The verdict fell this Friday evening after two weeks of trial.
Three years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, this history professor beheaded by a jihadist of Chechen origin, the first judicial part of this case closed this Friday with the first convictions.
Sentences of 14 months in prison suspended to six months in prison – placed under an electronic bracelet – were handed down on Friday in Paris against six ex-college students tried for their involvement in the murder of their teacher. The trial was held behind closed doors.
These sentences were handed down taking into account “the seriousness of the facts”, the “personality” of the accused and their “development”, and while the offenses were “perfectly established”, declared the children’s court in its judgment, read in public hearing after two weeks of debate.
Five of the defendants, aged 14 and 15, were on trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated violence. They were accused of having monitored the surroundings of the college and designated Samuel Paty as the attacker, for remuneration.
A sixth teenager, aged 13 at the time of the events, appeared in court for slanderous denunciation. This schoolgirl had wrongly claimed that her teacher Samuel Paty had asked the Muslim students in the class to signal themselves and leave the class before showing the caricatures of Mohammed. She hadn’t actually attended this class.
The professor’s assassin, killed by police officers on the day of his crime, criticized Samuel Paty for showing caricatures of Mohammed during a course on freedom of expression. In an audio message in Russian, he claimed responsibility for his action by congratulating himself on having “avenged the Prophet”.
The investigation traced how, in ten days, the trap had closed on Samuel Paty: from the lie of the schoolgirl to the attacks on the internet, until the arrival of the assailant on October 16 in front of the school where he had gave 300 euros to students to identify the teacher.
A second trial is also expected involving adults who directly or indirectly participated in the assassination of the deceased professor.