Hundreds attend funeral of Samuel Paty’s attacker in Chechnya

Hundreds of people in Chechnya have attended the funeral of Abdullakh Anzorov, appearing to pay homage to the 18-year-old who decapitated the French schoolteacher Samuel Paty last month, a video has shown.

Anzorov’s body, which was reportedly repatriated to Russia for burial late last week, was paraded through a village in central Chechnya in a procession of about 200 people, mostly young men chanting prayers as they walked to a village cemetery.

Anzorov’s coffin, carried on the shoulders of mourners through the town centre of Shalazhi, was draped in green cloth.

While Paty’s murder shocked France, prominent voices in Russia’s North Caucasus such as Chechnya’s strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, have focused blame on the country’s secularism and President Emmanuel Macron for allowing images of the prophet Muhammad as “provocations and attacks on the faith.”

Kheda Saratova, a prominent member of a human rights advisory body to Kadyrov, confirmed to the state news agency RIA Novosti that Anzorov was buried “in the village cemetery in Shalazhi”.

Three short videos from the funeral procession were uploaded to a Russian-language social network group called “Islam is the Religion of God”, and were then picked up by Russian news agencies.

Russian media also reported that local authorities knew about the funeral procession, but had banned photography of the event and set up roadblocks near the village to prevent more people from attending.

Most Russian and Chechen state media have not reported on the funeral, and the Kremlin spokesman on Monday said he had no information on the reports of Anzorov’s funeral.

One village official was quoted by a Russian news site as denying that Anzorov was buried with “special honours” but was simply being buried close to the graves of his relatives.

“He is a hero for the whole Islamic world,” the head of the Shalazhi administration was quoted as saying. “There were about 100 people at his funeral. It was a normal funeral. I was certainly there, and expressed my condolences to his relatives. That is my duty.”

Calls to the Shalazhi village administration were not answered on Monday. An email to the official Salman Magomadov received an autoreply.

Kadyrov has condemned the attack on Paty but has spent far more time warning western leaders about the dangers of antagonising Muslims and “forcing people to commit crimes”.

Kadyrov has assumed a public role as a defender of the Muslim faith while putting down a simmering insurgency largely composed of Islamist elements.