On Tuesday, November 12, when Audrey F., the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine secondary school principal, took the witness stand, she appeared determined in her black pencil skirt and grey jacket adorned with elbow patches. It quickly became apparent that her testimony before the Paris special criminal court would be sober, methodical and would prove invaluable in understanding the downward spiral that led to the murder of Samuel Paty, a history-geography teacher at the school, on October 16, 2020.
Her account is precious, first of all, because unlike Paty, who never had the opportunity to meet his accusers, Audrey F. met the two men behind the "fatwa," as she described it, that led to his beheading. It is also valuable because she took note of all the events that unfolded in the 10 days leading up to the professor's death.
It all began on October 7, 2020, when the principal decided to sanction a schoolgirl, Z., with a two-day suspension for repeated "incivilities" and "absences." This sanction had nothing to do with the lesson given the previous day by Paty, from which Z. was also absent. But that's not what the girl told her parents. She told them that she had stood up to her teacher, who had allegedly asked the Muslim pupils to leave the classroom before showing images of the "naked" Prophet.
The next morning, the principal learned that the girl's father, Brahim Chnina, was waiting outside the school to meet her, accompanied by a second man. She agreed to receive them in her office, in order to "calm the situation." The second man, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, an old hand in Islamist activism, claimed that he was "responsible for France's imams," which he is not.
Far from a banal conversation with a parent upset to learn that his daughter has been punished, or even discriminated against, the interview immediately turned to the question of blasphemy. Sefrioui "took the lead," she said. "He refused that a 'thug' would use freedom of expression to show a caricature of the Prophet, which he called an 'offense against the sacred', and repeatedly asked me to fire this 'thug'..."
The principal tried to bring the two men to their senses and "refocus" the debate on what the young girl was really accused of. "Mr. Sefrioui had a moment's pause. I had the impression that he realized that the exclusion had nothing to do with Mr. Paty's class. But it doesn't last... He threatened to come back with 'Muslims' to demonstrate in front of the school. I tried to get back on track with Mr. Chnina by suggesting that he come and meet Mr. Paty the next day. He told me it's out of the question for him to come face to face with this 'thug'..."
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