The family of Samuel Paty, murdered in October 2020, filed a complaint on Wednesday April 6 with the Paris prosecutor’s office against the administration, which they consider to be at fault for not having protected the professor, announced their advice, Virginie Le Roy, to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Mistakes were committed both on the side of national education and on the side of the Ministry of the Interior, without which Samuel Paty could have been saved”said M.e Le Roy, confirming information from Release.
The complaint targets the crimes of “non-impediment of crime and non-assistance to person in danger” a show “several agents from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of National Education” who had to know directly or indirectly the situation of Samuel Paty.
The “weakest protection (…) would have saved him”
In detail, the complaint recalls the slow process started with a course on secularism in a college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) at the beginning of October 2020, which culminated in the assassination, on October 16, of professor 47 years old, stabbed then beheaded, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin, killed shortly afterwards by the police. The 18-year-old man, radicalized, accused him of having shown caricatures of Muhammad in class. In an audio message in Russian, he had claimed his gesture by congratulating himself on having “Avenged the Prophet”.
For the family, “from October 8 and until the 16, Samuel Paty, the principal and the teachers identified a serious threat to their physical integrity and the security of the college”resulting in particular from the media coverage of the case on social networks by the father of a schoolgirl who claimed to have attended the course and by the Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui.
But for the family “the agents of the Ministry of the Interior failed to assist Samuel Paty”who “should have benefited from at least the weakest protection”one or two agents, given the « menace » aiming at it, which “would have saved him”.
Failure to monitor social networks
The complaint also targets several agents of national education, for example at the rectorate or at the college. A report from the General Inspectorate of Education dating back to December 2020, looking at the events that occurred in Samuel Paty’s college before his assassination, considered that the institution had been responsive in its care but underlined lack of monitoring of social networks.
“Prior to this complaint, the family of Samuel Paty questioned the ministries concerned and asked them for the transmission of several information and documents, they did not obtain any response”says the complaint. “No comment at this stage”reacted to AFP the Ministry of the Interior.
In the anti-terrorist investigation into the assassination, at least fifteen people are indicted, including six college students, the father of the teenager and Mr. Sefrioui. The investigations could be closed by the end of 2022, according to a source familiar with the matter.