It is around 4:38 p.m. this Friday, October 16 and Abdoullakh Anzorov is compulsively strumming on his smartphone.
Dressed in black, this 18-year-old Chechen is crouching near the excruciatingly mutilated body of Samuel Paty, a history teacher, whom he has just murdered near the Bois d'Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) with a butcher's knife.
The head of his victim lies at his feet.
For twenty-one minutes, even though he has just sowed terror in a quiet area of the Paris suburbs, the young terrorist talks with a user on the social network Instagram.
This one is thousands of kilometers from the crime scene.
According to our information, investigators from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) located him in the Idlib region, in Syria.
The police believe they have identified him as a Russian-speaking fighter.
The translation of his pseudonym written in Cyrillic is moreover "Idlib's diary" ("dnevnik_idliba").
This mysterious correspondent is, at the very least, the second jihadist to be found in the Iraqi-Syrian zone with whom Abdullakh Anzorov spoke discreetly.
The interlocutor answers "Allah Akbar"
On October 16, the two men spoke in Russian by private messages until 4:59 p.m., barely a handful of minutes before Samuel Paty's killer was chased by police from the BAC de Conflans.
Then shot down by nine retaliatory shots.
Examination of the phone found on the terrorist's body allowed investigators to read their discussion.
It is discovered that Anzorov posted on Twitter at 4:55 pm a macabre photograph of the severed head of the victim with a message congratulating himself on having "executed a hell dog (sic) who dared to belittle Muhammad" - the teacher had shown Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his 4th year students.
He immediately took a screenshot of this message of demands and the morbid cliché that he transmitted on Instagram to his interlocutor in Syria.
The jihadist then replied "Allah Akbar" in Russian.
At 5 pm, Anzorov, who uses the pseudonym "Abdullah Shishani" [Abdullah, the Chechen] records an audio message in which he gargles with his "brothers" for having "avenged" them by having killed "a man who showed the prophet insultingly ”.
“My brothers, pray that Allah will accept me as a martyr,” he adds, breathlessly, aware that he only has a few minutes left before the confrontation with the police.
The young terrorist sends this audio message to the same Russian-speaking fighter on Instagram.
It is then the latter who will broadcast the final words of the killer on social networks in order to bring them wide publicity, and not the assailant himself as has been believed.
Did this jihadist play the role of sponsor of the attack?
Or was it just a simple virtual relationship with whom the terrorist wanted to tell his barbaric misdeeds before his death?
It is still too early to tell.
“Nothing says at this stage that Anzorov was remotely guided from abroad, confides a close investigator.
With his interlocutors in Syria, he seems rather to be in the demonstration, wanting to prove his worth.
He inquired about the situation on the spot.
But we are only at the beginning of the investigation.
"
Theological advice from a second jihadist
The killer's ultimate confidant is in any case the second jihadist discovered in his address book.
As Le Parisien - Today in France revealed, Abdoullakh Anzorov also spoke with another Internet user whose IP address was located in the Syrian region of Idlib between September 12 and 14.
According to the first elements of the investigation, this Russian-speaking jihadist, who used the pseudonym "12.7X108", is not the same as the one to whom the terrorist claimed responsibility for the attack.
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In their discussions on Instagram, Anzorov asked him various questions about the compatibility of death as a “martyr” with Islamic texts and the possibility of doing “hijra” [emigration to Muslim land].
"I want to fight," he also wrote to her.
For the investigators, the killer gave up his plan to go to Syria and made concrete his terrorist intentions by taking advantage of the controversy over the course taught by Samuel Paty.
The exploitation of the young Chechen's phone made it possible to highlight his interest in various terrorist groups, both the Islamic State (IS) organization and the Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTS) group, affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
The latter is very present in the Idlib region.
In a message published on Snapchat twelve days before the attack, Abdullakh Anzorov glorified the jihadists of HTS, which he presented as "the best current group to join", and their actions in North-West Syria.
According to a security source, however, Hayat Tahrir al-Cham has denied any involvement in the assassination of Samuel Paty.