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.

  • DremorEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    I mostly agree with you.

    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.

    Edit : merging two answers to the same comment.