(AFP) French prosecutors on Monday sought jail terms of between one and 16 years for eight people on trial over the 2020 beheading of a school teacher by an Islamist radical that shocked France.
The harshest sentence was reserved for a defendant accused of joining a terrorist enterprise helping to prepare the murder of Samuel Paty after the teacher showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class.
Paty became a free speech hero to the French authorities following his beheading in October 2020 by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who died in a shootout with the police.
Prosecutors had earlier downgraded “complicity in terrorist murder” charges carrying up to a life sentence for Anzorov’s friends Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23.
