The end of the trial of accused accomplices in the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty coincides with the arrival of the jihadists in Damascus. The Paris courtroom proceedings are now shedding new light on the links that emerged at the time of the murder between the assassin and the Islamist group HTS.
The actual murderer, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by the police shortly after the killing. The trial now being held of his alleged accomplices has made numerous references recently to the influence of the Islamist group HTS on the militancy of Anzorov and his cohorts. It was HTS that also seized power in Damascus a few days ago, forcing the Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad to flee.
Anzorov was linked to two members of HTS. The murderer had clearly identified with the HTS group and its activities. Twelve days before Paty’s murder, he described the HTS group on Snapchat as “the best group today to join” to wage “the real Jihad.”
On the day of the murder itself, Anzorov took the time to send one of his contacts a photo of the decapitated man’s head on Instagram, along with an audio message:
I decapitated the teacher, now I’m going to wage jihad in France.
To which his interlocutor replied: “Allah Akbar! May the peace, mercy and blessing of Allah be upon you.” Anzorov didn’t have the time to get the answer as he was shot dead by the police.
The investigation established that one of Anzorov’s contacts and the recipient of this message was one Faruq Shami, originally from Tajikistan, who had been communicating with him from Idlib, the headquarters of the HTS organisation in Syria. From there, he played an active role in the group’s media propaganda and maintained conversations with several social media profiles of radicalised French people. In 2022, an investigation was opened against him by the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office, as the possible mentor of Anzorov.
At the time of the murder, the HTS group, contacted by journalist Wassim Nasr, denied having expressly ordered the assassination of Samuel Paty, but did not condemn Anzorov’s action, which it felt was justified by the French government’s policy of provocation:
We live in an open world, anyone can contact anyone, we do not know the Chechen student and his act is the responsibility of the French President, who has provoked and accused Islam in most of his speeches. The student lived in France and his interactions are more important with his direct environment. What he did is the result of what is happening in France and not in Idlib.
Two of Anzorov’s friends now on trial in Paris, Ismaël Gamaev and Louqmane Ingar, were also linked to HTS propagandists on social networks.
