In November, six teenagers from France went on trial for their alleged roles in the 2020 beheading of their history and geography teacher. The trial, which included in December, was conducted in juvenile court due to the defendants’ ages at the time of the crime. The court proceedings were held behind closed doors, with only those directly affected by the case in attendance. In its decision, the court found five of the six defendants, aged 14 through 15 at the time of the attack, guilty of helping the attacker identify the teacher.

Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered near his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris, on October 16, 2020. The chief assailant, 18-year-old Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Chechen refugee, was shot dead by police following the attack. 

This act of violence was perpetrated shortly after Paty showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in an ethics class discussing France’s free speech laws.

The six teenagers on trial were accused of various roles in the lead-up to the killing. Five of them faced charges of criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence. 

They were alleged to have identified Paty to his killer in exchange for money. 

The sixth defendant, a girl who was 13 at the time, was convicted of making false allegations. She told her parents that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the room before showing the cartoons, a claim later proven false as she was not present in the class when the incident occurred.

The legal representatives for the defendants and the Paty family expressed diverse perspectives on the trial. Louis Cailliez, a lawyer for the Paty family, emphasized the need to understand the true reasons behind the teenagers’ actions, which he described as “unforgivable.” However, Antoine Ory, representing one of the accused, highlighted his client’s remorse and fear of confronting Paty’s family. 

The teenagers themselves, now high school pupils, reportedly did not expect that their actions would lead to murder, expecting at most that Paty would face social media criticism or minor physical harm.

This trial was part of a broader investigation that includes eight adults, with their trial scheduled for late 2024. 

The significance of the minors’ role in the sequence of events leading to Paty’s assassination was a central element of both the trial and the forthcoming proceedings against the adults.

The incident involving Samuel Paty has reignited concerns about jihadist violence in France. Nearly two years after Paty’s murder, another teacher, Dominique Bernard, was fatally stabbed in an attack in northern France, underlining the persistent threat of radical Islamist violence in the country. 

France has previously experienced a series of attacks by Islamist militants, including the 2015-gun rampage at the Charlie Hebdo offices.