Man suspected of anti-Semitic 2017 murder will not be tried

The man suspected of killing a Jewish woman in Paris, in an attack deemed anti-Semitic, will not be held criminally responsible, a court decided this week.

The controversial decision to not even put Kobili Traoré on trial for the 2017 murder of 65-year-old Sarah Halimi, an Orthodox Jewish woman, in which she was pushed out her window, was made Wednesday by the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, upholding earlier rulings from lower courts, France24 reports.

Traoré, then 29 and a heavy marijuana smoker, is suspected of having shouted “Allahu akbar” as he killed the older woman, who happened to be his neighbor.

The court decided that the murder was the result of a “delirious fit” and Traoré was therefore not responsible. He has been in a psychiatric hospital since the killing.

The murder was reclassified as anti-Semitic in February 2018, shortly before the anti-Semitic slaying of Parisian Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor.

“From now on in our country we can torture and kill Jews with complete impunity,” Francis Kalifat, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, said in response to the ruling.

The insanity ruling last year was reportedly denounced by French President Emmanuel Macron, noting there was “a need for a trial,” no matter its outcome.

These aren’t the only anti-Semitic attacks France has suffered in recent years.

A 23-year-old man, Mohamed Merah, with links to extremism, killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in early 2012.

Just under three years later, two days after the fatal attack on the office of satirical outlet Charlie Hebdo, there was a siege on a Parisian kosher market, which ended in the murders of four hostages “because they were Jews.”