Eight sentenced in France for actions that led to teacher beheading

A French court has sentenced eight people to prison for their roles in a hate campaign that led to the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in October 2020.

The sentences handed down range from three to 16 years.

The attack took place following social media posts falsely claiming Paty had shown his students obscene pictures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free speech.

Abdoullakh Anzorov murdered Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, at a secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.

Anzorov was shot dead by police minutes after killing the 47-year-old.

He was fired up by claims circulating on the internet that a few days earlier Paty had ordered Muslims to leave a class of 13-year-olds, before displaying the images of the prophet Muhammad.

In fact, Paty had been conducting a lesson on freedom of speech, and before showing one of the controversial images first published by the Charlie Hebdo magazine, he advised pupils to avert their eyes if they feared being offended.