In the middle of the youth assembly of those accused in the trial for the murder of Samuel Paty, most of whom were barely out of adolescence at the time of the events, two white heads appear in the box of the special court in Paris : Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65 years old, and Brahim Chnina, 52 years old, ten years older after four years of preventive detention. They are the true adults of the infernal spiral that led to the death of the professor, beheaded on October 16, 2020 by a radicalized 18-year-old Chechen.
Since the beginning of the trial, they have listened to the process in silence, with their silhouettes bent under the weight of the years and the facts with which they are accused. Both are accused of having orchestrated the hate campaign, based on a schoolgirl’s lie, that caused the teacher’s death. Brahim Chnina is the father of the schoolgirl, who, by spreading his lie on social networks, targeted Samuel Paty. He had been encouraged in his clique by an old backpacker of political Islam, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who had amplified the controversy by activating his community relays.
What prompted these two men to launch this smear campaign against the professor? The stigmatization that Brahim Chnina mistakenly thought his daughter had suffered? Religion? The desire to denounce the “ blasphemy » What would Samuel Paty have done when presenting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students? This issue will be explored later in the trial when the facts are addressed.
But we have already had some fragments of answers, on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 7, during his personality interrogation. In every terrorist trial, this sequence is akin to a balancing act: discussing the facts or the defendant’s relationship to religion is prohibited, but the substance of the case and religion always come to the surface.
“I have always done it well”
In the opinion of all the relatives interviewed by the researcher in charge of creating his portrait, Brahim Chnina is a “father hen”a loving husband, brother and “ dedicated “. The picture painted by those around him is that of a saint. This native of Oran, Algeria, who arrived in France at the age of 10, was forced from a very young age to “take your family”, sacrificing his studies (he dreamed of being an airplane pilot) to take care of his brothers and sisters, in particular his little brother Rachid, seriously disabled by a rare disease.
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