The government also promised to reinforce security in schools. But nearly three years to the day after Paty’s death, another teacher was killed in an eerily similar attack. That teacher, Dominique Bernard, who gave French literature classes at a school in northern France, was killed by a former student of Russian origin who had pledged allegiance to IS and who had expressed hatred of France’s secular values.

The court proceedings are the second trial in connection with the murder of Paty, who was 47 when he died. Six former students at his school were convicted last year for playing a role in the killing. Five were found guilty of helping Anzorov identify and track Paty in exchange for money, though they were not thought to have known that Anzorov intended to kill.

The sixth, a girl, was convicted of making false allegations about the teacher. She had not attended his class but had falsely told her parents he had ordered Muslim students to leave the room when he displayed the caricatures.

Officials did not name those former students, who were minors at the time of the attack. But the girl’s father, Brahim Chnina, 52, is one of the main defendants in the second trial.

He and another defendant, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, 65, an Islamic activist, are accused of spreading false claims and personal information about Paty online, feeding an online frenzy that ultimately caught the attention of Anzorov, who lived about 80 kilometres away.

Lawyers for some of the defendants accused of fuelling the online smear campaign have argued their clients had never called for his death and had no knowledge of Anzorov’s murderous plot.

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Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer for Sefrioui, told reporters Monday that the charges against his client were tied to “political and moral considerations that are unrelated to any actual participation in a terrorist organisation.”

“If you are going to apply the law, an acquittal is necessary,” he said.

But prosecutors say that the context at the time of the attack was key. A month before Paty was killed, Charlie Hebdo had republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. That led to new terrorist threats against France and a knife attack occurred that month near the satirical newspaper’s offices — making it clear to the defendants, prosecutors argued, that targeting Paty online could put the teacher’s life in danger.