Prosecutors claim Muslim killing of Jew ‘anti-Semitic’
THE alleged murder of an elderly Jewish woman by a Muslim man should be tried as an anti-Semitic attack, French prosecutors have said, after months of campaigning by Jewish groups who claimed that a hate crime was being swept under the carpet.
Sarah Halimi, 65, was tortured and killed at her home in eastern Paris in April and thrown off the third floor to the ground below.
The suspected killer, Kobili Traoré, 27, a Muslim of Malian origin who lived in the same building as Ms Halimi, allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) during the attack and said that he was killing Satan.
French authorities did not immediately classify the crime as an anti-Semitic murder, and the affair initially got little coverage in the mainstream French media.
This prompted outrage among Jewish groups, some of whom said that authorities were playing the incident down to prevent it from becoming an issue in far-Right leader Marine Le Pen’s presidential election campaign.
But this week Paris prosecutors requested that the murder be classified as an anti-Semitic act.
It will now be up to a judge to decide whether to accept their request. Prosecutors said they based their decision on a psychiatrist’s evaluation of Mr Traoré. This said that at the time of the killing the suspect had consumed large amount of cannabis and was in an altered state.
But that this did not exclude the possibility that he knew he was carrying out an anti-Semitic act.
The suspect, who was arrested immediately after the attack, has claimed insanity.
The prosecutor’s decision was welcomed by Francis Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities.
“This is satisfying for the Jewish community and for the family of Sarah Halimi, who will now be able to begin their mourning,” he said.
Earlier this month, French authorities were accused of failing to tackle “societal anti-Semitism” after a Jewish family was beaten, held hostage and robbed in their home near Paris because of their religion.
The assailants told the three victims: “You are Jews, you have money. We take money from Jews to give to the poor.”
Mr Kalifat of the CRIF said that “this horrible act is proof that Jews in France are particularly threatened in the street... and even in their homes.”
The European Jewish Congress responded to that same incident by saying: “We call on French authorities to firmly root out societal anti-Semitism and its passive acceptance.”