The more closely one examines the unprecedented case of the appeals trial for the murder of history and geography teacher Samuel Paty, the less it seems coherent in penal terms. After four hours of closing arguments on Friday, February 27, the prosecution requested a 20-year prison sentence for the two men behind the hate campaign that led to Paty’s beheading by a radicalized young Chechen national. The men, Brahim Chnina, the father of a middle school student, and Islamist agitator Abdelhakim Sefrioui, were both charged with terrorist criminal conspiracy.

The severity of the requested sentences was the first surprise in the prosecution’s closing statements. At the initial trial, in December 2024, the two men were sentenced to 13 and 15 years, though the prosecution, which was then represented by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, had only requested 10 and 12-year sentences. Now, 14 months later, with the general prosecutor’s office having taken over from the anti-terrorism office, the sentences requested at the Paris appeals court have doubled, or nearly so.

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