The defendants face trial for the actions that led to the beheadings

Nine people accused of trying to kill French teacher Samuel Paty by a jihadist will hear their fate after a six-week trial in a Paris court.

They included the schoolgirl’s father who lied about Paty’s alleged discrimination against Muslims in the class and set out a series of events that led to her beheading on the street in October 2020.

Also on trial are a Muslim activist who led an online campaign against Paty, two childhood friends of Chechen-born killer Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him obtain weapons, and four men with whom he exchanged messages on social media.

Anzorov was shot dead by police minutes after killing a 47-year-old history-geography teacher outside his high school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

He was angered by allegations circulating online that a few days earlier Paty had ordered Muslims to leave his class of 13-year-olds before exposing pornographic images of the prophet Muhammad.

In fact, Paty was conducting a lecture on freedom of speech, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised readers to avert their eyes if they were afraid of being offended.

A schoolgirl, named Z. Chnina, had not even entered the classroom when this happened, but she told her father that she was punished for protesting.

The trial centered on legal arguments about whether people who had no prior knowledge of an attack – or in some cases even its perpetrator – could be held guilty of “terrorist organization”.

Summarizing in court this week, the prosecution lawyers asked that the accused be sentenced to between 18 months and 16 years, saying that their actions led to this unintended brutality.

However, prosecutors also angered Paty’s family members by refusing to push for more sentences, as well as downgrading the merits of some of the alleged crimes.

During the trial, the court heard the first testimony from the girl, Z. Chnina, now 17 years old.

Last year he was given a suspended sentence by the juvenile court, which was held behind closed doors.

“I want to apologize to everyone [Paty family] because if it wasn’t for my lies, they wouldn’t be here today,” she said, crying.

“And I want to apologize to my father because when he made this video it was because of my lies.”

In the days following Paty’s free speech class, her father Brahim Chnina made videos criticizing the teacher by name. He also asked for the help of activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui to spread the campaign through his social media.

Chnina and Sefrioui never called for action against Paty, and were unaware of Anzorov’s existence until after the murder.

But for the prosecutors they were guilty of “terrorist association”, because they knew about the possible consequences of their campaign.

“No one says they want the death of Samuel Paty, but in lighting 1,000 digital fuses they knew that one of them would lead to Jihadist violence against teachers,” according to the prosecutor.

The context in October 2020 was one of growing controversy over Jihadist violence, after Charlie Hebdo republished some of Muhammad’s cartoons. Five years earlier, most of the magazine’s staff were gunned down by jihadists in their office in Paris.

This week in court, longer sentences were requested for Anzorov’s friends who were with him when he bought the fake knife and gun. One of them also drove Anzorov to school in the afternoon during the attack.

None of the defendants is a devout Muslim, and it was not established in court that they knew about Anzorov’s plans.

That is why the prosecutor reduced the charge against them to “participating in a terrorist attack” which could carry a life sentence.

The other four suspects are people Anzorov talked to on chat forums, without revealing his intention to kill Paty.

One of them, a convert to Islam called Priscilla Mangel, admitted that she made “inflammatory” comments online about Paty’s case but said she would not have said them if she had known Anzorov’s intentions.

“To me this was an anodyne conversation with a stranger.”

According to the defense lawyers, none of the suspects would face trial for what they said, if it wasn’t for Paty’s murder.

So the key legal question before the court is whether the words he utters can be legal depending on what follows.