For their part in the 2020 murder of French teacher Samuel Paty, six adolescents have been found guilty. During a free speech course, Paty was decapitated by a Muslim refugee who took offence at his portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed.
In 2020, Paty, a history and geography teacher in the Paris district of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, was fatally stabbed and decapitated close to his classroom. Police shot and killed his killer, an eighteen-year-old Chechen who had arrived in France at the age of six with his family as an asylum seeker.
In a course on blasphemy and free speech laws, Paty had shown students pictures of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed before he was killed.
Following a juvenile court trial behind closed doors, the six teenagers received their sentences on Friday. Five of the young people—who were between the ages of 14 and 15 at the time of the murder and assisted the murderer in identifying Paty—were found guilty of engaging in violent criminal conspiracy.
A thirteen-year-old girl pupil was found guilty of fabricating statements. Although it was later revealed that she was not in the classroom and that Paty had told Muslim students they might leave if they did not want to see the objectionable photos, she had claimed that Paty had ordered Muslim students to identify themselves prior to the lecture.
Not one of the six will go to jail. Four of the other defendants received suspended sentences ranging from 14 to 18 months, while one defendant received a six-month sentence that he would be able to serve at home while wearing an electronic monitor. The girl received an 18-month suspended sentence.
Attorneys representing Paty’s family denounced the punishments as being excessively light. Lawyer Virginie Le Roy told reporters, “A man beheaded in the street is not nothing,” and the family was “anger[d] and “disappointed” and “incomprehensive” about the findings. “The minors played a crucial role in the series of events that culminated in his murder,” the speaker stated.
Next year, eight adults will be put on trial again for their suspected involvement in the murder. One of them, the father of the 13-year-old girl, is charged with sharing films on social media encouraging Paty to be the target of mob violence.
Roughly 10% of French people are Muslims, many of whom are from France’s former colonies in North Africa. Radical Islamists have frequently committed acts of extreme violence, and the government has had difficulty integrating this sizeable minority. Just in the last two months, there have been three incidents in Paris: a man who yelled “Allahu Akbar” before stabbing three people; a woman who threatened to blow herself up on a train in the capital; and an ethnic Chechen who fatally stabbed a teacher in the city of Arras.
