Defendants face verdict over actions that led to beheading

Eight people accused of abetting the jihadist murder of French teacher Samuel Paty are to learn their fate after a six-week trial in a Paris court.

They include the father of a schoolgirl whose lie about Paty’s alleged discrimination against Muslims in the classroom set in motion the chain of events which led to his beheading on a street in October 2020.

Also on trial are a Muslim activist who led an online campaign against Paty, two boyhood friends of Chechen-born killer Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him acquire weapons, and four radicalised men with whom he exchanged messages on social media.

Anzorov was shot dead by police minutes after killing the 47 year-old history-geography teacher outside his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

He was fired up by claims circulating on the internet that a few days earlier Paty had ordered Muslims to leave his class of 13-year-olds before revealing obscene pictures of the prophet Muhammad.

In fact Paty had been conducting a lesson on freedom of speech, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised pupils to avert their eyes if they feared being offended.

The schoolgirl, named as Z. Chnina, had not even been in class when this happened, but told her father she had been punished for raising an objection.

The trial has centred on legal arguments over whether people who in advance had no knowledge of the attack – or in some cases even of its perpetrator – could by their words nonetheless be guilty of “terrorist association”.

Summing up in court this week, prosecution lawyers asked for jail terms of between 18 months suspended and 16 years for the accused, saying their actions had indirectly led to the atrocity.

However, the prosecution had also angered members of Paty’s family by refusing to push for maximum sentences, and by downgrading the qualification of some of the imputed crimes.

During the trial, the court heard the first public testimony from the girl, Z. Chnina, now aged 17.

A year ago she was given a short suspended sentence for slander by a juvenile court, whose hearings were conducted behind closed doors.

“I want to apologise to all the [Paty family] because…