A French court has sentenced eight people to prison terms ranging from three to 16 years for their involvement in the social media campaign that culminated in the October 2020 murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb.
The convictions center on a fabricated online narrative claiming Paty had shown offensive images of Prophet Muhammad to students. In reality, the 47-year-old history and geography teacher had conducted a lesson on freedom of speech at his Conflans-Saint-Honorine school, warning students they could look away if potentially offended by Charlie Hebdo magazine images.
Among those convicted was Brahim Chnina, who initiated the online campaign based on his 13-year-old daughter’s false account, and Islamic activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui. The court also found guilty two associates who accompanied the killer, Abdoullakh Anzorov, while purchasing weapons, and four individuals who exchanged messages with him on radical chat platforms.
The judge rejected defense arguments that the accused were unaware of Anzorov’s murderous intentions, ruling that their actions constituted incitement regardless of foreknowledge. Anzorov, a radicalized Chechen Muslim, was killed by police shortly after murdering Paty.
The seven-week trial examined how a schoolgirl’s lie escalated through social media into a deadly hate campaign, leading to France’s latest terrorism conviction related to Islamic extremism.
