(JTA) A new parliamentary report on the 2017 killing of a Jewish woman by a Muslim attacker was meant to restore French Jews’ faith in their country’s police and justice systems.
Instead, the report released last week has added fuel to the fire, enraging French Jewish leaders.
Last year, a judge ruled that Sarah Halimi’s professed killer was not responsible for his actions because his consumption of marijuana had induced a psychotic episode. This was despite the fact that the court concluded he was motivated to kill Halimi because she was Jewish.
In the aftermath of the ruling, French Jews led a wave of infuriated protests.
In September 2021, a parliamentary committee led by French Jewish lawmaker Meyer Habib began investigating, in his words, “any dysfunctions” in the case on the part of French police. The committee’s new 67,000-word report found that police officers arrived on the scene before the murder occurred but did not stop it.
