Prophet's caricatures: six children among 14 to face trial over killing French teacher
World
Prophet's caricatures: six children among 14 to face trial over beheading of French teacher
(AFP) - French prosecutors have called for the trial of 14 people over the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamic extremist in 2020. Two adults face the charge of complicity in a terrorist murder. Six other adults and six minors under the age of 18 face lesser charges.
The two facing the most serious charge have been named by police as Azim Epsirkhanov and Naim Boudaoud.
Both were friends of the murderer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, who was shot dead by police at the scene of Paty's killing.
It is alleged that the pair accompanied Anzorov to buy the murder weapon, and that Boudaoud travelled with him to the school where Paty taught history and geography.
A third friend of the murderer, Yusuf Cinar, faces the charge of membership of a terrorist gang.
Prosecutors have also recommended charges of associating with terrorists for the father of a student at Paty's school, for a radical Islamic preacher, as well as for a Muslim convert who was in contact with Anzorov via Twitter.
One of the accused, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, is known to the police as a radical islamist and is on the list of individuals suspected of posing a terrorist threat.
He allegedly circulated a video on social media five days before Paty's murder, calling on parents of students at the school to call for the teacher's sacking.
Caricatures of the prophet
A 15-year-old girl, who allegedly told her parents that Paty had shown caricatures of the prophet in class, will be tried before a children's court. She will be charged with false accusation. Investigators have established that she never attended the course in which the caricatures were used.
Five other minors, aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the attack, will be charged with membership of a gang planning violence, which is an offence, not a crime, under French law. They are suspected of having pointed out the victim to the murderer. Two of them are believed to have been paid for the information.
Paty was targeted after messages circulated on social media saying he had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his class.
The 47-year-old used the magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is not a criminal offence.
The national anti-terrorist judicial authorities will now examine the evidence and decide whether or not to proceed with some or all of the charges.
