May 16, 2023. The French examining magistrates in charge of the case of the murder of Samuel Paty, a high school teacher savagely beheaded on October 16, 2020 in Conflans Sainte Honorine, a small city in the suburbs of Paris where he taught, reveal the list of those they have decided to indict.
The list of 14 people does not include the murderer, Abdullakh Anzorov: he was shot dead by police. Prior to Paty’s murder, his name was in the database of the Central Office for the Fight against Crime, but he had not been placed under police surveillance. He was a Chechen Muslim, age 18, with refugee status in France, and had sought to join Islamic terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Two young French radicalized Muslims, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naïm Boudaoud, had accompanied him to a store where he bought a hunting knife to cut off his victim’s head. Both men told the investigators that they knew what Abdullakh Anzorov wanted to do and that they approved of it. They are being prosecuted for “criminal association”. Their prison sentence will not exceed 10 years; they will be eligible for release after seven or eight years — dismayingly little.
