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CRIME

Two men on trial over murder of elderly Jewish woman that shocked France

Two men went on trial on Tuesday over the 2018 murder of an elderly Jewish woman that provoked protests and alarm in France about anti-Semitic crime.

Flowers left in tribute to Mireille Knoll, 85, outside her home in Paros.
Flowers left in tribute to Mireille Knoll, outside her home in Paris. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP

The partly burned body of Mireille Knoll, 85, was found in her apartment in central Paris after she had been stabbed 11 times before her home was set on fire.

President Emmanuel Macron attended the funeral of the Holocaust survivor, who escaped a notorious 1942 roundup of more than 13,000 Jews in Paris by fleeing with her mother to Portugal when she was nine years old.

Two men have been charged with her killing, a 25-year-old homeless man with psychiatric problems and the 31-year-old son of one of Kroll’s neighbours.

The pair, who met in prison and have past convictions for theft and violence, both deny killing the frail and immobile grandmother and each blames the other for her death.

“We will need a miracle for the truth to come out of their mouths,” Gilles-William Goldnadel, a lawyer acting for Knoll’s family, told reporters as he entered the court, adding that it was a case of “anti-Semitism motivated by financial gain.”

Prosecutors are treating the murder as an anti-Semitic hate crime because one of the men said he had overheard the other “talking about Jews’ money and their wealth” and that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) while stabbing her.

The investigation had also shown one of the suspects, named as Yacine Mihoub, had an “ambivalent” attitude towards Islamic extremism, prosecutors claim.

“They’re monsters,” Knoll’s son, Daniel Knoll, told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are expecting a very severe verdict.”

Both Mihoub, 31, and co-accused Alex Carrimbacus, 25, were present in court or the trial which is due to last until November 10th.

The murder was the latest in a series of attacks that have horrified France’s 500,000-strong Jewish community and exacerbated concern about how rising Islamic extremism is fuelling anti-Semitism.

An estimated 30,000 people took part in a silent march in her memory in March 2018 that was attended by government ministers and the heads of France’s political parties.

One of the organisers, Sabrina Moise, said at that the time that while she “loves France” she felt it was “no longer safe for Jews because of galloping anti-Semitism.”

In 2012, Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse.

Three years later, a gunman killed four people in a hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket in the French capital.

And in 2017, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties, Sarah Halimi, was thrown out of the window of her Paris flat by a neighbour shouting “Allahu Akhbar”.

France’s highest court ruled in April that the killer, Kobili Traore, was not criminally responsible for crime after succumbing to a “delirious fit” under the influence of drugs and could not go on trial.

That ruling infuriated the victim’s family as well as Jewish groups, and prompted Macron to urge a change in French law to ensure people face responsibility for violent crimes while under the influence of drugs.

It also prompted protests in France and also Israel.

Speaking about Knoll, Macron had said her killer she “murdered an innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish and in doing so had sullied our most sacred values and our memory.”

Member comments

  1. Even without knowing the outcome of the long awaited trial we almost know for sure the verdict . This will be “not guilty” on reason that one is bonkers and the other was high on drugs at the time of the unfortunate murder of this fine Jewish lady. Its very risky being Jewish in France now .

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CRIME

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

French authorities have uncovered a website for a fake recruitment drive purportedly seeking French volunteers to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, the defence ministry said on Thursday.

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

The site has now been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without elaborating.

The site had said that 200,000 French people were invited to “enlist in Ukraine”, with immigrants given priority.

A link to the site – that resembled the French army’s genuine recruitment portal – had been posted on X, formerly Twitter, the French defence ministry said.

“The site is a fake government site,” the ministry said, also on X, “and has been reposted by malevolent accounts as part of a disinformation campaign”.

The ministry did not say who they thought might be responsible. But a source close to the government told AFP initial evidence pointed to communications operations linked to Russian mercenary group Wagner.

“The accounts used and the technical data behind them, these are the people we know”, the source said.

“These people are still there and remain very focused on Ukraine. The subject of the French army is something that annoys them a lot.”

Separately, a government official speaking on condition of anonymity said the site bore “the hallmarks of a Russian or pro-Russian effort as part of a disinformation campaign claiming that the French army is preparing to send troops to Ukraine”.

French President Emmanuel Macron angered the Russian leadership last month by hardening his tone on the conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks he has refused to rule out sending ground troops and insisted that Europe has to do all that is necessary for a Russian defeat.

France has already accused Russia of waging a disinformation campaign against it.

The official told AFP that similar recent examples of disinformation posts included pictures of French army convoys wrongly presented as moving towards the Ukrainian border.

The fake website invited potential recruits to contact “unit commander Paul” for information about joining.

The defence ministry and government cyber units are investigating, ministry staff told AFP.

The French government has recently stepped up efforts to denounce and fight what it says are Russian disinformation and destabilisation campaigns aimed at undermining French public support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“Russia is asserting itself as the most aggressive player in the information field,” Marc-Antoine Brillant, the head of Viginum, an agency mandated to detect digital disinformation campaigns, said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.

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