He was accused of having praised the beheading of Samuel Paty on the internet: an Afghan asylum seeker was sentenced Wednesday, November 4 in Poitiers to 18 months in prison with a definitive ban on setting foot on French soil.
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Arrested Monday in a reception center for migrants in Poitiers with another Afghan suspect, this 26-year-old man appeared for a series of messages published on social networks a few days after the attack in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), October 16.
Among these messages, a Facebook post praising the beheading of the teacher, topped with two bloodstained swords, or a video on Tik Tok by President Emmanuel Macron with a verse from the Quran in Arabic calling for "to
make those who hurt suffer the messengers of Allah
”.
The defendant, with the thick beard under his mask, described himself as a practicing Muslim but not radicalized and justified himself via an interpreter by explaining that he was "a
fan of hunting
" and that he had published some of the messages incriminating “
for information
”.
He assured that he did not understand the meaning of the verses of the Koran that he had posted because he does not speak Arabic but only Dari, the Persian spoken in Afghanistan.
"
Who are we kidding?"
"Thundered the representative of the public prosecutor, who blasted"
the imbeciles and the ignorant who spread terror in the name of a religion which wants us to go back centuries
.
He demanded 2 years in prison against the young Afghan.
The defendant's lawyer, acknowledging "
serious facts
", asked the judges of the criminal court to "
not make his client an example
".
After a short deliberation, the judges pronounced a less severe prison sentence than wished the public prosecutor but followed the requisitions by also deciding a definitive ban from the national territory.