Eight on trial in France over murder of teacher who showed Prophet caricature
The father of a French pupil whose account of the use of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on free speech indirectly led to the teacher's brutal murder went on trial on Monday accused of association with a terrorist network.
Samuel Paty, 47, was stabbed repeatedly in 2020 outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine near Paris by an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, then decapitated, days after showing his pupils the caricatures.
Many Muslims consider depictions of prophets to be blasphemous.
Prosecutors allege Brahim Chnina used social media to turn a dispute over the civics class into a campaign against Paty, helping make videos designed to incite hatred towards the middle-school teacher and distributing them on social networks.
They accuse Chnina of collaborating with Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Franco-Moroccan who founded a hardline Islamist organization, the Cheikh Yassine Collective, subsequently banned in France.