of the two accused, along with Azim Epsirkhanov, of “complicity in the murder”. Described by the prosecution as “particularly vulnerable” and “impressionable”, and “with no visible signs of violent radicalisation”, he frequented Abdoullakh Anzorov. The day before the attack, he took Anzorov to a cutlery shop in Rouen to buy a knife matching the one found near his body. On the day of the murder, Boudaoud accompanied Anzorov to a shop in Cergy to buy airsoft guns and steel balls.
Azim Epsirkhanov, a 23-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, arrived in France in December 2010. According to the prosecution, he was an accomplice in Paty’s murder, “helping and actively accompanying” Anzorov “in the search for and purchase of weapons”. During the hearing, Epsirkhanov admitted that he had received the sum of 800 euros from Anzorov to urgently procure a firearm for him. Four other people, three men and one woman, are accused of having supported the terrorist in his project on messaging services such as Snapchat or Instagram.
