COMMUNITY

Gilles-William Goldnadel and Francis Szpiner

Lawyers

French justice delivered a cruel blow to the country’s Jewish community in April 2021, when the nation’s highest court ruled that the accused murderer of Sarah Halimi – a Jewish woman brutally beaten to death in her own apartment by an antisemitic intruder in April 2017 – would be excused from a criminal trial on the grounds that his intake of cannabis on the night of the killing had rendered him temporarily insane. In response, Halimi family attorneys Gilles-William Goldnadel and Francis Szpiner announced that they were taking the case against the accused, Kobili Traoré, to the Israeli courts in behalf of Halimi’s sister, Israeli citizen Esther Lekover. Under Israeli law, there is the possibility of trying antisemitic crimes committed abroad if the complaint is filed by a citizen of Israel. However, France does not have an extradition treaty with Israel. “Following the appalling judgment ruling out any criminal sanction against the murderer of Sarah Halimi, I enter a complaint to the Israeli justice system against Traoré on behalf of Esther, Sarah's sister,” Goldnadel declared. “No to the denial of justice.” (Photos: Twitter and Wikimedia)