A heavily guarded Paris courtroom became the center of France’s latest reckoning with extremism Wednesday as eight defendants went on trial for their alleged roles in the 2020 beheading of a middle school teacher.

While teaching a lesson on freedom of expression on October 5, teacher Samuel Paty showed his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that had appeared in the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Following France’s education guidelines, he allowed students to leave the room if they wished to avoid seeing the images.

The next day, a 13-year-old student told her father, Brahim Chnina, she had been suspended for challenging Paty about the cartoons. Despite being a lie, her father launched a fierce social media campaign, posting videos denouncing Paty and sharing the school’s address in Conflans-Saint-Honorine. His daughter was tried last year in a juvenile court and given an 18-month suspended sentence.

In the week that followed, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65, a self-declared Islamic activist, joined the campaign. His inflammatory videos branded Paty a “thug” and called for violence against the teacher. Their posts caught the attention of Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, through jihadist social media channels. Though he lived 60 miles away and had never met Paty, Anzorov began plotting an attack.

Two friends allegedly helped him prepare: Naim Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, are accused of helping purchase weapons and driving Anzorov to the school. On October 16, Anzorov waited outside the school. After students identified Paty for him, he followed and killed the 47-year-old teacher before being shot dead by police.

“We expect that the justice system will be up to the crime that has been committed,” Francis Szpiner, the lawyer representing Paty’s 9-year-old son, told the Associated Press. “It’s an unheard-of event in the history of the republic. It’s the first time a teacher has been assassinated because he is a teacher.”

Four other defendants, aged 18 to 25, stand charged with terrorist conspiracy for their involvement in extremist chat groups that connected Anzorov to his target.