On April 4th, 2017, Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish grandmother and retired doctor and teacher, was brutally murdered by her neighbor Kobili Traoré. Traore broke into her Paris apartment, stabbed her to death for approximately 50 minutes, and then threw her body from a third-story window.

Traoré, 27, while torturing Halimi was heard calling her a “dirty Jew”, reciting verses from the Quran, and shouting Alahu Akbar. After the murder, he shouted, “I have killed the sheitan,” meaning the devil or demonic spirit in Arabic. Local police were downstairs waiting for backup while the torture was taking place.

In an unfathomable decision in mid-April, France’s highest judicial body, the Court of Cassation, ruled that Traoré will not face trial due to his consumption of marijuana the night of the murder. The courts cited an article of the French criminal code which states that a person is not liable for a crime if they suffered from a psychological or neurological disorder that impaired their actions at the time it was committed. In a 2017 case, a person also under the influence was sentenced to prison for throwing their dog out a window.

This legal travesty must not be allowed to stand and Traoré must be held accountable for his heinous anti-Semitic actions! French citizens, especially Jews, are not safe if religiously-motivated murder goes unpunished. The only place Traoré deserves to be for the rest of his life is behind prison bars.

Read more and sign the petition here on combatantisemitism.org