We, members of the Observatory of University Ethics, who have always been committed to the restoration of the Republic, meritocracy, and uncompromising secularism, are appalled by the verdict handed down on March 2, 2026, by the Paris Special Assize Court in the case of the accomplices in the assassination of Samuel Paty. First, the facts must be recalled without euphemism. On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher at the Bois-d'Aulne middle school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, was beheaded in the street by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an eighteen-year-old radicalized Chechen, for having shown, in class, within the legitimate context of a lesson on freedom of expression, caricatures of Muhammad published by Charlie Hebdo. The four defendants retried on appeal had each participated, in their own way, in the chain of hatred that targeted the teacher for Islamist vengeance: Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, friends of the killer, had helped him obtain a knife and, in one case, transport it to the school; Brahim Chnina, father of the thirteen-year-old student who had lied about the lesson's content, had launched a smear campaign on social media; Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a notorious Islamist activist, had relayed and amplified this conspiracy by filming and disseminating accusatory videos in front of the school. In the first trial, in December 2024, the court sentenced Boudaoud and Epsirkhanov to sixteen years' imprisonment each for complicity in terrorist murder, Chnina to thirteen years, and Sefrioui to fifteen years for terrorist conspiracy. On March 2, 2026, the appeal produced a significantly more lenient verdict: Boudaoud received a six-year prison sentence and Epsirkhanov a seven-year sentence for simple criminal association, without a terrorist character; Chnina saw his sentence reduced to ten years for terrorist criminal association; Sefrioui retained his fifteen-year sentence for the same facts.[1]
The legal and moral ambiguities raised by this judgment regarding the very classification of a crime whose horror reaches its peak with a public beheading are appalling. Article 421-2-1 of the Penal Code unequivocally states that "participating in a group formed or an agreement established with a view to preparing, as evidenced by one or more material acts, an act of terrorism also constitutes an act of terrorism."[2]However, the facts are clear: the two young men provided the geographical information, the knife, and the means of transportation; Chnina and Sefrioui created the climate of media lynching that transformed a teacher into a designated target. Yet, the Court of Appeal chose to dismiss the terrorist intent charge against Boudaoud and Epsirkhanov, citing their youth and an alleged lack of full awareness of Anzorov's plan, thus reclassifying their role as a simple common law offense. With bitter irony, one is led to wonder if the French justice system has reached the point of requiring the accomplice to personally wield the knife or explicitly shout "Allahu Akbar" for the terrorist nature of the act to be recognized. This artificial dissociation between hateful words and barbaric acts, between the material logistics and the ideology that drives them, relativizes the obvious: a beheading for blasphemy against Islam is not a news item, but the logical outcome of a collective undertaking aimed at intimidating the Republic in one of its most sacred functions, education.
The ambiguity that has arisen is not merely technical; it is primarily philosophical. It suggests that one can aid a jihadist without fully sharing their goals, as if an individual's radicalization could remain invisible to their closest relatives. This reasoning undermines the very notion of a causal chain in terrorism and, consequently, the protection owed to state officials. Good heavens!
The consequences for the teaching profession are immediate and devastating. Our colleagues, largely underpaid (a newly qualified teacher earns barely more than two thousand euros net after five years of higher education and a competitive exam), find themselves on the front lines of the social, cultural, and security crisis in neighborhoods where schools remain the last bastion of republican values. Poorly trained in effective secularism, often with initial training that prioritizes "inclusive" pedagogies at the expense of the authority of knowledge, they face daily intimidation from communal groups without the necessary legal tools or institutional support. This verdict only exacerbates their isolation: why risk one's career, mental health, or, like Samuel Paty, one's life, to defend the freedom to teach Enlightenment ideals, the historical critique of religions, or the supremacy of French law over any religious injunction, if the justice system itself seems to minimize the responsibility of those orchestrating smear campaigns? The freedom to teach, guaranteed by the 1950 statute and by Article 1 of the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, becomes a theoretical principle when the State fails to protect those who embody it. It is worth noting that teachers are asked to educate enlightened citizens while being denied the means to defend themselves against those who consider them apostates! The public education service, a historical pillar of republican meritocracy, is emerging weakened: resignations are increasing, replacements are being made by under-trained contract workers, and the transmission of shared values is declining in favor of a cultural relativism that suits Islamists. Protecting the public service is not an option; it is a republican obligation. Are our "elites" still fully aware of this?
Finally, and this is the most serious point, this verdict fuels a deep and growing distrust of representative democracy in France, the political outcome of which will inevitably be revealed in the 2027 presidential elections. When millions of citizens, committed to republican order and equality before the law, see that the State, after failing to provide physical protection for its teachers, equates accomplices in a terrorist crime with mere common criminals, trust in institutions collapses. Successive opinion polls since 2020 attest to this fracture: a majority of French people perceive the justice system as lenient towards radical Islamism and powerless against separatism, while Parisian elites constantly invoke "living together" and the rights of the defense. This distrust is not irrational; It is the logical product of a state that seems quicker to prosecute "hate speech" than to punish calls for murder. In the 2027 presidential elections, this resentment will find its electoral expression. The political forces that advocate for a restoration of state authority, uncompromising secularism, and genuine meritocracy (those that refuse to yield to communitarianism) will garner the votes of those who believe the Republic no longer protects its own citizens. For democracy cannot survive the perception of a two-tiered justice system: one for the elites, another for the people who pay taxes and send their children to public school.
It is time to break with these legal ambiguities that undermine the social contract. The restoration of the Republic requires a justice system that names terrorism without euphemism, a massive revaluation of the teaching profession, and a secularism that yields nothing to fanaticism. Samuel Paty did not die so that his indirect murderers could benefit from reduced sentences in the name of an ill-informed youth or insufficiently proven intent. Let us protect the public education system, or accept its decline and the end of republican meritocracy. The time for leniency is over.
The text is signed by all members of the Observatory. The initial signatories are:
- Xavier-Laurent Salvador
- Patrick Henriet
- Gilles Guglielmi
- Claire Laux
- Emmanuelle Henin
- André Quaderi
- Bruno Masala
- Pierre Vermeren
- Joseph Ciccolini
- Jacques-Robert
- Renée Frégosi
- Michel Fichant
- Ivan Burel
- Bruno Sire
- Dominique Triaire
- Pierre-Henri Tavoillot
- François Roudaut
- Vincent Tournier
- Michel Albouy
- Vincent Zarini
