Six teenagers go on trial on Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class – a killing that led authorities to reaffirm France’s cherished rights of expression and secularism.
Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on 16 October 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who had become radicalised. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police.
