A total of 14 people are set to face trial in France over the beheading of a teacher by an Islamist extremist in 2020, legal documents obtained by the AFP news agency showed on Tuesday.
The most serious charges — complicity in a terrorist murder — are being pressed against two friends of the Chechen refugee who murdered teacher Samuel Paty after he showed pictures of the Prophet Mohammed to his pupils, the case documents reveal.
The killer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police at the scene in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. The attacker reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” as police confronted him.
Prosecutors believe the attacker”s friends, Azim Epsirkhanov and Naim Boudaoud, accompanied Anzorov to buy a knife and Boudaoud travelled with him to the school, according to AFP.
Another six adults will be tried for associating with terrorists, including the father of a girl at Paty’s school, an Islamic preacher, as well as a Muslim convert in contact with Anzorov via Twitter.
Six teenagers will be brought before children’s courts for allegedly undertaking surveillance around the school and identifying Paty for his killer.
Paty was targeted after messages spread on social media that he had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to his class.
The 47-year-old teacher had used the magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.

In the days after the beheading, French authorities detained dozens of people, including four members of the killer’s family.
Following Paty”s beheading, the French government issued an order to dissolve a domestic pro-Hamas Islamic group, Collective Cheikh Yassine, which is named after the founder of Hamas.