Samuel Paty is beheaded: Eight people will be tried in France for Islamist links

Six defendants, three of whom are under judicial custody, are on trial for participating in a terrorist act, which carries a 30-year prison sentence.

They will not be cross-examined about their alleged involvement in the murder until November 20.

Among them is 52-year-old Moroccan Brahim Chnina.

He is the father of a then-13-year-old female student who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing them caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

He wasn’t in class at the time.

‘It incites hatred’

Also on trial is 65-year-old French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui.

He and Chnina spread the teenager’s lies on social networks in order to “identify targets”, “incite feelings of hatred” and “thus prepare for various crimes”, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Both men had been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.

The investigation showed that Chnina spoke to Anzorov by phone nine times between October 9 and 13 after he posted videos criticizing Paty.

Sefrioui released a video criticizing what he saw as Islamophobia in France and describing Paty as a “teacher thug”, but told investigators he only wanted “administrative sanctions”.

Two young friends of the attacker face charges of “complicity in terrorist murder”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.

Naim Boudaoud, 22, a Russian of Chechen origin, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, are accused of accompanying Anzorov to a knife shop in the northern city of Rouen the day before the attack.

“The investigation, which lasted almost three years, never managed to establish that Naim Boudaoud had any knowledge of the attacker’s criminal plans,” said his lawyers, Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah.

Boudaoud is accused of accompanying Anzorov on the day of the attack to purchase two replica guns and steel pellets.

Epsirkhanov admitted that he received 800 Euros from Anzorov to find him a real gun, but he was unsuccessful.

‘Deadly danger’

paty used Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.

His murder took place weeks later Charlie Hebdo He republished the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen raided the magazine’s offices and killed 12 people.

The other four defendants interacted with Anzorov online.

22-year-old Turkish citizen Yusuf Çınar later shared a jihadist Snapchat account with him, where images of Paty’s murder were published.

Ismail Gamaev, a 22-year-old Russian of Chechen origin with refugee status, and Louqmane Ingar, also 22, exchanged jihadist content with Anzorov in a Snapchat group. The first posted a photo of Paty’s head full of smiling faces after the murder.

The only woman on trial is 36-year-old Priscilla Mangel, a converted Muslim. I talked to Paty’s killer in XHe described the teacher’s classroom as “an example of the war waged by (France’s) Republican institutions against Muslims.”

Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers of Mickaelle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered teacher, said that the murder revealed “the depth of Islamist infiltration in France”.

They said the trial should “allow our society to become aware of a mortal danger.”

Six former secondary school students were sentenced to six months in prison after a 14-month suspension in December last year following a closed hearing in the children’s court. However, those sentenced to prison will not serve the prison sentence.

Chnina’s daughter was sentenced to 18 months probation after being convicted of libel.

The girl, who is still underage, will speak in court on November 26.