Six students go on trial over 2020 murder of French schoolteacher

(AFP) Six teenagers go on trial in Paris on Monday for their role in the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, the first of two trials in a case that horrified France.

The 47-year-old history and geography teacher was stabbed and then beheaded near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

His attacker, 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov, was shot dead at the scene by police.

The young radicalised Islamist murdered Paty after messages spread on social media that the teacher had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Paty had used the magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.

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