Bernadette and Jean Paty took to the witness stand together on Tuesday, February 3, at the appeal trial for the terrorist murder of their son, Samuel Paty. The father, once a tall, sturdy man, was now weakened by age and hardship. He needed a cane to walk, but insisted on standing tall and staying dignified at the special criminal appeals court in Paris. He had been hospitalized during the initial trial, at the end of 2024, and was unable to testify.
The mother of the murdered history and geography teacher, herself a retired teacher, seemed frail beside her husband, but her voice was resolute when it came to defending her son’s memory. “He was unfailingly tolerant,” she said. In their family, “we are secular and we don’t criticize religions,” the victim’s father added, in a whisper.
Four men, who had previously been sentenced to prison terms of 13 to 16 years, were once again on trial for their role in the beheading of Paty, a history and geography teacher, near the middle school he worked in, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, on October 16, 2020.
Yet as the second week of the trial began, the focus was not on the complicity of Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, two friends of the perpetrator, Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Chechen-born terrorist who was killed by law enforcement after the attack. Nor was it on the online campaign led by Brahim Chnina, the parent of one of Paty’s students, and Islamist preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui.
You have 80.22% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
