Sister of Murdered Jewish Woman in France Seeks Trial in Israel

The sister of a Jewish woman murdered in Paris in 2017 will seek a trial in Israel after the killer avoided being tried in France on the grounds he acted in delirium due to drug-taking, lawyers said. 

Jewish groups have reacted with outrage to the decision by France's highest court last Wednesday that Kobili Traore was not criminally responsible for the murder in 2017 of Sarah Halimi.

Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman, died in 2017 after being pushed out of the window of her Paris flat by neighbor Traore, 27, who shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic).

Traore, a heavy cannabis smoker, has been in psychiatric care since Halimi's death and he remains there after the ruling.

The court said he committed the killing after succumbing to a "delirious fit" and was thus not responsible for his actions.

Lawyers Francis Szpiner and Gilles-William Goldnadel said in a statement late Wednesday they would "take a complaint to Israeli courts against Kobili Traore in the name of Esther Lekover, the victim's sister".

Criminal law in Israel can apply to crimes of anti-Semitism committed abroad when complaints are filed by Israeli citizens, such as Lekover. 

But, as a rule, France does not extradite its citizens.

French president Emmanuel Macron had earlier this week waded into the case by urging a change in French law on criminal responsibility.

"Deciding to take narcotics and then 'going mad' should, not in my view, remove your criminal responsibility," Macron told Le Figaro in an interview published Monday. 

"I would like Justice Minister (Eric Dupond-Moretti) to present a change in the law as soon as possible", he added.

Jewish groups said the court ruling had made Jews less safe in France, while lawyers representing Halimi's family said they intend to refer the case to the European Court of Human Rights. 

French Jews have been repeatedly targeted by jihadists in recent years, most notably in 2012, when an Islamist gunman shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southern city of Toulouse and in 2015 when a pro-Islamic State radical gunned down four people at a Jewish supermarket in Paris.