French Court Convicts 8 in Connection to Events That Led to Teacher’s Killing

A Paris court on Friday convicted eight people for their roles in the events that led to the killing of Samuel Paty, a history teacher whose stabbing and decapitation by an Islamist terrorist in 2020 deeply shocked France.

Mr. Paty was slain in October 2020 near his school northwest of Paris by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen descent who was angered by the teacher’s display of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to illustrate free speech in an eighth-grade civics class. The police shot and killed Mr. Anzorov shortly after the violent assault.

The teacher’s killing came after larger terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016 that together killed hundreds of people. Mr. Paty’s death also deeply unsettled the country and fed worries that France’s public-school teachers — who play a crucial role in imparting the French Republic’s values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism — were increasingly under threat from attacks by Islamist extremists.

Those fears were heightened last year, when another teacher was killed in eerily similar circumstances in northern France.

The verdict on Friday involved the trial of eight people, including Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, friends of Mr. Anzorov who were accused of helping him procure a knife and two pellet guns for his attack. Mr. Boudaoud was also accused of driving Mr. Anzorov to a point near the school. Both pleaded not guilty, arguing they had no previous knowledge of Mr. Anzorov’s plans.

Two other defendants, who also pleaded not guilty, were accused of fueling an online smear campaign against Mr. Paty that ultimately caught the attention of the killer, who lived about 50 miles away from the school.