French President Emmanuel Macron was criticized by senior French judicial officials on Monday for implying that the murderer of Sarah Halimi should face a new trial in a speech he delivered in Israel last week.

“Even if, in the end, the judge had to decide that criminal responsibility is not there, the need for a trial is there,” Macron said in a speech to French Jews in Jerusalem last Thursday. “There is a need for the healing that a trial can bring.”

However, Macron did add that: “I cannot speak to you from the heart, because I am the guarantor of the independence of the judiciary, of the cardinal principles of our Criminal Code,” adding that the appeal to the Court of Cassation (the highest court in France) “constitutes a possible way forward under the law.”

Macron said that after Halimi’s murder, he “received so many letters, heard so much excitement, saw so much rage and anger at the idea that justice will never be done.”

Macron’s comments were condemned by the top judge and prosecutor-general at the Court of Cassation which is holding a hearing on the appeal by Halimi’s family against the lower court’s ruling.

“The independence of the justice system, of which the president of the Republic is the guarantor, is an essential factor in the functioning of democracy,” said Cassation Court president Chantel Arens and attorney general François Molins. “The magistrates of the Court of Cassation must be able to examine the appeals before them with complete peace of mind and complete independence.”

Sarah Halimi, 65, a frum retired doctor and mother of three children was brutally beaten and murdered by Mali native Kobili Traoré, who threw her out of her apartment window while yelling “Allahu Akbar” in April 2017.

Although Traoré confessed to the murder, a psychiatric evaluation determined that he was not responsible for his actions and the judge refused to even initially acknowledge that the murder was a hate crime, only conceding six months later at the pressure of the Halimi family’s lawyers that the murder was motivated by anti-Semitism.

The judge called in a psychiatric expert who said that although Traoré was delirious due to cannabis consumption, he was fit to stand trial and “accessible to a penal sanction.” But the judge decided to discard his opinion and called in two more experts, who ruled that Traoré was unfit to stand trial.

Halimi’s family appealed the verdict and last month the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that due to smoking cannabis before the murder, Traoré was delusional and could not be considered criminally responsible for his actions.

At the time, Francis Kalifat, president the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said: “Is an anti-Semitic crime the only crime that is excused by the judiciary because of massive drug-taking, whereas in all other crimes the judiciary would consider that to be an aggravating circumstance?”

“If the victim were not Jewish and if the murderer were not a Muslim, the decision could have been different,” said Gilles-William Goldnadel, one of the lawyers for the Halimi family.

Traoré had been sentenced to over ten violent assaults before murdering Halimi.

The court ruling is part of a much larger problem of anti-Semitic incidents in France. A report released on Sunday by the French Interior Ministry said that most of the hate crimes in France last year were aimed at Jews, who make up less than 1% of the population – about half a million Jews among 65 million people.

A recent American Jewish Committee (AJC) Paris survey found that 70 percent of French Jews say they have been victims of at least one antisemitic incident in their lifetime, 64% have suffered anti-Semitic verbal abuse at least once, and 23% have been targets of physical violence at least once, with 10 percent saying they were attacked several times.

More than one-third, 37%, avoid wearing visible Jewish symbols, 25% hide their Jewish identity in the workplace, and 52% have considered leaving France.

55% of Jews were insulted or threatened on the street and 59% were physically abused in school. 54% were victims of verbal abuse and 26% suffered violence in schools.

46% said they had suffered anti-Semitic verbal abuse in the workplace.

Religious French Jews feel the most vulnerable, with 74% of them saying they had suffered verbal abuse at least once, compared with 64% of the full Jewish sample.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)