When she walked to the witness stand with her determined look, her straight black skirt and her gray jacket with elbow patches, on Tuesday, November 12, we immediately understood that the testimony of Audrey F., the principal of the Samuel Paty school, It would be to be sober and methodical. And that his testimony would be of great value to understand the infernal spiral that led to the murder of the history and geography teacher on October 16, 2020.
Beautiful, first of all, because unlike Samuel Paty, who never had the opportunity to meet his accusers, Audrey F. met the two men at the origin of the “ fatwa ”, these are his words, which caused his beheading. Beautiful too, because she took note of all the events that occurred during the ten days before her death.
It all started on October 7, 2020, when the director decided to sanction a schoolgirl, Z., with two days of exclusion for “ incivility ” and ” absences » he repeated. A sanction unrelated to the course taught the previous day by Samuel Paty, in which Z was also absent. But that is not what the schoolgirl told her parents: she told them that she confronted her teacher, who supposedly asked the students “Muslims to leave class before projecting images of the prophet” naked “.
“If we had been Jews…”
The next morning, the director learns that the schoolgirl’s father, Brahim Chnina, is waiting in front of the establishment to receive her and that he is accompanied by a second man. She agrees to receive them in her office so she can“calm the situation”. The second man, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, an old backpacker of Islamist activism, presents himself as “responsible for the imams of France”which is not.
Thousands of miles away from a banal conversation with the father of a student upset to learn that his daughter has been disciplined, or even discriminated against, the interview immediately turns to the issue of blasphemy: “It is Mr. Sefrioui who will take the initiative. He refuses to allow a “thug” to use freedom of expression to show a caricature of the prophet, which he calls “offensive to the sacred,” and asks me several times to fire this “thug”…”
The main one tries to bring the two men back to their senses and “ refocus » the debate about what the young woman is really accused of. “Mr Sefrioui steps back for a moment. I have the impression that you realize that the exclusion has nothing to do with Mr. Paty’s direction. But it won’t last… He threatens to return with “Muslims” to demonstrate against the establishment. I try to regain control with Mr. Chnina offering to go the next day to meet Mr. Paty. He tells me there is no way he will meet this “thug” face to face…”
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