The defendant faces a sentence for the actions that led to the beheading

Eight men accused of inciting the jihadist killing of French teacher Samuel Paty will learn their fate after a six-week trial in a Paris court.

Among them is the father of a schoolgirl whose lies about Petty’s alleged discrimination against Muslims in the classroom implicate the events that led to his beheading on the street in October 2020.

Also on trial are a Muslim activist who led an online campaign against Pati, two childhood friends of Chechen killer Abdulakh Anzorov who allegedly helped him acquire weapons, and four radicalized men with whom he exchanged messages on social media.

Anzorov was shot dead by police minutes after killing the 47-year-old history and geography teacher outside his high school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Anarin.

He was fired up by claims circulating online that just days earlier, Pati had ordered Muslims to leave his class of 13-year-olds before revealing obscene pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.

In fact, Patty was teaching a lesson on freedom of speech, and before showing one of the controversial photos first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised students to look away if they feared they would be offended.

A schoolgirl named Z. Chninay was not even in class when it happened, but she told her father that she was punished for objecting.

The trial focused on legal arguments over whether people who had no prior knowledge of the attack – or, in some cases, even of its perpetrator – could nevertheless be guilty of being part of a “terrorist organisation”.

Summing up in court this week, prosecution lawyers asked for prison terms of 18 months suspended for up to 16 years for the accused, saying their actions indirectly led to the atrocity.

However, prosecutors also drew the ire of Patti’s family members by refusing to seek the maximum sentence and downgrading some of the crimes charged.

During the trial, the court heard the first public testimony of the girl Z. Chnina, who is now 17 years old.

A year ago, the juvenile court, where hearings were held in private, received a short suspended sentence for defamation.

“I want to apologize to all of (Patti’s family) because if it wasn’t for my lies, they wouldn’t be here today,” she said, sobbing.

“And I want to apologize to my father because when he made the video, it was partly because of my lies.”

In the days following Patty’s free speech class, her father, Brahim Khnina, made videos denouncing the teacher by name. He also enlisted the help of activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui to spread the campaign through his social media network.

Chnina and Sefriui never called for action against Pati, and they were unaware of Anzorov’s existence until after the murder.

But for the prosecutor’s office, they were still guilty of “terrorist association” because they knew about the possible consequences of their campaign.

“No one is saying they wanted Samuel Patti dead, but after lighting 1,000 digital fuses, they knew one of them would lead to jihadist violence against the teacher,” prosecutors said in a statement.

The context in October 2020 was one of heightened tensions over jihadist violence after Charlie Hebdo republished some controversial cartoons of Muhammad. Five years earlier, most of the magazine’s staff had been killed in a jihadist attack on their Paris office.

In court this week, the longest terms were sought for two of Anzorov’s friends who accompanied him when he bought a knife and a fake gun. One of them also took Anzorov to school on the day of the attack.

None of these defendants is a radicalized Muslim, and it was not established in court that they knew about Anzorov’s plans.

That’s why the prosecutor’s office reduced the charge against them to “complicity in a terrorist attack”, which carries a life sentence.

The other four defendants are people Anzorov chatted with, and he never disclosed his intention to kill Petty.

One of them, a convert to Islam, Priscilla Mangel, admitted to making “provocative” comments online about the Patey case, but said she would never have made them if she had known about Anzorov’s intentions.

“For me, it was a pointless discussion with an anonymous person.”

According to defense attorneys, none of the defendants would have been prosecuted for what they said had it not been for Patti’s murder.

So the main legal question before the court is whether the statements can become illegal depending on what happens next.