The trial begins with the beheading of a teacher who showed a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad

Eight people have gone on trial in Paris accused of inciting the killer of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was beheaded in the street outside his school four years ago.

Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young man of Chechen origin with a knife, is dead – he was shot by police minutes after his attack.

So the case is less about the murder itself, and more about the circumstances leading up to it.

In seven weeks, a court will hear how a 13-year-old schoolboy’s sleep disorder caused by social media, started an international hate campaign, and fueled a campaign of revenge against a self-proclaimed defender of Islam.

In this case there are two men who are accused of identifying Mr. Paty as “blasphemous” on the Internet, two friends of Anzorov who are alleged to have offered help to help him, and four others who support him on chat rooms.

The killing of Mr Paty was a shock – and shock – in France.

He was an active and popular history teacher at a high school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a prosperous suburb west of Paris.

On October 6, 2020 he gave a lecture on freedom of speech – the same lecture he had given several times before – to a class of teenagers.

Drawing on The infamous episode of Charlie Hebdo magazine – how the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad led to the killing of most of its staff in 2015 – he briefly showed an example of cartoons.

Before doing so, he recommended that those who are afraid of being offended should avert their eyes.

The next day one of his students – a 13-year-old girl – was asked by her father why she did not go to school.

He told him that he was disciplined because he had the courage to stand up to Mr Paty when he told the Muslims to leave the classroom to show a picture of the naked prophet.

It was three lies.

Mr. Paty had not yet told the Muslims to leave the classroom. The girl was reprimanded, but not for the reason we mentioned. He hadn’t even entered the room the day Mr. Paty gave the lecture on freedom of speech.

But with the internet sending it on its way, the lies spread… and spread.

First the girl’s father – Brahim Chnina – made her repeat the claim in videos, posted on Facebook, naming the teacher.

After that, a local Islamist – Abdelhakim Sefrioui – created a 10-minute online video titled “Islam and the prophet insulted in a community college.”

Within days the school was flooded with threats and hate messages from all over the world. Paty told his colleagues that he is living in a difficult time because of the campaign against him.

Meanwhile, the criticism had reached the attention of an 18-year-old Chechen refugee living in Rouen, 80km (50 miles) to the west.

Anzorov wrote the first note on his phone that read: “The teacher showed his class a picture of the naked Messenger of Allah.”

Anzorov then asked for the help of two friends, who are now on trial.

One of them is said to have been there when he bought a knife in a Rouen shop. Someone helped him buy two replica guns on October 16, the day of the attack, and took him to school.

The final four defendants – including one woman – are people Anzorov chatted with on Snapchat and Twitter and allegedly encouraged him.

The defendants admit they are connected to the case, but deny the charges of “terrorist organization” or “participating in the killing of terrorists”.

Lawyers for the girl’s father and the Islamist preacher will argue that although they have publicly criticized Mr Paty, they have never called for him to be killed.

In the same way, the lawyers of Anzorov’s friends – real and online – will say that they did not know that he was planning to kill.

For prosecutors, context matters. The killing of Samuel Paty comes at a time of heightened awareness of the jihadist threat. In October 2020, Charlie Hebdo had just republished some of the cartoons, marking the start of the lawsuit over the original attack.

The Internet was full of new Islamic threats against France, too in late September a Pakistani man injured two people with a machete in the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.

In that case, accusing a public man of blasphemy was tantamount to designating a terrorist target, prosecutors will argue.

Last year the girl in the middle of the case was there convicted in juvenile court of perjury and given a suspended sentence.

Five other students were also convicted of targeting Mr Paty in Anzarov in order to get money.

The trial will continue until the end of December.