Eight on trial in France in connection with murder of teacher Samuel Paty
Al Jazeera
Samuel Paty was attacked and beheaded outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine near Paris in 2020.
Eight people have gone on trial in France charged over their alleged roles in events that led to the murder of a teacher in 2020.
Days after Samuel Paty, 47, showed his pupils the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech, an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin stabbed him repeatedly and beheaded him outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine near Paris.
Abdoullakh Anzorov, who had requested asylum in France, was killed by police shortly after he murdered Paty.
Seven men and one woman appeared in court on Monday for a trial that is set to last until December. Three of them are under judicial supervision and are being tried for participation in a “criminal terrorist act” which is punishable by 30 years in jail.
They include Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan. He is the father of a schoolgirl, then aged 13, who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet. She was not in the classroom at the time.
