The trainer was killed in 2020 exterior his college in Paris, after sharing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad at school.
Six youngsters have gone on trial behind closed doorways in reference to the beheading of French historical past trainer Samuel Paty.
The homicide, which shocked the nation, occurred in 2020 after the trainer had proven his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a category on freedom of expression.
Paty, 47, was killed exterior his college in a Paris suburb by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, who was shot useless by police quickly afterwards.
The six youths can’t be recognized on account of their age. They entered court docket on Monday carrying hoodies to cover their faces.
5 of the six, who had been 14 to fifteen years outdated on the time, resist 2.5 years in jail for felony conspiracy with intent to trigger violence. They’re accused of figuring out the trainer to the killer in alternate for cash.
The opposite defendant, a woman who was 13 on the time, allegedly informed her mother and father that Paty had requested Muslim pupils to go away the room earlier than exhibiting the caricatures. Nonetheless, she was not within the class on the time.
Consumed with remorse
Throughout questioning, the youngsters swore that at most they thought Paty can be “flagged up on social media”, “humiliated” or perhaps “roughed up”, however they by no means imagined “it would go as far as murder”.
“He is consumed with regret and is very fearful of the confrontation with Paty’s family,” Antoine Ory, lawyer for one of many accused, stated on Monday earlier than the listening to began.
Paty’s sister Mickaelle stated in a press release via lawyer Louis Cailliez that her brother would nonetheless be alive with out a “fatal association of small cowardices, big lies”.
“The role of the minors was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his assassination,” a lawyer for Paty’s household stated.
The hearings, on account of final till December 8, can be held behind closed doorways. Eight adults are additionally accused and can seem earlier than a particular felony court docket.
Final month, virtually two years to the day of Paty’s killing, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed trainer Dominique Bernard and gravely wounded two different individuals in an assault at a faculty in northern France.
Like Anzorov, Bernard’s suspected killer Mohammed Moguchkov additionally hailed from Russia’s primarily Muslim North Caucasus area.
Anzorov focused Paty after messages unfold on social media that the trainer had proven his class the cartoons. That they had initially featured within the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo in 2015, triggering a lethal assault by gunmen.