Six teens convicted for role in 2020 beheading of schoolteacher
Samuel Paty, 47, was killed by an 18-year-old Chechen Muslim refugee near his school in the suburbs of Paris, France.
Six French teenagers have been convicted for their involvement in the 2020 beheading of a schoolteacher.
Samuel Paty, 47, was killed near the school he worked in Éragny-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris, France, by 18-year-old Chechen Muslim refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov. The teenager used a meat cleaver to cut his head off.
Five of the defendants were found guilty of helping to stake out the middle school teacher.
A sixth was found guilty of lying about what the teacher said in class and fueling online anger that led to his death.
Prior to his death, Paty showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his students in a class about freedom of expression. Depictions of Muhammad are seen as blasphemous by many Muslims.
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Anzorov had been radicalized online, and accomplice drove him to the school, where he then paid kids to identify Paty as he was coming out.
He was killed at the scene by police minutes after the attack.
The Charlie Hebdo drawings had spawned their own attack when two brothers stormed the magazine's offices in 2015, kiilling 12 and injuring 11.
After a hearing at French juvenile court Friday, the six defendants left the courtroom without speaking. Some had their heads down as they listened to the verdict and one appeared to wipe away tears, the Associated Press reports.
Her lawyer, Mbeko Tebula, says she "doesn’t forgive herself for this lie."
"She didn’t imagine it would … turn into so much horror," he said. ‘’She was 13."
"She will try to move forward," he said. "She will try to rebuild herself as a woman. To live with this permanent guilt, which will not pass through her but will inhabit her."
France has been the subject of a number of radical Islamist terror attacks in recent years, including the horrific November 2015 coordinated attacks that killed 130 people. Last week, a man with a history of Islamic radicalism and mental illness fatally stabbed a 23-year-old German-Filipino tourist near the Eiffel Tower.
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