"No law without justice", "Justice for Sarah Halimi".
Several thousand people gathered on Sunday April 25 in France, and in particular in Paris, at the initiative of citizen collectives and representatives of the Jewish community, to challenge the lack of trial after the murder of Sarah Halimi in 2017.
Under the slogan "Without justice, no Republic", the Parisian demonstrators met at the Place du Trocadéro at the initiative of a collective, "Agissons pour Sarah Halimi".
The messages "No law without justice", "Justice broken?"
or "Justice for Sarah Halimi" were written on signs held up in the crowd.
"The clamor has risen and hope has returned. Hope is you here," said Sarah Halimi's brother [also known as Lucie Attal], William Attal from the podium.
Personalities including Yvan Attal, Pascal Légitimus, Alexandre Arcady or Cyril Hanouna have shown their "solidarity" with the Halimi family and calling for "change the law", via messages broadcast on a giant screen.
A bill aimed at "filling a legal void"
This mobilization follows the confirmation, on April 14, by the Court of Cassation, of the criminal irresponsibility of the murderer of the Jewish sexagenarian killed in 2017 in Paris, hospitalized in psychiatry since this crime.
The highest court of the judiciary confirmed the anti-Semitic nature of the crime, but confirmed the impossibility of trying the murderer, given the abolition of his discernment during the facts.
According to the seven psychiatric experts who examined him, Kobili Traoré, a heavy cannabis user, was in the throes of a "delirious puff" when he killed his 65-year-old neighbor, Lucie Attal, also known as Sarah Halimi.
The Paris Court of Appeal had concluded that there was a mental disorder that had abolished its judgment or the control of its acts at the time of the facts, which the Court of Cassation deemed to be in accordance with the law.
Shortly before the Parisian rally on Sunday, Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti announced the presentation "at the end of May", in the Council of Ministers, of a bill on criminal irresponsibility, aimed at "filling" a "void legal".
In accordance with the request of the President of the Republic, the government will present at the end of May in the Council of Ministers a bill to fill the legal vacuum which appeared in the Sarah Halimi affair.
This tragic story that has marked us all will advance our law.
pic.twitter.com/SqF2O28utj
- Eric Dupond-Moretti (@E_DupondM) April 25, 2021
With the future new law, "if justice has not been done for Sarah Halimi, it will be done thanks to Sarah Halimi", launched at the microphone Jonathan Behar, one of the organizers of the rally.
A Sarah Halimi law?
The impossibility of a trial had aroused a very strong misunderstanding within a part of the French Jewish community, targeted by several deadly attacks in recent years.
The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) hoped that the future law would bear the name of Sarah Halimi: "It is a form of tribute that would be paid to her, for lack of having done her justice."
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people, according to the police headquarters, marched Sunday in Marseille to the Palais de Justice where a banner "Justice for Sarah" had been hung.
At the head of the procession were present the elected Republicans Martine Vassal, who heads the Department and Renaud Muselier, president of the Region.
In Strasbourg, around 600 demonstrators, according to the prefecture, gathered on the forecourt of the great Synagogue de la Paix.
"I call on you to remain dignified in the face of what looks like a denial of justice," Maurice Dahan, president of the Israelite Consistory of Bas-Rhin, told them.
With AFP
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