6 teens on trial

Six teenagers went on trial Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet of Islam to his class, a killing that led authorities to reaffirm France’s cherished rights of expression and secularism. Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who had become radicalized. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police. Among those going on trial, a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. She later told investigators she had lied. She was not in the classroom that day and Paty did not make such a request, the investigation has shown.