After several months of standoff, the anti-Semitic character in the murder of Sarah Halimi, in Paris, in April 2017, was held Tuesday by the investigating judge in charge of this investigation very followed in the Jewish community. Already indicted for the murder of this orthodox Jewish woman, the suspect Kobili Traore "was heard today by the magistrate instructor" who has retained this aggravating circumstance, said a judicial source. Contacted by AFP, his lawyer could not be reached immediately.

During the night of April 3 to 4, 2017, in a public housing project in eastern Paris, Kobili Traoré, 27, had introduced herself into the apartment of her 65-year-old neighbor, Lucie Attal, also known as Sarah Halimi. To the cries of "Allah Akbar", interspersed with insults and verses from the Koran, the young man had beaten her on the balcony, before defenestering her. "I killed the sheitan" (the demon, in Arabic), he had shouted. The violent death of this woman had revived the debate on the persistence of anti-Semitism in the neighborhoods under the effect of an identity Islam.

"Acute delusional puff"

Interned in the aftermath of the tragedy, Kobili Traoré was indicted on July 10 for murder. The psychiatric report, issued in September, concluded that the suspect had been caught that night with an "acute delusional puff" after heavy cannabis use, but this psychotic disorder did not exclude its criminal responsibility and was "not incompatible with an anti-Semitic dimension".

The prosecution and the civil parties have long claimed that the antisemitic nature of the case should be upheld. The latter had also expressed the wish for a reconstitution. In January, faced with the lack of response from the judge, the prosecution and civil parties had appealed to the Paris Court of Appeal to decide this question: Was Sarah Halimi "targeted" because of his religious affiliation? The decision of the judge Tuesday preceded the examination of this issue by the chamber of instruction.

The other case Halimi

The judge had also refused a reconstruction, on the grounds that the suspect recognized the facts and that he remained "fragile", "especially after a relapse" in the psychiatric hospital. This request must still be examined by the investigating chamber.

Jewish officials strongly criticized the refusals. "This is an insult to (the) memory" Sarah Halimi "and additional pain for his children and his family," had reacted the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), Francis Kalifat.

The case of Sarah Halimi, a name that awakens the memory of Ilan Halimi's anti-Semitic assassination by the "barbarian gang" in 2006, took a political turn in July when President Emmanuel Macron called for justice clarity on the facts, in the presence of the Israeli Prime Minister visiting Paris. "Everything suggests, in this crime, that the denial of reality has struck again," had accused in a forum published in Le Figaro fifteen personalities, including philosophers Elisabeth Badinter and Alain Finkielkraut.