Six teenagers go on trial behind closed doors on Monday, accused of involvement in the beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty by a suspected Islamist in 2020 in an attack that struck at the heart of the country's secular values.
PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Six teenagers go on trial behind closed doors on Monday, accused of involvement in the beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty by a suspected Islamist in 2020 in an attack that struck at the heart of the country's secular values.
The teacher had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering a number of Muslim parents. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.
Did you just read the headline and get outraged without pausing for even a second to think "2.5 years for murder and mutilation can't be right, I better read the article"?
The five other minors to be prosecuted, aged between 14 and 15 at the time of the attack, will be charged with premeditated criminal conspiracy, or ambush.
They are suspected of having pointed out Paty to the murderer or helped monitor his exit from the school.
They weren’t involved in the killing, they are guilty of pointing him out.
Which part of “helped monitor his exit” did you not get? They stalked him with the intent to assist the assassination. By your logic, many people aren’t actually criminals because they’re not the ones who actually carried out the murder, they just directed it.
I’m not saying they should get the death penalty but what they did was heinous and deserves more than 2.5 years.
The only source I can find on such a thing is post Nuremberg trials, and it was ten nazi generals that definitely deserved it.
I did find a source for 23,000 out of 35,000 deserting Nazis were killed by their own party for fleeing war, so maybe you were thinking of that while being a nazi?
The point is that you do not actually need to have killed anyone yourself for you to get the most severe punishment available. If they're a fascist, put them before a court and let them be judged. But there's a problem. The people are not yet antagonized against fascism enough. Too many people are accepting or indifferent of it.
Where did I say they were directly involved in the beheading? I know xenophobic is a big word for you but you should still look up the definition before just tossing it around like that.
I see you're privy to some information that the media doesn't have, everywhere says he wanted to know where that teacher was to scare him. Where did you gather the information from that they were co-conspirators fully aware of the plan?
If you play by felony murder rules, they’re just as guilty since they participated in the planning and actively participated (by waiting for / stalking the victim and pointing him out to their co-conspirator).
In some places if you help plan and participate in a crime that results in a death you’re equally culpable of the murder - even if you weren’t in the same room as the killing. Escape car drivers frequently get death row for a murder that happened in the course of the crime.
They are not the perpetrators, and were kids at the time. Kids are easily influenced, and make mistakes, a lot of them.
In this case those mistakes ended up causing the gruesome death of an innocent teacher, that is why they are on trial. If someone is guilty, it is their parents, who failed to educate them, and those who exploited those weaknesses to put them under their influence.
In this case it is more selling information about the victim to the perpetrator.
The tribunal task will be to evaluate if they knew what the perpetrator was about to do, in which case their punishment will be harsher, or if they didn't.
It is more of a legal shortcut, but it is a useful one if we don't want to have to do psychological expertise and possibly counter-expertise for every case to determine if someone is mature enough or isn't.
I know some man-childs that never got past a teenager maturity, as well as teenagers who have more maturity than many "adults".
But laws have to be precise for many reasons, and the age of legal responsibility has many reasons to exist other than this case.
Still, adults are mostly less immature than kids, as they had the time to mature (albeit not everyone, unfortunately).
More life experience means it is easier for adults to discern bullshit from truth, and thus their responsibility is considered as full in the case they make mistakes.
A kid tribunal task is as much to discern how mature a kid is as it is to sentence them to a just punishment.
I don't know for you, but most of us aren't. Throwing stones at them will only lower us at the same level as those who beheaded others for their fanatical ideology. Let justice do its work.
I was writing from a juridical view point, not from an emotional one. Like everyone I want them to be punished, but in accordance with their fault, not with the emotion, albeit legitimate, that teacher murder created. Once again, they are kids, or maybe should I say teens, with limited life experiences, easily swayed by those who offer them a seemingly strong identity, like every teenager strives to find at that period of their life.
A strong punishment is necessary, but not as strong as if they were full fledged adults.
Usually in France, at that age, sentences are in most cases cut in half of what an adult would get. Exception for life sentences, in which case it is the "surety period", during which they cannot be released no matter what, which will be cut in half.