Six teenagers to stand trial in Paris, France, for their roles in the gruesome beheading of a teacher in 2020.
The 47-year-old history and geography teacher Samuel Paty from the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was stabbed and then beheaded near his secondary school.
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Abdoullakh Anzorov, an ethnic Chechen refugee of 18 years old, was shot dead on the spot by police.
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A young radicalized Islamist murdered Paty after word circulated on social media that the instructor had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Paty used the magazine in an ethics lecture to analyze free speech legislation in France, where blasphemy is legal, and drawings criticizing religious figures are common.
His murder occurred just weeks after Charlie Hebdo posted the caricatures. When the magazine originally used the images, Islamic terrorists attacked its office in 2015, killing 12 people.
Dominique Bernard, another teacher, was murdered in Arras, northern France, last month by a young radicalized Islamist.
Bernard's accused killer, Mohammed Moguchkov, was also from Russia's predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region.
Five of the teenagers on trial, who were 14 or 15 at the time of Paty's death, will be tried in juvenile court behind closed doors for criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence.
They are accused of looking for Paty and identifying him as the murderer in exchange for money. A sixth youngster, who was 13 at the time, is accused of falsely accusing Paty of asking Muslim students to identify themselves and leave the classroom before showing the drawings.
According to Virginie Le Roy, a lawyer representing Paty's parents and one of his sisters, the teenagers' trial is critical.
"The role of the minors was fundamental in the sequence of events that led to his assassination," she went on to say.
During questioning, the students claimed that they expected Paty to be "flagged up on social media," "humiliated," or "roughed up," but never dreamed "it would go as far as murder."
