(AFP) French President Emmanuel Macron drew a sharp rebuke from the country’s top magistrates on Monday for criticising a court ruling on the 2017 murder of a Jewish woman in Paris.
Sarah Halimi, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties, died after being pushed out of the window of her Paris flat by a neighbour shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic).
Her murder stoked debate over a new strain of anti-Semitism among radicalised Muslim youths in predominantly immigrant neighbourhoods.
But the Court of Appeal in Paris last month concluded that the suspect, a heavy pot smoker, had succumbed to a “delirious fit” and was therefore not criminally responsible for his actions.
