Pallade Veneta - Eight on trial over French teacher's 2020 beheading

Seven men and one woman are appearing in court in the trial, set to last until December, over the murder of 47-year-old Paty, a teacher of history and geography, that shocked France.

They trial began with the defendants confirming their identity, an AFP correspondent said.

Perpetrator Abdoullakh Anzorov, who had requested asylum in France, was himself killed by police shortly after he murdered Paty near the latter's school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine west of Paris.

The teacher, who had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, is regarded as a hero of free speech by the French authorities and his school is now being named after him.

Six defendants, three of whom are under judicial supervision and are not currently in prison, are being tried for participation in a criminal terrorist act, a crime punishable by 30 years in jail.

They include Brahim Chnina, a 52-year-old Moroccan.

He is the father of a 13-year-old schoolgirl who claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

The claim was false and she was not in the classroom at the time.

Also on trial is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old Franco-Moroccan Islamist activist.

He and Chnina spread the teenager's lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of "designating a target", "provoking a feeling of hatred" and "thus preparing several crimes".

Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.

- 'Mortal peril' -

Two young friends of the attacker are facing even graver charges of "complicity in terrorist murder", a crime punishable by life imprisonment.

Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, a Russian of Chechen origin, are accused of having accompanied Anzorov to a knife shop in the northern city of Rouen the day before the attack.

"Nearly three years of investigation have never managed to establish that Naim Boudaoud had any knowledge of the attacker's criminal plans," his lawyers Adel Fares and Hiba Rizkallah told AFP, denying their client's "complicity" in the crime.

Thibault de Montbrial and Pauline Ragot, lawyers for Mickaelle Paty, one of the sisters of the murdered teacher, said his killing had highlighted the "depth of Islamist infiltration in France".

The trial should in particular "allow our society to become aware of a mortal peril", they added.

The trial is scheduled to last until December 20.

Six former high school students were sentenced in December 2023 to terms ranging from 14 months suspended to six months in prison, following a closed-door trial before the juvenile court.

Those sentenced to prison, however, will not in the end serve jail time.

Chnina's daughter was sentenced in that trial to 18 months probation after being convicted of calumny in her denunciation of Paty.

Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.

His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.

After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people.

B.Fortunato--PV