PARIS (AP) — Six teenagers are on trial in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class, a killing that sparked a national debate on free expression and secularism in France.
The victim, Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who had become radicalized. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police.
Paty’s name was disclosed on social media after a class debate on free expression during which he showed caricatures published by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had been the target of a newsroom massacre by extremists in January 2015.
All hearings at a Paris juvenile court are being held behind closed doors in accordance with French law regarding minors. The media are not allowed to disclose the defendants’ identities.
Among those going on trial, a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. She later told investigators she had lied. She was not in the classroom that day and Paty did not make such a request, the investigation has shown.
Five other students of Paty’s school, then 14 and 15, are facing charges of criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing aggravated violence to be committed. They are accused of having waited for Paty for several hours until he left the school and of having identified him to the killer in exchange for promises of payments of 300-350 euros ($348-$406).
The trial is scheduled to end on Dec. 8.
Louis Cailliez, the lawyer for Paty’s sister, Mickaëlle, said she wants “to understand the real causes” that led the students to commit something irreparable. He pointed to the “fatal combination of little acts of cowardice, big lies, calumnies, arrangements, complicity and help without which Samuel Paty would still be alive.”
The trial comes six weeks after a teacher was fatally stabbed and three other people injured in a school attack by a former student suspected of Islamic radicalization. The killing in a context of global tensions over the Israel-Hamas war led French authorities to deploy 7,000 additional soldiers across the country to bolster security and vigilance.