It is difficult to imagine the weight that Z. carries at 17 years old, with her ponytail, her pout and her adolescent cheeks. For four years he has been living with the crushing guilt of having caused, with his lies, the murder followed by the beheading of his history and geography teacher, Samuel Paty. But on her shoulders she carries another weight, Z., that of the fate of her father, imprisoned for four years and who faces thirty years of criminal prison for having believed his daughter’s lie.
This former schoolgirl, now in her final year, is the one who caused the tragedy. Her fallacious account of a course taught by Paty dedicated to freedom of expression, which she had not attended, exploited by two irresponsible adults (her father and the Islamist agitator Abdelhakim Sefrioui), had led to the unspeakable. But then she was only 13 years old and as such she was sentenced, in December 2023, by the Paris juvenile court, to eighteen months of probation for slanderous denunciation.
She returned to court on Tuesday, November 26, this time as a witness, during the adult trial. As it was held behind closed doors, it is the first time that the public and journalists have had the opportunity to hear it. With her short pleated skirt, her baby face, and her hands nervously wringing on the witness stand, we take her two years younger and quickly understand the impossible situation she finds herself in.
She is torn, Z., between his desire to sincerely apologize and his desire to save her. ” dad “who looks at her with tired eyes from the bench. We then remember the title of Samuel Paty’s course that he had not attended: “Dlemma situation.” How can you not fall into the temptation of continuing to lie a little, knowing that one big lie sent your father to prison and that the little lies Maybe I could save him?
“I wanted to sincerely apologize…”
In her spontaneous statement, the teenager first wanted to apologize to the civil parties. “I couldn’t do it a year ago at the hearing, I would like to apologize to the family, because I destroyed their life. Today I complain about not having seen my father for four months, but you, it has been five years since the last time you saw him. [Samuel Paty]. I know my apologies are hard to hear, but I wanted to sincerely apologize…”
You have 62.64% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
