PARIS (Reuters) – The daddy of a French pupil whose account of the usage of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a category on free speech not directly led to the trainer’s brutal homicide went on trial on Monday accused of affiliation with a terrorist community.
Samuel Paty, 47, was stabbed repeatedly in 2020 exterior his faculty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine close to Paris by an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, then decapitated, days after exhibiting his pupils the caricatures.
Many Muslims take into account depictions of prophets to be blasphemous.
Prosecutors allege Brahim Chnina used social media to show a dispute over the civics class right into a marketing campaign in opposition to Paty, serving to make movies designed to incite hatred in the direction of the middle-school trainer and distributing them on social networks.
They accuse Chnina of collaborating with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Franco-Moroccan who based a hardline Islamist organisation, the Cheikh Yassine Collective, subsequently banned in France.
Each males are charged with affiliation with a terrorist organisation. Chnina’s lawyer declined to remark forward of the beginning of the trial.
Sefrioui’s lawyer, Ouadie Elhamamouchi, has mentioned there is no such thing as a proof of contact between Sefrioui and the Chechen killer, whom police shot useless.
Elhamamouchi instructed Reuters that Sefrioui would present the court docket “that he has completely no connection by any means with this heinous assault, which he has condemned from day one”.
Among the many six others on trial in Paris alongside Chnina and Sefrioui are two associates of Paty’s killer, Abdullakh Anzorov. Prosecutors allege they knew of Anzorov’s plans to slay Paty and helped him purchase weapons.
Each are charged with complicity in a terrorist killing, and French media say they’ve each denied wrongdoing.
Final yr, a court docket discovered Chnina’s daughter and 5 different adolescents responsible of fees associated to collaborating in a pre-meditated prison conspiracy and serving to to organize an ambush.
Chnina’s daughter was not in Paty’s class when the caricatures have been proven and the court docket discovered her responsible of constructing false accusations and slanderous feedback.
The most recent trial is because of run till December.
