NEW DELHI: Six teenagers, on Monday, go on for trials in Paris for their alleged role in the beheading of a French teacher in 2020.
French history teacher Samuel Paty was brutally murdered after he showed the caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class. This action ignited anger within Muslim parents.
One of a student, who was in that class, allegedly told her parents about the class and also said that Muslim pupils were asked to leave the room before showing the caricatures.Currently, that 13-year-old girl is facing false accusation charges after it was established that she was not in the class when it happened.
Meanwhile, the other five minors will also be charged with premeditated criminal conspiracy or ambush.
The teacher was killed outside his school in Paris by an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, who was shot dead by police soon after the attack.
They are suspected of having pointed out Paty to the murderer or helped monitor his exit from the school.
All six minors were expected to face a minimum of 2 and a half years in prison.
“He is consumed with regret and is very fearful of the confrontation with Paty’s family,” Antoine Ory, lawyer for one of the accused, said Monday before the hearing started.
Paty’s sister Mickaelle said in a statement through lawyer Louis Cailliez that her brother would still be alive without a “fatal association of small cowardices, big lies”.
The hearings, due to last until December 8, will be held behind closed doors. Eight adults are also accused and will appear before a special criminal court.
Last month, almost two years to the day of Paty’s killing, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in northern France, triggering renewed fears of jihadist violence.
France has suffered a wave of attacks by Islamist militants in past years, including a gun rampage in 2015 in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. This satirical magazine had published caricatures Paty showed in his class.
(With inputs from Reuters)
French history teacher Samuel Paty was brutally murdered after he showed the caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class. This action ignited anger within Muslim parents.
One of a student, who was in that class, allegedly told her parents about the class and also said that Muslim pupils were asked to leave the room before showing the caricatures.Currently, that 13-year-old girl is facing false accusation charges after it was established that she was not in the class when it happened.
Meanwhile, the other five minors will also be charged with premeditated criminal conspiracy or ambush.
The teacher was killed outside his school in Paris by an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, who was shot dead by police soon after the attack.
They are suspected of having pointed out Paty to the murderer or helped monitor his exit from the school.
All six minors were expected to face a minimum of 2 and a half years in prison.
“He is consumed with regret and is very fearful of the confrontation with Paty’s family,” Antoine Ory, lawyer for one of the accused, said Monday before the hearing started.
Paty’s sister Mickaelle said in a statement through lawyer Louis Cailliez that her brother would still be alive without a “fatal association of small cowardices, big lies”.
The hearings, due to last until December 8, will be held behind closed doors. Eight adults are also accused and will appear before a special criminal court.
Last month, almost two years to the day of Paty’s killing, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in northern France, triggering renewed fears of jihadist violence.
France has suffered a wave of attacks by Islamist militants in past years, including a gun rampage in 2015 in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. This satirical magazine had published caricatures Paty showed in his class.
(With inputs from Reuters)
