The French court sentenced the murder of an elderly Jewish woman to life imprisonment of 22 years without parole, and the case sparked a strong protest against anti-Semitism France.
Yacine Mihoub was convicted of murdering 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, Who was stabbed 11 times and burned part of the body After a fire broke out in her Paris apartment on March 23, 2018.
The second defendant, Alex Carrimbacus, was acquitted by the Paris court, but was convicted of anti-Semitism motivated theft and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The court stated that the attack began with a robbery and was fueled by a “broader anti-Semitist background” and “prejudice” against so-called Jewish wealth, which led Mihoub to believe that the victim had a “hidden treasure” in her home.
Knoll’s family praised the verdict as “just.”
President Emmanuel Macron attended the funeral of the eighty-year-old man The infamous round-up of Jews in Paris in 1942 During World War II, she fled to Portugal with her mother, and later she married an Auschwitz survivor.
Mihob is the son of one of Kroll’s neighbors. He described her as a “surrogate grandmother” to him. She denied any connection with her death, but instead accused Kalimbakus.
Knoll’s murder aroused more disgust because she suffered from Parkinson’s disease and was unable to act independently.
Knoll’s son Daniel told the court that when his mother let Mihob home, who had worked for her for many years, “she did not expect that the person she had protected for many years would become her executioner.”
In his final statement to the court on Wednesday, Kalimbakus told Knoll’s family that he regretted not stopping the attack described by the prosecution as “particularly brutal”.
After Kalimbakus told investigators that he overheard Mihob arguing with Kroll about “Jewish money and wealth” on the day of Kroll’s death, the attack was classified as anti-Semitism.
He also claimed that Mihob, who had been convicted of violence multiple times, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”) when stabbing her.
The prosecutor also pointed out that the messages praising the jihadist attacks found in Mihoub’s cell were evidence of what he called anti-Semitism.
The 500,000 Jewish community in France is the largest in Europe Shocked by a series of attacks By radical Islamists who have targeted Jews in recent years.
In March 2011, Muhammad Mela In March 2011, a teacher and three children of a Jewish school in Toulouse were shot dead.
Four years later, four people died in one Taking hostages in a kosher supermarket Complicated by the two brothers in Paris Slaughtered a group of cartoonists A few days ago in Mohammed’s comics.
An estimated 30,000 people attended The silent parade in Knoll’s memory In March 2018, government ministers and French party leaders attended the meeting.
In the three-week murder trial, two recidivists who knew each other in prison accused each other of being responsible for her death.
The case is similar to the 2017 killing of Sarah Halimi, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her 60s who was thrown out of the window of her Paris apartment by a neighbor chanting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”).
The French Supreme Court ruled in April that the perpetrator of the case, Kobili Traore (Kobili Traore) Did not bear criminal responsibility after succumbing to “mental insanity” Under the influence of the drug, the trial cannot be conducted.
The ruling angered the families of the victims and Jewish groups, and prompted Macron to urge changes to French law to ensure that people face responsibility for violent crimes under the influence of drugs.
