(Algemeiner) France’s Jewish community has called on the authorities in the city of Lyon to retain the possibility of an antisemitic motive in the investigation of the chilling murder last Tuesday of an 89-year-old Jewish man.
René Hadjaj was pushed to his death on May 17 from the balcony on the 17th floor of the apartment building where he lived in the Duchère district of Lyon. Hadjaj’s murder brought to mind the similar fate met in April 2017 by Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman who was beaten and tortured in her apartment by an Islamist intruder who then ejected her from her third-floor window. The accused assailant, Kobili Traore, was excused from trial in April 2021, on the grounds that he could not be held criminally responsible, as his intake of marijuana on the night of Halimi’s killing had rendered him temporarily insane.
