France's court convicts 8 for involvement in 2020 beheading of teacher

France's anti-terrorism court convicted eight people on Friday of involvement in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in 2020.

Paty was killed near Paris on October 16, 2020, days after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The assailant, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot to death by police.

Those convicted were accused, in some cases, of providing assistance to the perpetrator and, in others, of organising a hate campaign online before the murder took place.

The shocking death of the 47-year-old Paty left an imprint on France, and several schools are now named after him.

The convicts include friends of assailant Abdoullakh Anzorov who allegedly helped purchase weapons for the attack and the father of a schoolgirl whose lies started the fatal spiral of events.

The attack occurred against a backdrop of protests in many Muslim countries and calls online for violence targeting France and the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper had republished its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad a few weeks before Paty's death to mark the opening of the trial over deadly 2015 attacks on its newsroom by Islamic extremists.

The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who saw them as sacrilegious. But the fallout from Paty's killing reinforced the French state's commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life.